It is Okay to be Afraid When Facing New Uncertainty
Looking back on 2021, for many people, it is a year with lots of uncertainty as well as with plenty of new experiences. This is the same for me. I went through this year with no academic plans at the end, but it also gave me space to explore new fields that I am interested in.
After traveling to different cities for interns and volunteer work, I love sharing and exchanging my experience with others recently. During those conversations, I was often asked “How could you be so brave?” and “Don’t you feel afraid of those uncertainty?”. These questions at the first place, were so hard for me to answer, since I would never describe myself as a brave person.
Actually, I would be easily nervous and become anxious when starting a new journey. I still remember I was so anxious the night before starting my first intern, which made me fail to fall asleep for the whole night. However, I don’t think this is the reason that could stop me from taking attempts and new adventures, as I accept myself to be anxious and believe being anxious is normal for most people when facing new things.
It is Okay to be Afraid.
Everyone would have hundreds of new ideas to explore every day, but the thoughts of “I can't do it”; “I won't be liked” or “I would definitely make it wrong” etc. stop people from taking actions for hundred times too.
When this happened, would you feel upset and think it is your problem that could not be brave enough? Just get rid of this thought! Research have found that it is actually people’s normal reaction when facing new uncertain things. The point is more about how well you believe you can cope and establishing realistic anticipation (Whalley, 2020).
Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU)
In psychology, we often use the word “Intolerance of uncertainty” to describe people’s underlying fear of unknown (Carleton, 2016). It gives us a way to understand how an individual finds particular new fields uncomfortable or even threatening.
As we said before, it is common for us to feel anxious or have fear because of the “unknown feeling”, however, most people should be able to adjust themselves in the new environment and find strategies to cope (Algorani & Gupta, 2021). People with high IU are more likely to identify new experience as threatening and therefore, with more intense anxious feeling and find it is hard to get adjust (Whalley, 2020).
High IU do prevent people from taking attempts and explore the new possibility. So how could we solve this problem? Below we have found some tips for you that you might find useful to reduce your fear of uncertainty.
Tip One: Normalise Your Anxious Feeling
We can describe the anxious feeling as the feeling of a strong and persistent fear of being exposed to unsure situations (Li et al., 2020). As a self-protect mechanism, we would often think about the worse conditions and assess the possibility for us to overcome (Russell, 2020). We feel uncertain and anxious is because we do not know what could be the worse and how we could prepare to avoid the negative outcomes.
Based on the above information, the first step is for us to tell ourselves “this is new/unkown for me, so it is okay to feel anxious/fear and uncomfortable right now” . It could be a good idea for you to find a piece of paper, write down how is the new experience like and describe how you feel right now. Then you read this paper as reading someone else’s story, think about “is this a big deal for person A?”. When you jump out of your own personal view and feelings, in most conditions you will find that yes, the new experience is actually not that scary and of course feeling uncomfortable is totally acceptable.
This could be a hard and long process for you to normalise and accept this anxious feeling, however, once you achieved, you will find that you have the courage to make one step further!
Tip Two: Focus More on the Process Instead of the Outcome
When you are interested in a new field, it must because that you find the content/process interesting. Therefore, keep yourself interested is the best way to cover your fear and keep your motivation! When you just start or about to start a new experience, force yourself to forget how you feel and the potential negative outcomes, instead, keep telling yourself and imagining what interesting/fun activities you could be involved and participate in.
Tip Three: Write Down a List of Uncertain Situations You have Already Gotten Through.
Like we said above, we like to make decisions based on our previous experience. Therefore, reminding yourself how great you have dealt with other uncertain events would help you reduce your fear of uncertainty and increase your confidence (Russell, 2020). You could keep a short note of each time you successfully went through uncertain situations and what you have achieved in this new experience. Though every new experience is different, but when you look back at these past events, you will see that yes, I have the capacity and could be resilient, so this time I can also do it.
On our life journey, we could encounter many uncertain situations and we would also want to explore the new fields we are interested in. Just remember, it is so normal for you to have fear and feel anxious when facing every new field, but do not stop and question yourself. Embrace your fear and make a step forward, telling yourself “Yes I am not brave enough at this moment, but I believe I am resilient enough to smash everything”.
Wholeheartedly,
The Lights Within
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