Episode 27: What to be Certain of in Uncertain Times

In this episode, Katie Murray explores the pervasive challenge of uncertainty and offers actionable tools to help you manage stress and build resilience. If you often find yourself overwhelmed by the unknown - whether in relationships, health, or work -this discussion provides tangible ways to strengthen your capacity to live well amid ambiguity.

Need further support around this? Reach out to Katie on Instagram or visit her website at: KMC to find ways in which Katie can help you navigate challenges that you are currently facing. 

Katie also has a number of free resources on her website - check them out here: KMC - Resources

Transcript

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Welcome. This is to our core with Katie Murray, and this is the place where we peel back our layers to uncover who we really are at our centre. At our core. And think of it as a chat with your bestie, the one who can make you laugh until your belly hurts, who is ridiculously unfiltered, and will lovingly call you forward to help you cut through the noise and get real with yourself. Around here, nothing is off limits. And we are mixing this up with equal parts of humour and heart. So let's dive right in. Hey, hey, hey there. I want to talk to you today about something that I think almost every person I know is carrying right now. And that is uncertainty. And it's far reaching, isn't it? Because it could be about money that you feel uncertain about, or a relationship, or your kids, or your health, or a decision that you haven't yet made. Something you're waiting to hear back about. And uncertainty does something to us. It makes our brain often become really loud, or it feels that way at least. And it can make our bodies feel super rigid and tight. And it can make us want answers like yesterday, immediately. So today, I really want this conversation not just to be about let's just chart trust the process or pretending that hard things aren't hard. No one needs that kind of toxic posity in their life, and I'm not here to deliver it to you today. It is, however, about how to live well when things feel really unclear for you. And the reason why uncertainty hits us so incredibly hard is that certainty is actually a basic human need. We need safety. We need connection. We need belonging. And you know what we also need is a level of certainty. We need a reasonable sense of predictability because your nervous system, it loves patterns and routines and it likes knowing what tomorrow might roughly look like. And so when certainty disappears for us, it's not about it just merely being inconvenient. It's it can feel really destabilizing. And I want to explain a little bit more about why. Why waiting for test results can feel unbearable? Why not knowing where you stand in a relationship can consume your thoughts? Why job insecurity can wake you up at 3 a.m. or prevent you from sleeping until 3 a.m. And this is not your brain evidencing its weakness. It's about how it's wired to be. Because when certainty drops for us, your body is quietly asking, are we safe here? And you know what your brain then loves to jump in and do? Try and solve it. And this is probably a spiral that we all know. Something uncertain shows up for us. And your brain hates it. It's like, this doesn't feel safe. And so now I need to find a resolution for this. So it tries to fix it. You might find yourself replaying conversations that you've had through the day. Or you overanalyze the tone in someone else's response. Or you Google or Chat GPT things very late in the night, hoping that somehow chat is just going to give you all of your answers to life. You find yourself imagining worst-case scenarios, you mentally rehearse arguments that haven't even happened yet. Because the brain's favorite hobby is catastrophizing. And it's not because it's like being dramatic, it's because it thinks that by preparing you for the most catastrophic outcome, that it's protecting you in some way. Because your brain is wired for safety, not necessarily peace. So telling yourself to just calm down and stop thinking about it at 3 a.m. in the morning when you've you're th three hours deep in a Google dive into trying to find the answer that might give you some clarity or certainty. That's not giving you peace. However, it is making you feel like you're somehow closer to certainty. And that therefore makes your nervous system feel safer. So when it doesn't know what's coming, it tries to fill in the blanks. And it, yes, it is usually something dramatic. Like when you're feeling uncertain about something, how often do you leap to the best case scenario? How often, when you're feeling uncertain about something, do you blow up the possibilities and the opportunities that are going to be available to you when you're in that spiral? Yeah, it goes towards the dramatic, the catastrophe, the what if it all goes wrong? What if this doesn't work out for me? And then you know what happens? Your body joins in. You might find your test chant, like chest tightening, or your breast getting shallow, or your jaw clenching, or you feel restless, or you start snapping at people, or you just shut down