Curious About Uncertainty

This morning when I saw the following headline in The Guardian my curiosity immediately revved up.

How to train your brain to see possibility instead of doom – it was an excerpt from the forthcoming book 21st Century Brain by Dr Hannah Critchlow famed Neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge.

As I quickly skimmed the article and encountered this pullout quote I was hooked:

“In a rapidly changing world, the ability to tolerate uncertainty may be one of our most important cognitive skills.”

This idea is not new to me since it is one of the five guidelines in Living Well with Illness and a pillar of Morita Therapy – learning to co-exist with uncertainty. What attracted me, of course, was new research on this topic coming from a brilliant, young neuroscientist. I was excited to say the least.

Before I finished the excerpt, I had searched out the book, which will be launched April 30^th and unfortunately at a very high price in Canadian dollars. However, I will propose our library purchase it and I will check later on at the local university libraries here in Ottawa.

I have taken liberties with an overly generous excerpt from The Guardian’s excerpt. But in my enthusiasm, I wanted you to have a peak at Dr. Critchlow’s research, because in my experience this can make a world of difference both in daily living and times of crisis.  I also know there are readers here who would be interested in the topic and this book.

What follows is snippets that I have copied and pasted along with a link to the entire piece  There isn’t a firewall but you will need to enter your email address to read it. You can read more detail and techniques regarding everyday life when you click on the link.

“It can feel as though the world is tilting towards chaos: political shocks, economic instability, technological upheaval and a constant stream of bad news. Faced with so much uncertainty, many of us default to a sense of impending doom. But is that reaction hardwired – or can we train ourselves to keep a more open mind?

A useful starting point is humility. Every generation, it seems, believes it inhabits uniquely turbulent times, as literary epics down the ages testify. Uncertainty has always been part of the human condition, and none of us can really know what tomorrow holds…

In a rapidly changing world, the ability to tolerate uncertainty may be one of our most important cognitive skills. The result is a cognitive trap. Faced with uncertainty, we tend to narrow our thinking, rush to conclusions and cling to simple explanations. In extreme cases, this can manifest as anxiety, rigid beliefs or even susceptibility to conspiracy theories – frameworks that impose order on a confusing world.

 

But there is another way. The poet John Keats described “negative capability”: the ability to remain “in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”. Modern neuroscience increasingly supports this strategy. The capacity to tolerate ambiguity – to sit with not knowing – appears central to flexible, creative and resilient thinking…

So how might we shift from a mindset of doom to something more open? The first step is curiosity. A more adaptive response is to ask: what do I not yet know?”

Last Snippet:

“Importantly, this is not about blind optimism. Our brains are prone to both negativity bias and optimism bias – the tendency to be sensitive to threat while also overestimating positive outcomes for ourselves. Navigating uncertainty well means balancing these tendencies, avoiding catastrophizing at one end, and wishful thinking at the other…

Ultimately, the question is not whether we can eliminate uncertainty, but how we relate to it. We can treat it as a threat, clinging to false certainties and narrowing our perspective. Or we can treat it as an inevitable – and potentially generative – feature of life, one that invites exploration, learning and change. The difference lies not in what life throws at us, but in the habits of mind we cultivate.

In a rapidly changing world, the ability to tolerate uncertainty may be one of our most important cognitive skills. It protects against both paralysis and delusion, avoids kneejerk reactions, and underpins sound decision-making. Perhaps most importantly of all, it opens the door to possibility.”

• The 21st Century Brain by Dr Hannah Critchlow (Transworld Publishers Ltd, £22). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

NOTES

1. Thanks for coming by tonight. Each day is uncertain and I am grateful for your kind, thoughtful comments and the appreciation you so often show to me. May you all be safe, free from pain, and with many moments of well-being.
2. I am hoping by the end of the month I will have a new computer. In the meantime I am doing my best to be “curious” and  to work without agitation during this uncertain tech time in my life. This explains my immediate great interest in Hannah Critchlow’s work. :-))
3. The photos are from Vancouver, thanks to Rob.
4. I am holding a good friend in my heart who is currently in hospice care. Friday is her birthday. She is deeply loved and cared for.
5. And my daughter-in-law’s special birthday ending in zero is also tomorrow. How lucky are all of us to have wonderful people in our lives.
6.  See you next week, with gratitude, Trudy