🤔 Uncertainty is the New Normal. How to cope with ?

1. Understand your relationship with uncertainty and the consequences it can have on your experiences and behaviors. It may be helpful to work on the concept of tolerance for uncertainty, a very important trait in anxiety. This is an exaggerated tendency to avoid or control a negative event. It leads to behavioral avoidance strategies (e.g., procrastination, scattering, disengaging from what you're doing or from others) or over-control strategies (e.g., over-informing yourself, wanting to do everything yourself, becoming rigid, or constantly changing decisions).

2. Identify your personal DNA: who do I want to be by indicating my core values in all circumstances? Use it as a compass for your actions to maintain meaning. Do this by keeping a personal journal to have a space for written expression and to live your emotions authentically. Introspection is essential in times of uncertainty. It helps to clarify your priorities and the meaning of your life.
  - My story, critical events
  - My values
  - My heroes/guides
  - People I can't stand
  - My life goals, my criteria for pride
  ...

3. Reduce the time spent on online information. Information overload is harmful for three reasons: 
  1) It maintains stress and catastrophic scenarios because it is based on sensationalism, fear, and emotions. 
  2) It is increasingly politically polarized and thus traps you in your cognitive world, especially on social networks. 
  3) It is increasingly image-based rather than text-based, which is not processed in the same way and reactivates the nervous system. Prefer paper, which is much better for reducing nervous system activation.

4. Define realistic zones of control based on the theory of self-determination motivation: develop new relationships, new skills, and degrees of autonomy in your life. Examples: reactivating friendships, learning a language, negotiating more autonomy on Friday mornings to do more deep focus work, sending out resumes and improving external employability, auditing your bank fees and optimizing loans, getting back into sports, etc.

5. Become a bit more of a futurist-strategist: define three scenarios (from the most catastrophic to the most optimistic). What are the probabilities of these happening beyond fantasy or rumination? What would be the real consequences? What degree of "catastrophe"? What opportunities might it also offer? What preventive and reactive actions are possible ("what to do beforehand to prevent it if it happens?" and "what to do afterward if it happens?"). How to work precisely on these scenarios? Who can help me gain perspective?

Matthieu Poirot,

Psychologist and Phd in Management

www.midori-consulting.com