Simone Stolzoff

It was that not knowing exactly what was to come.

This is backed up by another one of my favorite studies, which was the researchers in the lab gave participants either 100% chance of receiving a painful electric shock or a 50% chance of receiving a painful electric shock.

And those with the 50% chance were far more stressed than those with the 100% chance.

We would somehow rather have a certain bad thing happen to us than have to deal with the ambiguity of not knowing.

And so I think in those cases of acute uncertainty, there's a few things that I would recommend.

The first is to separate what you can and what you can't control.

If there are actions that you can take that can actually influence the outcome, then you should take them.

Yeah, I'll opt out for now.

But for example, say you're applying for a job.

Rather than just throw your hands up and say, I don't know if I'll get it or not.

There are things that you can do, at least at the outset, like write a great cover letter, like try and network with people on the hiring team.

But once you've done all of the things that you can control, the next step down the flow chart is to plan for different scenarios.

Often a lot of our discomfort with uncertainty comes from putting all of our eggs in one basket, saying, okay, we need this job to work out.

We need to get into the school.

We need to have this specific outcome when that outcome is actually out of our control.

So rather than saying, I am just going to plan for one outcome, planning for different what I call contingency plans.

So if this happens, I'll do this.

If that happens, I'll do that.

And then after that, it's just a matter of being able to regulate your nervous system, to be able to cope with the not knowing.

That might mean getting into a flow state and distracting yourself through another activity.