As Rowan Atkinson, the actor who plays Mr. Bean, says: "My forecast for tomorrow is that anything can happen."
And he is absolutely right.
Uncertainty is the natural and permanent state of the human being.
The good news is that it is also a state that is conducive to our prosperity, providing us with unexpected opportunities for success.
Think that if we lived in a world of total certainty and security, we would not stop being slaves of our own destiny;
and that uncertainty is the magic of life.
Would you always read books that you know the ending of, or could you love a person whose gestures, words, and behaviors were predictable at all times?
That would be like dating Siri on your phone!
Despite being a source of freedom and opportunity, uncertainty scares us so much that, according to a study by the University of Maastricht, almost everyone would rather receive an electric shock at this very moment than wait for one. possible future download that do not know if it will arrive or not.
That is, the uncertainty hurts more than the discharge itself.
What is the reason that we get on so badly with her?
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It is a matter of neuroscience.
Words have an extraordinary force, but not all for the good.
And if the word uncertainty knocks us out, despite being somewhat ethereal, it is because for centuries we have been put into our heads that it was a handicap for our prosperity, when in reality it is the opposite.
We had come to convince ourselves that it was something negative, and therefore we tried at all costs to eliminate or avoid it.
Two impossible claims –since we cannot know everything, nor control everything, nor is there a single path without uncertainty–, which frustrate, despair and block us.
What you have to do is accept it and manage it to take advantage of its three manifestations: insecurity, chaos and change, which paradoxically are the three most direct routes to success.
That is why years ago I set out to collect recommendations from teachers and scientists of all times who had studied how to increase our tolerance for uncertainty in fields as diverse as the stock market, war, or treating the terminally ill;
And, combining them, I gave shape to a method to face any situation of uncertainty in life or in the company.
A method that could only be called Positive Uncertainty, since this is its main attribute.
The method consists of seven steps that include simple tools for each moment and situation, but today I want to stop at the fifth, called Keep Calm.
The world has always been very complex, we have never been able to understand everything or control everything, but since the beginning of time we have flowed with this chaos to reach unsuspected levels of prosperity.
The problem, in extreme crises like the current one, comes when the external chaos generates that other internal chaos that is what really destroys us.
How to ensure that we do not generate stress in a reactive way?
We have, for example, the exercises that terminally ill patients use to manage their uncertain circumstances.
Among others, some as simple as living from gratitude the small advances of day to day, instead of suffering from frustration for everything that remains to be resolved;
or practicing narrative therapy, reformulating the story we tell ourselves to jump from drama and pessimism to hope and resilience.
It is curious that we can predict the movement of a comet for the next fifteen thousand years, but we cannot know what will happen tomorrow with our partner, business or professional career.
But speaking of comets, do you know what the stars think?
That we are the fleeting ones.
Really, in the brief space of time we spent here, would you rather chain yourself to dead ends for fear of what may or may not happen?
I trust that the seven steps of Positive Uncertainty will give you a little light in these strange times, but the important thing is to know that each of us is the light.
And that although we cannot predict the future, we are capable of creating it.
Andrés Pascual
is the author
Positive Uncertainty: It turns insecurity, chaos and change into a path to success
(Espasa, 2020)