Some of the best advice I’ve gotten lately was about what to do in times of chaos. Learning how to handle uncertainty in life starts with a simple practice.
In times of chaos, the best thing we can do is tell the truth at every level of our life and hope that integrity knows its own way.
The Uncomfortable Truth
But here’s the thing…
The truth isn’t always comfortable. It doesn’t always have an immediate answer to everything. It’s time-released and won’t always travel at the speed of social media. It needs breath and space to permeate our entire beingness.
Sometimes the honest truth is: I don’t know what to believe anymore.
And “I don’t know” is an incredibly powerful place to perceive the world from.
The Sports Game Problem
When we immediately jump to a side on every single issue like we’re watching a sports game, we fall victim to our own blinders.
Picking one side assumes that life is black and white and ignores how vivid and colorful and complex issues really are.
Cognitive bias is the error we get into when we lean too far in any direction without realizing there’s likely some truth in all perspectives.
In cognitive bias, it becomes much more difficult to understand and observe what’s actually happening.
Shedding the Need to Know
Learning how to handle uncertainty in life means shedding our need to know everything right now.
Because truth is an amalgamation of all perspectives, not a simple-minded and naive: I’m right and you’re wrong.
In lieu of false certainty, we have an opportunity to train ourselves to sit with the discomfort of not knowing.
What Happens in That Discomfort
That discomfort will manifest as anger, then fear, then grief, then clarity.
But clarity doesn’t always mean you’ll know why things are happening. Clarity means you’ll see without bias and judgment clouding your thoughts. You’ll enjoy a peace that can only come from a more multi-dimensional vantage point.
I don’t know what’s happening in our world, right now. And that’s scary.
The Strange Space
But underneath that terror is this strange space of comfort in faith.
Faith that the more areas of our lives we’re able to tell the truth wholly, the more clear our vision will become about our place in things.
And from that place of clarity, maybe, just maybe, we’ll offer light to someone else who needs it.
It’s okay to admit that we don’t know. That’s actually where solutions live. That’s how to handle uncertainty in life: by trusting the process rather than demanding answers.
This is the lens the Bible is meant to be read through.
Explore the Jesus Lightning book series for mystical Bible interpretation that reveals the inner meaning of Scripture.
Praying for truth and love. Godspeed.