Learning To Live With Uncertainty

(bright music) Headspace Studio. (bright music continues) Hi there, it's Dora and welcome back to Radio Headspace. (gentle music) You know, I caught myself the other night deep in a forum online, reading strangers' stories, looking for my own experience somewhere in their words. And I had that moment where you look up from your phone and you realize that you've been there for a while and you somehow feel worse than when you started. I guess you could say I'm in the middle of a health journey right now. I won't go into all the details, but there is a lot of waiting involved, a lot of not knowing, a lot of sitting with outcomes that haven't arrived yet and questions that don't have answers yet. And the mind, as you may know, is not great at sitting with that. It wants to fill the space with scenarios, with possibilities, with best cases and worst cases and everything in between. And so there I was at midnight doing exactly what I know doesn't help, looking for certainty in a place that had none to offer. (gentle music) Now I want to be really honest here. Knowing this does not make uncertainty easier. I know that the stories I'm spinning are adding to my stress rather than relieving it. I know all of this. And I still find myself reaching for my phone, still find myself tracking and researching and reading. And I think there's something important in naming that rather than pretending that having a mindfulness practice makes you somehow immune to the very human impulse to try to think your way out of uncertainty. And this is what I mean when I talk about living life off the cushion. On the cushion and meditation, uncertainty can feel kind of manageable. You notice the thought, you return to the breath and you let it go. Off the cushion in the middle of real life with real stakes and real fear, it's a completely different thing. And I think we do ourselves a disservice when we make it sound simple. It is a practice and it's genuinely hard. And the gap between knowing and doing is one of the most honest things about being human. (gentle music) There is something worth understanding about why we do this though. From a nervous system perspective, the mind's drive to find solutions, to gather information, to prepare for every possible outcome is an evolutionary adaptation. The mind is trying to keep us safe. When we're waiting, when we're in a season of uncertainty, the mind goes looking for solid ground, and in the absence of real answers, it manufactures them. Scenarios, assumptions, projections, it feels like it's helping. And in the short term, there's a temporary comfort in it, but it's kind of like a borrowed comfort and the interest we pay on it is more anxiety, more stress, more suffering. So, what has actually helped me in the midst of all of...