I've noticed that uncertainty has a unique way of turning otherwise reasonable people (including me!) into doom-spiraling lunatics. 

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A layoff hits. A partner pulls away. A big decision is hanging in the air with no answer in sight — and suddenly the most thoughtful, balanced people I know are panic-applying to wildly wrong-fit jobs and posting things on LinkedIn that even they know are embarrassing. 

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If you're there right now, this article is for you. But first — something that might piss you off. 

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Your brain is doing exactly what it was designed to do. The problem is that the design is about 40,000 years out of date. 

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Your brain is wired to assume the worst — and that's not a glitch

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Our biology is fundamentally averse to uncertainty. Not because uncertainty is bad — but because, for most of human history, uncertainty was the thing that got you killed. Is that rustle in the grass a predator? Better assume yes. Those are the brains that survived long enough to make it inside our own skulls eons later. 

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Psychologists call this the negativity bias. Baumeister and colleagues summarized decades of research on it in a paper bluntly titled "Bad Is Stronger Than Good". The main headline is: bad events affect us roughly five times more powerfully than good ones of the same magnitude. 

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Our brains aren't buzzkills on purpose. They're just running the same survival software they ran when survival actually depended on flinching at every shadow. But our modern uncertainty is almost never about predators. It's about jobs, partners, money, and status. And, thus, you end up in the modern age, in which a tersely worded email from your boss can invoke the same exact stress response your ancient ancestor used to fight a wild boar to the death. Fun, right? 

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What this practically means is: if you do not intentionally choose a positive perspective about the uncertainty you're in, your brain will choose one for you. And the one it will likely choose for you will be catastrophic and incredibly negative. 

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Worst-case thinking feels protective but it's actually the basis of disordered anxiety

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The reason your brain goes directly to catastrophe is because it's the most efficient way to mobilize you into protective action. Rest is a risk — so your brain floods you with anxiety and worst-case scripts until you get up and actually do something about those worried thoughts. 

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But one of the nastiest tricks anxiety has is that it's great at rigging its own election to power, much like someone else I know :). 

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Anxiety shows up via automatic catastrophic thinking that you don't control. It brings with it an entire host of uncomfortable bodily sensations that can make you sick to your stomach. 

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And because those feelings are so awful, you're really good at obeying them and DOING something to make them go away. Unfortunately, doing anything at all to resolve a feeling is actually a trap — something we call a compulsion. 

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Here's what your brain learns when you take actions to resolve your anxious feelings: 

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Oh hey, that anxiety was actually necessary! They thought about all these awful things, so I sent them the survival energy they needed to get through that threat to their safety! And they got up and did something with my fight or flight energy, so I know that I'm correct about that. Ok, cool — I'll keep sending them more anxiety every time they think of these catastrophic scenarios because it's clearly vital to their continued survival! 

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Most of the suffering we experience in uncertainty isn't from uncertainty itself. It's from the sneaky anxiety loops we unwittingly cultivate when we aren't intentional with our attention and perspectives. 

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And that prevents us from seeing the real truth of how this whole life thing unfolds. 

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Good things come out of uncertainty, too. But our brains like to forget that.

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Here's the real tea. 

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Do a quick survey of the best moments of your life right now, and I guarantee you will see that they all emerged out of a gigantic pool of uncertainty. They probably happened in ways you did not expect or ways you never saw coming. 

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So why don't we actually remember that when uncertainty comes knocking? Again, you have your brain to thank for this. 

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But more specifically you have your sense of identity — your ego — to blame. And you may have just experienced this when I asked you to survey the good things in your life. 

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When you thought about the good stuff, did you, perhaps subtly, invent a story in which magically, somehow, you set yourself up for the good opportunity? A story in which you had control, or in which the good thing was a direct and obvious result of your actions? 

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Do you believe you actually got the call from the recruiter because you positioned your resume in an optimized way? 

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Do you think the blind date only ended in success because you trusted the judgment of the person setting it up? 

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These rationalizations sound convincing and true, but they are actually our egos working behind the scenes to gaslight us into believing that good things only happen when we, as a singular doer, take action and control them. Our sense of identity writes itself into power with convenient retelling. 

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You positioning your resume the right way can influence the chances a recruiter calls you. But it does not, in and of itself, magically make the recruiter on the other end pick up their phone, call you, and offer you the job. 

