Are you facing unexpected changes and uncertainty? It can affect all aspects of your life, triggering fear and making it difficult for you to make good decisions. In this article I will explore the impact of ambiguity on our lives and provide practical tips for managing it in a healthy and effective way.
2020 gave all of us a crash course in uncertainty. We lost economic momentum. Our health suffered. We struggled to learn how to work from home. We had so little information about so much that was making big changes in our lives. And despite the fact that restaurants have re-opened and you can go to the store without a mask on, we still feel a deep sense of uncertainty in much of our lives.
When there is so much that we cannot predict, it shakes us up. This is what it means to live in ambiguity.
Ambiguity ramps up our fear. If you’re old enough to remember when Jaws and its sequels were in theaters, you might recall how much a fear of sharks pervaded our society. In the original movie, however, you don’t see the shark at all except for a few brief seconds. Steven Spielberg hadn’t planned on hiding the shark so much. The mechanical shark they’d built for the movie was riddled with problems, so they had to shoot around it. As a result, moviegoers’ sense of uncertainty and ambiguity were heightened. Not seeing the shark made it all worse. It was terrifying.
Ambiguity triggers fear, and when you’re afraid, you can’t engage in higher-level thinking (wisdom, insight, discernment). People who can manage ambiguity with skill, however, are able to deal comfortably with the uncertainty of change. They can make decisions and act with only a percentage of the total picture.
2021 opened with a shark attack of ambiguity for us in the States as questions piled up and cascaded out with the violence we witnessed in Washington. We now have language and, thanks to the special committee in Congress, a lot of details for what we were struggling to comprehend then.
Whenever the earth changes, when the ground beneath our feet shifts, we scramble to grab hold of something certain, but even when we feel like we have a handle on things, it doesn’t make anything certain. Part of the reason we moved into burnout in the following months is because it is too few of us have the skill to be calm and make wise decisions when nothing is certain.
My clients frequently seek to improve their ability to handle and manage ambiguity. One of them, Stephy, has learned that a combination of self care and letting go is what has helped. She discovered that when she wasn’t taking enough care of herself, she would be distracted by (or more susceptible to) headaches, but getting regular sleep, exercise, nutrition, hydration, and stretching all helped her to stay present and focused. She’s also been practicing mindfulness, intentionally letting go of the illusion of control and choosing to remember that change is the constant.
If you are managing ambiguity in your own life and work:
- Get information — as much as you can about the realities you are dealing with. In the absence of information, people make stuff up. So you need information.
- Control what you can. It can help to make lists of what you can control, what you can influence, and what is outside of your control/influence. Accept those things you can’t do anything about, and commit to doing what you can about what is in your control or influence.
- Connect with your support network. In times of stress, we need other people who can understand our struggles and appreciate us for what we are doing. Make a list of the 3 people you’re most comfortable with and make sure you connect with them at least once a month. Try to identify 3-5 more who would be good to have coffee or lunch with 2-3 times a year. Reach out to people you haven’t talked to in a long time — send them a text and tell them you’d like to reconnect.
- Learn and include stress-reduction techniques in your life, such as regular exercise, slow and deep breathing, mindfulness and self-compassion. Living through ambiguity is difficult, but you are in good company. Be kind to yourself when you are in it, and learn to let go of automatic thoughts that make things seem even worse. You’ll make your own way through much easier.
If you’d like to talk about how a coach can support you through periods of ambiguity and equip you with the skills for managing it, reach out to me at let me know. I’ll be happy to help you sort out your next steps and decide what’s the best one for you.
Bottom line, constant ambiguity can be deeply unsettling, but you can manage it effectively with these tools and techniques. Get information, focus on what you can control, connect with your support network, and take care of yourself. These basic steps will help you to live with uncertainty and make your decisions with more clarity and wisdom.