completely. You just don't even talk to anyone. You become withdrawn. Or for me, I kind of get this like, you know, when you go over like a like a hilly bit, like when you go into a dip, or you know, on a roller coaster where you get like this whoosh feeling up through your abdomen. That's what I get when I'm feeling anxious. Like when a thought lands for me, and it's not a positive one, um, I get this really like warm, uncomfortable, I wouldn't even say butterflies, because I associate butterflies with kind of excitement. This does not feel like I'm excited. This feels like I'm about to lose my lunch. It is a surge within me. Because uncertainty doesn't just live in our thoughts, it lives in our entire nervous system. And I want to offer you some tangible things that you can implement when you're feeling uncertain, because the feedback that I'm getting from a lot of people at the moment is the world's gone to shit. So, one, like where focus goes, energy flows. So just be careful where you're focusing on. And also, I really want to give you stuff. If that's how you're feeling right now, if you're feeling like everything's a mess, I want to give you something that feels tangible for you to bring you back to what's actually true for you right now, what's actually happening for you right now, without the catastrophe, without the drama. So if you find yourself saying everything's a mess, one step that I would invite you to do is try actually naming it. Naming it for what it is. I'm feeling uncertain about this situation and my body is reacting. That is entirely normal. I'm feeling really uncertain about this situation, and my body is reacting. See how you bring a level of your prefrontal cortex, your logical brain into that statement. The simple naming, the experience, creates space for you. It separates you from the internal storm that you may have been creating. And here's a myth that we often quietly live by. So many of us, in fact, are living by this. And it is this belief that once this is sorted, then I'll relax. And we kind of convince ourselves that it's gonna be a permanent relaxation. Like if I just get through this, then everything's gonna be fine. Once I know the outcome of this, then I'll feel steady again. Adulthood doesn't really work like that, though. There is always another decision or another stretchy part in your life coming, or another unknown that you might need to face. So I want to hear you to hear this really clearly. The skill here isn't about eliminating uncertainty. It's increasing your capacity to sit inside it without completely unraveling. And you might be like, damn, Katie, I wanted you to come with this podcast episode. Like with the title of it, I thought you were gonna be like, this is the magic fix to getting rid of uncertainty in life. Mate, that's not how the life is gonna work. And I would be setting you up to fail if I gave you strategies that made you believe that you were never gonna feel uncertain about anything that's happening in your life. I do, however, want to give you something that's really practical. And that is that we can break it down into looking at it from the lens of control versus influence versus letting go. So when you're uncertain, often everything can feel really tangled up together. It can feel like one big emotional knot in your chest. I have heard myself on times when there's been a period of uncertainty in my life and someone's going, oh, like, what's wrong, Katie? And I've gone, oh, I don't know. Maybe my entire life has gone to shit. Okay, so if that's not drama, I don't know what is, but it's a generalization, yeah. And it's something that's pretty common in the human experience that we tangle it all up and we like make it like this is our life now, like everything has gone to shit. When actually it's probably just one aspect that feels really uncertain for you. And I want this tool, this control versus influence versus letting go, to help it untangle it for you. So I want you to imagine you've got three columns. At the top of one column is control. At the top of the second column, it's influence. And at the third column at the top, it's got let go. So let's break it down. Let's start with the column around control and what you can directly act on. This is looking at your behavior, your participation. So let's use a work example. If you're uncertain about work, what is within your control right now? Well, you can update your CV, you can apply for new roles or jobs, you can book in a meeting with your manager to gain more clarity, you can do some training and upskill, or you could adjust your budget to work within the period of uncertainty. If you don't know how long income is gonna be coming in for, you can make some tweaks. If you're looking at the uncertainty that may exist in your relationship, and we're still in the control column, what can you directly act on? You can initiate a conversation, you can choose how you respond to something, you can set a boundary, you can ask a clear question. Something that I'm still working on. Um, it's not that my questions aren't clear, it's just that I have a really long way of asking them. Like I'm a storyteller. So, and I I think I've said on this podcast