On Uncertainty

And the benefits of managing any anxiety to turbocharge your creativity

I am at a point in my life where I am deliberately rocking my own boat and introducing levels of uncertainty.

I am creating uncertainty in what I am doing, where I am going, what I will do to pay the bills and where I will be in the world. I know change is coming and it’s nearly here.

The reason I am doing it? To live out my dreams before it’s too late. Read on if you’d like to do the same!

Excitement or Terror?

Think about a time you’ve felt excited. Maybe you were going to a party with people you didn’t know really well. Maybe you had a date. Now think about a job interview or making that speech at a wedding? All the scenarios suggested probably remind you of feeling a certain way. You know, funny feelings in your stomach area, dry mouth, shaky legs, heart rate faster than usual. Whilst the physical symptoms of excitement and terror are quite similar (although excitement might be less intense) it’s the context in which we experience the feelings that make us label it as either excitement or fear.

So the feelings are very similar indeed but if it’s a party we are going to we tend to say we are excited and associate that with a positive experience but if it’s a job interview we might call that fear or nerves and give that a negative emotional tag.

Managing Anxiety

So that’s one way to manage anxiety that stems from uncertainty. Practice changing your relationship to the feelings from a negative context to a more positive one.

Try it next time. When those butterflies start in your stomach area, rather than thinking to yourself, ‘Ah I’m anxious because I don’t know what my employment will look like next year’ why not think, ‘Ah, I’m excited because I have lots of new opportunities open to me and I am going to get ready for change by learning new things’. Why not try it? It costs nothing.

As people tend to experience these feelings as negative, at least try and remain neutral about them. Judging them as pleasant or unpleasant can actually drive the intensity more. Those physical feelings in your are just little chemical hits of adrenaline and cortisol suggesting that you might want to pay attention to something in your environment. Sometimes those feelings are right, sometimes they are way off kilter. You don’t always need to believe them, or attach thoughts to them.

If you need a bit more than flipping your relationship to the feelings, why not try some square, also known as box breathing, to settle your parasympathetic nervous system?

Square breathing exercise

It’s a very simple exercise. Imagine a square:

Then breathe in for a count of four as your mind travels along one side of the square.

Hold your breath for a count of four as your mind travels along the next side.

Exhale for a count of four as your mind travels along one side of the square.

Hold your breath for a count of four as your mind travels along the final side.

Repeat until your heart rate slows and you start to settle yourself.

This breathing exercise is so effective it’s taught to Navy SEALs. It will quickly intervene to slow your heart rate and settle your chemical levels. Practice it before you need it and then you have it ready to use it any time. Often this practice can be enough to create space in your mind to get your thoughts back on a positive train of thought.

You now have two techniques to manage any low-level anxiety you may feel about introducing some uncertainty into your life. However, if you feel that your symptoms are more persistent and serious or are affecting your enjoyment and functioning it’s important to go and see your medical professional.

Now let's talk about the very real benefits of introducing some uncertainty into your life.

Creativity

Last year I took part in the ‘world’s first interactive lived documentary called ‘The Uncertainty Experts’. In a way, I wanted to test myself and my tolerance for uncertainty. I figured it was pretty high. Turns out I was right. Turns out I can push it higher still if I want to, but why would I?

I’ll tell you why. The creative life is by it’s very nature an uncertain life. You don’t know what you will be doing in a year’s time. Things like business plans and KPIs are largely an irrelevance for artists. Uncertainty is a given, but the anxiety it provokes can be crippling to any sort of output at all.

If you reframe the anxiety as excitement as you tread the path of the unknown you can literally turn the key on your personal treasure trove of creativity. My life is not now about what things I can get; what job titles I can accrue; what plaudits I can gather… it literally is about how many creative ideas can I get out into the world before I am no more!

I am not trying to introduce an existential threat into your creativity, but in its most extreme form it certainly concentrates my mind around what really matters to me.

As The Uncertainty Experts taught me,

Enjoying paradoxes, and encouraging divergent thinking is core to creativity.

What they didn’t tell me was that, as a writer, embracing uncertainty would put a flywheel in my fingers. When we avoid uncertainty it sets up a play it safe internal narrative. This creates a dampening effect on our appetite to try new things when presented with new opportunities. Well it does on mine and thanks to that quote above, I can explain why.

Playing safe and avoiding uncertainty is a natural human approach to life. Yet if the last few years have taught us anything, it is that we can control everything. Life itself is incredibly uncertain. We can stick our head in the sand like an ostrich about that uncomfortable fact, or we can take a deep breath or four, dial down the anxiety, embrace the excitement and take the rocket fuel of what’s coming next to level up in our creative lives.