🏔 How I Make Peace with Uncertainty

It's an unavoidable part of life. We might as well learn how to navigate it.

Jan 18, 2023

🥳 Hey, Kasey here! Welcome to this week’s newsletter.

If you’ve been here for a while, you’ll notice a change in the branding. Yep, after lots of thought, I decided to drop High Growth Founders while I navigate somewhat of an existential brand rebirth.

For now, it will be the A Better Jones newsletter because, well, that’s me. I have been @abetterjones for 12 years now. And that name rather perfectly describes my mission in life: to be a better, stronger, more powerful version of myself.

I want to help you grow. In whatever form that matters to you. So please, reply to this email, slide into the DMs, or send carrier pigeons to let me know how.

In this Week’s Issue:

Growth Insight: Making Peace with Uncertainty
- What has me grappling with this now
- Why are we hard-wired to find uncertainty so damn uncomfortable?
- 5 Healthy ways to cope
Impactful Social Writing: Have the strategy, frameworks, and system to create an impact online. Plus, have a bunch of fun with Erica and me

Growth Insight: Making Peace with Uncertainty

As I write this post, I am waiting for potentially life-altering news — to find out if an endometrial biopsy shows signs of cancer. I was supposed to receive test results from urgent care last Friday and here it is, Tuesday afternoon, and still no word. Yes, I’ve called to follow up — 5 days in a row, in fact — but still, nothing.

A year or two ago, this wait would have been excruciating. And while the last week certainly has not been fun, I am astounded by my ability to make peace with the uncertainty of my situation and proud of how I have used this time to process this highly unexpected turn of events and allow myself to feel the onslaught of feelings it has sparked.

Throughout my life and especially my adulthood, I have struggled to cope with uncertainty. I find comfort in knowing, even when that knowledge is negative. If I know something to be true, I can then proceed to make a plan on how to handle the situation.

With knowledge, I feel I can assert self-agency by deciding how to respond.

I recently listened to an audio message I recorded for my therapist at 3:47am on June 12, 2020. This was about 36 hours after my dog attack and 15 hours after having extensive surgery to clean, repair, and stitch up my shredded arms. I had woken up hours earlier as a nurse came to check my vitals and was unable to fall back asleep.

My arms and hands were still bandaged and my right thumb broken, so I couldn’t text and opted for an audio message instead. Telling my therapist what had happened, I half-heartedly tried to joke about my need for his help to recover: “You know me, I need a plan!”

If I had found myself in this situation two years ago, I would have made multiple plans based on the potential outcomes.

But instead, I have used this week to make peace with whatever the diagnosis winds up being, knowing that I will meet it head-on, fight like an absolute warrior if needed, and allow this experience to deepen my love, care, and compassion for my family, my friends, and myself.

Perhaps the only planning that has resulted from this experience is to carve out more time to pursue a purpose-driven life. Turns out that facing your mortality is one helluva motivator to find meaning in the time you’ve got left.

So how did I learn to navigate the unknown with, what I dare call, grace?

Before I explain, it helps to understand why not knowing creates such struggle within us in the first place.

So as you sit in uncertainty, have faith that this experience will yield something positive for you. It might be brutally hard. It might royally suck in the moment. But you will learn something life-changing and you will grow because of it.

Why is uncertainty SO uncomfortable?

Our brains’ primary goal is to keep us safe. And anything unfamiliar reeks of danger. Think back to the start of human evolution when any rustle in the bushes or sound from an unknown animal could signal the presence of a predator.

This discomfort is our natural human state, but if you have trauma in your background (especially in your childhood), you probably have a more sensitive nervous system or a biologically increased response to stimulating situations.

Let’s dive into some of the data.

Employees would prefer a boss who is always unfair over a boss who is unpredictably unfair. The uncertainty of the former caused greater psychological stress over time.
In a study published in Nature Communications, volunteers “found that situations in which subjects had 50% chance of receiving a shock were the most stressful while 0% and 100% were the least stressful.” That’s right, it was more stressful to not know whether or not you’d receive a shock than being guaranteed to receive it.
Studies show uncertainty impairs executive function, increasing the difficulty of decision-making, action-taking, and performance more generally. I can attest to the truth of this. Even though I have largely made peace with this uncertainty I still have struggled to focus and be productive as I await this news, but the coping methods I’ve outlined below have helped.

The examples are nearly endless. Uncertainty is really freaking tough to handle. And yet, it’s an unavoidable fact of life, which is why we need to learn how to navigate it with grace. Or at least learn how to prevent self-sabotage and implosion when it arises.

How do you make peace with uncertainty?

There is no simple or easy answer to this, but these are the methods that have proven most helpful to me as I have learned in the last few years how to handle life’s inevitable periods of limbo.

