An antidote for managing life’s uncertainty

Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash

Last time, we talked about how getting more comfortable with saying “I don’t know” can help your certainty-seeking self navigate through an uncertain world. However, that’s not really enough for dealing with life’s uncertainty. 

One antidote for worries and concerns around life’s uncertainty is to commit to the ongoing practice of gratitude.

Now to be clear, no one wakes up and magically replaces a lifetime of hard work and pursuit of “more” with complete gratitude and acknowledgement that you already have enough. Attempting to do so would likely cause a major identity crisis. It can be hard to let go of a big part of how you measured your progress in life to this point — especially when that progress included obtaining bigger and seemingly better things from the money that hard work earned you.  

Remember that you remain on a journey — but one where your intentions have changed. 

Your journey now is an ongoing search for opportunities and reasons to be grateful for all that you already have. A great place to start is acknowledging that most of your first world problems are ones that you’re lucky enough to deal with.

For example, getting a notice that your property tax assessment has increased by 38% percent is not ideal. But how lucky are you to have the financial breathing room in your life to comfortably absorb that increase? 

Or perhaps you are dealing with a physical or mental health issue. While it’s not a situation anyone would choose, how lucky are you to have access to the help you need and insurance in place to comfortably afford it?

You start to realize it’s much harder to feel sorry for yourself when you practice actively reminding yourself just how much you have to appreciate and how much you tend to take for granted in the first place.

So while you can’t eliminate uncertainty from your life, remember that you do have the antidote for dealing with it. Whenever you find yourself giving into life’s many uncertainties, return your focus to gratitude for all that you already have. It won’t eliminate all of your worries and concerns, but it will help put them back in their proper perspective.