Thrive with Pauline DEALING WITH UNCERTAINTY

Thrive with Pauline DEALING WITH UNCERTAINTY

5 STRATEGIES STUDENTS CAN USE DAILY FOR BUILDING HEALTHY, BENEFICIAL COPING SKILLS

“What if I can’t go to university? What if I can’t sit my exams? What if I not able to get a job or an apprenticeship?”

We are living in uncertain times – that much you already know. But how confident are you in showing your students how to deal effectively with the unpredictability and uncertainties of life?

Unexpected change can cause the best of us to feel stressed, worried and out-of-control. And our students are no different. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Dealing effectively with uncertainty is an essential psychological skill everyone would benefit from mastering especially those in our care.

We cannot predict what the future holds for us – the current situation is unknowable and largely beyond our control. However, we don’t need to control the event – we just need to control our response to the event.  This is where having great coping skills comes into play – having healthy, helpful, beneficial coping skills gives our students the skills and resources needed, not only to cope, but to thrive in the face of adversity.

Here are 5 strategies every student can use to strengthen their confidence, self-belief, resilience and, of course, their coping skills:

1. Let go of the need to control outcomes. Feeling out of control can feel scary. Fretting about the things we cannot control is certainly a strategy we could use but it’s not a very helpful one. A much better strategy is to focus instead on the things we can control including, for example, how we are going to respond to the event that concerns us – we need to work out what we are going to do and then do it. We may not welcome or enjoy uncertainty but accepting it for what it is makes it a lot more tolerable.  Planning for the future also helps reduce stress, worry and anxiety but we need to remain flexible with regards our planning – we need to keep a number of possibilities in mind not just planning for one, specific outcome. The more flexibility we have – the more adaptable we are, and the better we will be at dealing with change and uncertainty. We can’t insist that we will always get what we want but what we can say is that whatever happens we know we’ll be able to cope.

2. Imagine the best. Those who can’t tolerate uncertainty get trapped in ‘what if’ thinking as they imagine the worst-case scenario. In worrying about unknowable, uncertain, unpredictable events the individual often exaggerates the overall effect of what worries them which simply intensifies their anxiety. A much better approach is to imagine what we want, not what we fear might happen. Not only will we feel calmer and more in control in general, but we’ll feel more competent and confident about our ability to deal effectively with the events that lie ahead.  Rather than saying “what if ..” say “what will I do, if …?” For example, rather than saying: “What if I can’t go to university next year?” say “What am I going to do if I can’t go to university next year?” Knowing that you’re going to do something, no matter how small, helps diminish the worry. Worrying about the future is pointless. Taking bold action to ensure you are prepared for whatever the future brings builds confidence and self-belief.

3. Understand ‘hindsight bias:’ We have a tendency to assume that our past was stable, certain and constantly under our control. This is an illusion psychologists call ‘hindsight bias.’  In reality, we’ve all experienced a great deal of uncertainty in our lives up until now and, moreover, we’ve survived – that we’re all still here today shows how strong we really are. We need to reflect on how successful we’ve been in the past in dealing with adversity and tell ourselves if we did it once we can do it again.

4. Face our fears: we have a natural tendency to avoid and seek safety from what we associate with pain and discomfort. Running away from events we believe may cause us pain makes sense.  Avoidance keeps us safe momentarily but does nothing to help us deal with the difficulties of life in the long term. On the contrary, every time we seek safety from the difficulties of life, we send a strong message to ourselves telling ourselves that we can’t cope. Those who fear uncertainty do so because they don’t believe they can cope with the unpredictability of life. In other words, if we genuinely believed we could cope with uncertainty we wouldn’t fear it.  And the only way we can develop our coping skills in the face of what we fear is to tolerate the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that arise when we experience challenging events and then process the fact that we survived. In time we will come to understand that the fear we feel when we face a scary event is always much worse than the event itself. As Franklin D. Roosevelt, famously said, we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

5. Seize the day: Facing the unknown can be daunting but it also presents us with endless possibilities for continuous growth and development. The future is ours to create so rather than fearing uncertainty we can use uncertainty to our advantage through embracing change and the opportunity it brings. Unhealthy emotions such as stress, worry and anxiety are caused by negative thoughts and beliefs. Any decisions we make, including the decision to run away, will be determined by what we think and feel, and it’s our decisions and the actions we take that will determine the results we get in life.  In order to ensure we get the results we are looking for, we need to ensure that we create empowering thoughts, beliefs, and the healthy emotions that will enable us to take the bold, constructive action needed to flourish and thrive even in times of uncertainty.

We are living through a period of tremendous change. Our students will be concerned and that’s okay because it’s okay to admit to feeling concerned, but that’s not the same as saying we’re feeling worried, stressed and anxious.

We can remain realistically optimistic, even in the most challenging of times knowing that we can cope with whatever comes our way.

As the Roman philosopher Epictetus famously said: “People are not disturbed by events, but the view they hold about them.” Uncertainty is not within itself scary, it’s the view we take of uncertainty that scares us. And this is why having great coping skills is so important – we don’t need to control what is going on around us, we just need to know that we can cope. Our students have learned a great deal from us that is genuinely of value to them. One of the most important lessons they can learn, in addition to what they already know is how to cope in challenging, difficult, uncertain times.

Written by James Woodworth Thrive Programme Coach

If you would like more information about The Thrive Programme, please contact me for a free initial coaching meeting

Pauline den Hoedt – 07766664704