Acknowledge, accept, and sit with your discomfort

If you do nothing else, allow yourself to acknowledge that whatever you’re going through freaking sucks. Let yourself feel the fear, worry, and sadness that comes up. Heck, also let yourself feel the excitement, anticipation, and thrill when it’s appropriate.

Letting yourself feel the emotions that arise is the ultimate form of self-respect and compassion.

Besides, denying or distracting yourself from these feelings does not make them go away — believe me, I’ve tried. You may manage to squash or minimize them momentarily, but they will come back, often at the least opportune moments.

Instead, take a deep breath and allow these feelings to wash over you. Get curious about the thoughts, ideas, and physical sensations that bubble up. Be a patient, non-judgmental witness to your experience.

You might just learn something about yourself and the deep well of resilience that lies inside.

Recognize your triggers — and try to mitigate your natural (and self-destructive) instincts

Some of the most transformative personal development work you can do is learn to recognize your own emotional triggers. These are the things (people, situations, and experiences) that prompt strong, visceral reactions in you, often causing you to react without thinking, and usually to your own detriment.

Because our brain is likely to interpret uncertainty as danger, it’s highly likely that we will respond in an emotionally triggered fashion. Identifying our common triggered responses to danger or uncertainty can help us notice when we’re engaging in this behavior, so we can rein it in and stop ourselves from running wild with it.

For example, as I mentioned above, I tend to respond by rushing to create a plan and “solve” the problem — which FYI is usually impossible. Over the years, I have learned this is actually a symptom of my default trauma response: flight.

Sometimes, flight isn’t about physically fleeing, but distracting myself so thoroughly that I feel detached from the reality of my experience.

In case you wondered, it is not an effective coping method.

The most common ways that people respond to uncertainty:

Obsess over information.
This is when we get hyper-focused on learning everything we can about a situation, despite how this information is impacting our mental health or our ability to take action on anything we’re learning.
Black and white thinking.
You may instantly assume the worst (or the best) about a situation, leaving no room for nuance, complexity, or blurred lines. Often this perspective sets us up for disappointment, as the reality is likely to be far hazier and more complicated.
Identity Clinging.
Read more about the Uncertainty-Identity Theory and how we often default to us vs. them thinking as a a way to cope with the fear that uncertainty sparks in many of us. A quick glance at the news over the last few years will reveal countless examples of this theory at work.

When you understand your triggers, it becomes vastly easier to notice yourself acting on them and take a pause to reset your mind. Remember to have compassion for yourself. You adopted these triggers to keep yourself safe. Being self-judgmental is rarely helpful.

Be kind, gentle, and loving to yourself. You deserve it. Everyone does.

Focus on what you can control

What is most uncomfortable about uncertainty is the lack of control. For most of us, our instinct is to focus on everything outside our control — planning when we don’t yet know what we’re dealing with (that’s me!), obsessively hunting down information, and trying to force resolutions that aren’t ideal or even possible.

Instead, direct your attention closer to home.

Are you taking care of your body with good food and movement? Or are you using this uncertainty as an excuse to binge on alcohol and eat crappy food that will make you feel like shit?
Are you nurturing your mind with meditation, reading, and positivity? Or are you doom-scrolling Twitter, watching trashy TV, and seeking out content and experiences that confirm your negative worldview?
Are you connecting with friends and family, sharing your fears, and asking for support? Are you finding ways to be present and appreciate their love? Or are you hiding away and avoiding the people who want to support you?

You cannot control what life throws at you, but you can control how you respond.

Use your values as your guide

In the face of uncertainty, knowing what we can control or what we even care about can be difficult. I highly recommend that you remember your fundamentals — what do you really care about?

In this moment, when everything feels like it’s either crumbling around you or on fire, what do you save? Where do you spend your time and resources to ensure you protect the parts of yourself and life that matter most?

If you’re not sure, try the Peaks and Valleys exercise of discovering your personal values. It will connect you to the core of who you are the experiences that have shaped your life and created the value system that, whether you realize it or not, directs your vision for the world.

Remember the Adversity Advantage

And lastly, but perhaps most importantly, remember what I like to call the Adversity Advantage.

We learn and grow through challenge, strife, and hardship, not through lucky breaks or easy wins. But it takes us having an attitude for

I think often about the concept of Post Traumatic Growth. It’s a very real phenomenon where people who go through traumatic experiences often realize tremendous personal growth as a result.

Do you know the difference between people who experience Post Traumatic Growth and those that do not? The ones who do believe they can.

It all comes down to belief.

Impactful Social Writing

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Thanks for reading. It means the world. And please, comment below (or reply if you’d like to keep it private) and tell me 1 way I can help you — one problem you’re struggling with, one goal you have, one thing you need to grow in 2023.

In love and growth,

Kasey