Ways to Boost Your Uncertainty Tolerance
If one thing is certain, it’s that we tend to crave certainty. Scroll through the news, and a pattern emerges. Headline after headline promises to predict the future and make us feel a little more certain.
I wish I could tell you I’m immune to this constant craving for certainty, but I’d say that my habit of Googling housing market forecasts and doing free only tarot readings means I’m definitely not.
Uncertainty Tolerance
Perhaps appropriately, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the definition of "uncertainty tolerance." An article in Social Science & Medicine, “Tolerance of Uncertainty: Conceptual Analysis, Integrative Model, and Implications for Healthcare,” addresses this uncertainty and clarifies the definition:
"The set of negative and positive psychological responses—cognitive, emotional, and behavioral—provoked by the conscious awareness of ignorance about particular aspects of the world."
Sources of Uncertainty
The three sources of uncertainty are probability, ambiguity, and complexity.
Probability is the “randomness or indeterminacy of future outcomes.”
Ambiguity is the “lack of reliability, credibility, or adequacy of information.”
Complexity is the “features of information that limit understanding.”
So basically, uncertainty happens when things are random or when information conflicts, is incomplete, or is difficult to understand.
Unfortunately, I just described contemporary life as we know it. Life is uncertain.
As much as the headlines want to tell us otherwise, we don’t know what the future of COVID looks like. No matter how much I Google, I’ll never know what my house will be worth when I’m 65. My free, online tarot readings will never satisfy my curiosity, and sometimes discomfort, about what the future has in store.
So how can we learn to live with uncertainty? How can we tolerate it better? How can we accept our conscious awareness of ignorance instead of allowing it to crush our spirit?
Improv and Uncertainty Tolerance
I’ve written before about a study by Felsman, Gunawardena, and Seifert that showed that just 20 minutes of improv boosted participants’ uncertainty tolerance as compared to a control group who read from a script.
Improv forces people to listen, accept the scene as it unfolds, and add to the reality as it is, not as they want it to be.
Instead of being defeated by complexity, randomness, or ambiguity, improv encourages people to justify it, to make it make sense anyway, and, most importantly, to keep going, no matter what. If I jump on stage with my teammate and say, “Hi, Susan. Love your new look.” And then my partner says, “Hi, Bill. My name is Belinda,” I need to make it work, even though I’m well aware of the discrepant visions my partner and I have for the scene. Maybe Belinda is Susan’s twin. Maybe her full name is Susan Belinda. Maybe Susan was Belinda’s alias, and she’s in the witness protection program. As long as I accept what’s said and keep adding, we can continue to build the scene together.
While improvising, I’m doing more than tolerating uncertainty. I’m accepting it and making the most of it. So, it makes sense that practicing accepting and working with uncertainty could help us tolerate it better.
3 Ways to Boost Uncertainty Tolerance
I don’t think everyone needs to take an improv class to boost their uncertainty tolerance. We can extrapolate some general rules and apply them to our everyday lives to try to become more comfortable with ambiguity and complexity and to start accepting and making the most of life’s uncertainty.
1. Practice Ambiguity
The first thing improv can teach us about boosting uncertainty tolerance is that we have to practice it. Improv’s benefits to reduce social anxiety stems from it being a kind of exposure therapy. It forces us to practice what may feel uncomfortable. Then, once we start practicing it, it tends to be fun. This positive exposure encourages us to practice traits that we usually try to avoid.
The same principle works for uncertainty tolerance. If we want to get better at handling uncertainty, we have to practice sitting with that uncomfortable feeling instead of avoiding it or pretending it doesn’t exist.
This might look like you saying, “I’m not sure,” or, “Who knows what will happen?” or even shrugging your soldiers and saying, “It’s a mystery.”
See what happens when you point out uncertainty instead of denying it.
2. Accept What Is
The second thing improv can teach us about dealing with uncertainty is to say yes to it. Instead of playing the scene I’d like to be in, the old improv mantra is to, “play the scene you’re in.” That means accepting what’s actually going on onstage, instead of forcing some kind of agenda.
In real life, this means parsing out what’s in our control and what’s not and delineating what we can and cannot change.
I can’t do anything to control the next COVID surge or even be able to know if there will be one, no matter how much Googling I do, but I can decide whether or not to wear a mask, whether or not to get a vaccine or a booster, how many people to hang out with, and who those people should be.
Once I know what’s uncertain, I have to do what I can to say yes to that reality.
Yes, this is the current COVID situation. Yes, these are current home prices. Yes, I feel anxious, and that might be why I’m constantly turning to free online tarot readings.
Start with what’s really going on, with where you are and what life is actually throwing at you.
3. Work With What You Got
The last part of improv’s “Yes, and” rule is to work with the reality of the scene as it unfolds. Yes, it’s great to accept what is, but the next step is also crucial. We have to make the best of that reality.
Instead of pining for pre-COVID days or fantasizing about a yet-unknown endemic future, I need to focus on the present moment and make the most of life as it truly is.
Ask yourself questions like, “How can I make the most of this?” and, “What are ways I can make this work?”
This will not only help you accept uncertainty, but it will also help you flex your creative muscles. Instead of fantasizing, I can spend my cognitive energy brainstorming ways to work with the life I actually have.
So, the next time you turn to the internet to ease your uncertainty, make a different choice. Accept that a clear answer can’t be found online, or that there are too many competing opinions, or that we simply can’t predict the future.
Admit things are uncertain, and work with what you got.