40 Ways to Help Navigate Uncertainty with Skill and Intention
by Robert Hackman
Photography by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash
And the great unknown’s a hurricane
With howling winds and floods, driving rain
You might make it through, but you don’t know
If right behind it is a tornado
From ‘Song in C’
By Loudon Wainwright
The ongoing uncertainty and trauma we experience and witness in our world take a toll on us. Regardless of whether we are involved directly or from a distance, it wears us down and challenges our capacity for compassion.
The war in Ukraine, roaring inflation, and high homicide rates represent some of the latest jolts to our reality as the disruptions from the pandemic, and natural disasters, including wildfires, flooding, and tornadoes, recede momentarily. The list goes on.
Businesses struggle to find qualified talent, contend with the ‘great resignation,’ and suffer from supply chain interruptions.
Too often, our personal and political discourse gets reduced to litmus tests to determine whether ‘You are with me or against me?’
It is not surprising many people foist blame on ‘the other,’ deny uncomfortable realities, reminisce about more predictable times, and fervently follow demagogues in a quest for resolutions and relief.
Remarkably, these responses make us feel better. Anger is an emotion that provides the illusion of control – thus lessening our sense of helplessness and hopelessness. Yet it separates us from our feelings and masks the significantly more painful feelings of loss, grief, sadness, and isolation.
Anger’s short-term fix is a fake-out. Its resulting behaviors do not protect us, initiate growth, or build resiliency. They disconnect and hinder us.
What can you do to help navigate the unknown and the unexpected in ways that calm your insecurities, keep you grounded in reality, and move you forward skillfully and purposefully? How can you take responsibility and resist demonizing others?
40 Ways to Help Navigate Uncertainty with Skill and Intention:
- You can actively listen to and support others without agreeing with them.
- You can pretend less and accept more.
- You can feel your emotions as they occur and trust your capacity to manage them.
- Help create and maintain physically and psychologically safe environments and relationships for yourself and others.
- Assume others’ positive intent, give them the benefit of the doubt.
- Take time to determine your personal, team, and organizational purpose and figure out how to integrate them into your life and work.
- Take time to determine your top two values that make all your other values possible and incorporate them into your decision-making and behavior.
- Schedule times to worry and practice letting go of it outside your arranged times.
- Honor your feelings and learn from the information they provide you.
- Remember, inclusion is a ‘contact sport,’ and get to know and appreciate those you deem different from yourself.
- Say thank you and appreciate others more often.
- Catastrophize, imagine the worst-case scenarios, commit yourself to accept them, and do your best to keep them from occurring.
- Intentionally draw on varying sources and perspectives about what is happening in our world; getting out of your echo chamber will not hurt you.
- You can commit to fun and play.
- You can get physical in your body, get grounded with the earth, and touch your spirit.
- Tell those you are close to that you love them.
- Build celebration into your life.
- You can grow your courage through purposeful action.
- You can make it a point to acknowledge effort and accomplishment – yours and others.
- You can engage a coach, therapist, psychiatrist, clergy, rabbi, imam, or another religious or secular counselor.
- You can vigorously foster and maintain friendships.
- You can participate in secular, spiritual, and religious peer-to-peer groups.
- You can engage a skilled facilitator, trainer, or consultant to develop leadership and teamwork within your organization.
- You can invest time with helpful resources via TEDTalks, podcasts, and books.
- Cultivate mindfulness practices to bring yourself back to the present.
- You can utilize deep breathing techniques to decrease your blood pressure, relax your body, and lower your temperature.
- You can engage with your church, synagogue, mosque, or another place of worship.
- Create quiet time for yourself and make it sacred.
- You can volunteer your time to service those in need.
- You can challenge the validity of your thinking by asking questions and speaking to others you trust.
- You can develop creative outlets of writing, painting, photography, sculpting, knitting, among others.
- You can participate in team or individual sports.
- You can work out, practice yoga, or Pilates.
- You can stop watching the local news.
- You can pull back from social media.
- You can get creative in your kitchen.
- You can spend time in nature.
- You can set meaningful goals aligned with your values and purpose.
- You can recalibrate your priorities to determine what you will stop doing, start doing and continue doing.
- You can remember to live your everyday legacies with intention and purpose.
These represent how you can refuel your tank, rekindle your spirit, and increase buoyancy for yourself and others. I encourage you to create some of your own.
We need to acknowledge that we live in a time of upheaval and accelerating change and uncertainty and take responsibility for our response rather than surrender it to others.
Blaming others, especially those we deem to be less than somehow, hurts everyone. Our diversity represents a significant strength if we accept and nurture it.
Please reach out to me if you want to navigate uncertainty more adeptly for yourself, your team, or your organization. I welcome the conversation.
Robert Hackman is the founder and principal of 4C Consulting and Coaching. He provides executive coaching for leadership impact, growth, and development for individuals, teams, and organizations. Committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, he facilitates trusting environments that promote unusually candid conversations. Rob is also passionate about the power of developing Legacy Mindsets and has conducted over 50 Legacy interviews with people to date.
A serious man with a dry sense of humor who loves absurdity can often be found hiking rocky elevations or making music playlists. His mixes, including Pandemic Playlists and Music About Men, among others, can be found on Spotify.