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You taking a blind date from someone you trust can influence the chances it goes well, but it does not immediately mean that you will choose to take the second date or make that person your life partner. 

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Pretending we have more individual power than we really do prevents us from seeing the actual truth — that life is a dancing web of myriad causes and effects that go way above our individual pay grades and that in that web, control is a silly little pipedream. 

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You never have control. You only ever have influence. 

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If you've spent your whole life believing the only way you've achieved anything is through effort, control, and white-knuckling outcomes into existence, this realization can feel like a smack in the face. My own overachieving, type-A little ego had a full existential panic the first time I took this in. 

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Because if I don't have control, what the hell have I been doing this whole time? 

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Here's the bright headline buried under that terror. 

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Things generally work in your favor. Not because you're blessed. Not because you try the most. Not because you "deserve it." But because that is the natural order of life when you take influencing actions and trust the process. 

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This isn't magical thinking. It's statistical thinking with the ego removed. You won't get everything you want. You'll get hard things you didn't want. But if you keep showing up, keep taking influencing actions, and stop frantically clutching at outcomes like a lifesaver in the swell — you will also get what you want. 

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If you don't believe me, I bet you can look around right now and identify 5 things you're grateful for. Simple, common exercise. But where most people don't go with that is — can you also entirely claim direct and individual responsibility for those objects of gratitude? Were they taken and created, or were they given? 

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Look really closely and tell me what you find. 

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Choose your perspective on purpose to live a happier life

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When you find yourself in a season of uncertainty, you have to intentionally choose a perspective on it. Because if you don't, we already know what your brain is going to vomit up for you. 

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Here's an example. 

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Negative perspective on a layoff: "That's it. I'm not going to find another job for a while. Fuck, this sucks." 

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Positive perspective on a layoff: "I didn't choose this and it hurts. But this layoff can give me the space to figure out what I want this next chapter to be." 

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Both of these people are looking at the same, true, and largely inconvenient event. But one of them has a much better shot at taking influencing actions to get them to what's next. And one of them is going to feel a lot better while they do all that, too. 

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The future is unknown, and there's a clear winner of a story here. So, what's your reason for not believing in the positive perspective? 

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If you're anything like I was, I'm going to venture a guess — it's your past. 

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If the positive perspective feels fake, your past may be showing

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Did you have any of these reactions to the positive perspective? "That's pollyanna." "That's sugar-coated." "That's just plain wrong." That used to be me, too. So if it's you right now, I promise, nothing is wrong with you AND I am not full of bullshit :). 

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People who struggle most with seeing that positivity can emerge from uncertainty almost always have pasts that contain real disappointment, loss, or trauma. Your negativity bias is extra strong because your brain has a lot of evidence to believe that negativity is protective. "Last time I let myself hope, look what happened." Through no fault of your own, your brain learned that pre-emptive bracing was the safest way to move through life. 

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That's not a character flaw — it's a brain doing its job with the data it had. And you can't fault yourself for not knowing what you didn't know back then. 

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But now, hopefully, you do know. And you get to make a choice. 

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Do you want to keep grabbing onto negativity in order to stay safe? Or are you willing to surrender to the possibility that good things can happen — and are actually more likely to happen — when you envision them and stay open to them? 

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This is a practice, not a one-time fix

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You're not going to change your perspective one time and be done. Choosing to see the good in uncertainty, again and again, is continuous work. 

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The positive perspective will probably feel like bubblegum bullshit for a while. That's ok; keep choosing it anyway. Lean directly into the fakeness even as your brain is screaming at you to run from it. You know what's true, you know how you want to feel, and you know what's going to get you to the other side. So don't let your brain bully you away from any of that. 

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I've been ragging on the brain a lot in this article, but one of the remarkable things about it is its plasticity and ability to adapt. With continued discipline, your mind and brain will yield to what you're aiming for. One day you'll wake up and choosing positivity will feel easy and natural again. You'll never get rid of uncertainty (it really is the currency of life), but you can absolutely change how you relate to it. 

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If you're in extreme uncertainty right now and you'd like a partner in this work, coaches like me exist for exactly this. Please don't hesitate to reach out. I'm here for you. 

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Photo credit: Queenie Wang via Unsplash