before as well, I can make a short story really long. So I'm working on this. Even in like my podcast interviews when I've got guests, I notice that I can talk about the actual question for a good five minutes before I actually even let them answer it. Uh so I'm working on that, but asking a clear question, like just get to the point. If you're uncertain about your health, what can you have control over there? What action can you directly take? Well, you could book an appointment with your GP or an optometrist, or that ear, nose, and throat specialist, whatever it might be that you're uncertain about, you could book the appointment. You could then follow the medical advice, or you could do some research about it, you could get a second opinion. You could change your sleep habits to see if that improves what's going on for your health. They're just three examples work, relationships, health. And I want you to know that I'm not saying that control is about controlling the outcome. It is, however, about controlling how you show up. And that's a really important distinction. It is not about controlling the outcome. It is about controlling how you show up in the experience of uncertainty. Where you take your power back, where you choose control. The second column, influence, this is where most anxiety actually lies. Influence is a real invitation, and it's not a power move. It's also not a guarantee. I know, so disappointing this episode, isn't it? I've told you that you can't live a life without any experience of uncertainty. And now I've told you that this strategy of influence may also not provide you with a guarantee, but stay with me. This is not about forcing anything. However, you can have influence over things. You can influence your partner by sharing honestly. You know what doesn't influence things is silence, where you don't actually talk about how you feel, give them an opportunity to step into that space of understanding. You can influence your boss by expressing your goals, i.e., onboarding them to where you would like to go in regards to your professional development, where your aspirations are. Because if they don't know, they can't necessarily guide you there. You can influence a friendship by naming distance. You could name up, you could send a message to a friend and say, hey, we haven't spoken in a while. I'm just checking in to see if you're okay. Kind of like catastroph catastrophizing. There we go. Catastrophizing that they aren't talking to you because they don't like you. And it's probably what you said when you're out on the piss three weeks ago and they've seemed weird since you create a whole story when really life might have just got busy for them. And their usual daily text messages that they might have sent you might not have anything to do with the story that you created in your head, and also by naming up the distance with them, you give them an invitation. You influence that dialogue to open up between you so that if there is a problem that they can name it, that there's safety in that. And we often confuse influence with control. We think if I say this perfectly, they'll respond the way I need. Let me say that again for the people in the back. We often think if I say this perfectly, then they'll respond the way I need them to. However, influence actually simply means what I can do here is I can show up clearly. It does not mean I can make you agree with me. And that sentence, though, alone, around I can show up clearly, that's my responsibility, that sentence alone can free up so much mental energy for you. And then if we move on over to column number three, letting go, oh, some people might feel triggered in this one because this one can feel hard. Let's not sugarcoat it. Letting go can feel hard. And also, what good or what purpose is it serving you to hold on? What good or what purpose is it serving for you to hold on to it? Because this is about outcomes, other people's choices, external things outside of yourself, timing, test results being sent through to you. Whether someone chooses you. I mean, do you choose them? Like that's the first question when someone goes, I just want whether we're talking about friendships, relationships, you know, a boss, a job that you're going for, I just want them to like choose me, pick me, pick me. That pick me energy is lack. It's lack in action. Like it's so repellent. If we're talking about energy coming from a place of desperation, it is a repellent. So the first question I ask people when they talk about this, oh, I've just got this desire to be picked or to be desired or to be the one. And I'm not just talking about relationships, it can be like, like I said, that job application that you really want. Pick me. Do you want this first? Because often we get so caught up in the chase that we don't actually check in, is this the right fit for me? We often get caught up in whether someone understands us. And if it lives in someone else's head or their heart, it's not yours to control. And yet this is where most of our energy, our mental energy, gets spent. We replay, we analyze, we obsess. And in our obsession we try and predict because our brain is trying to manufacture certainty for us. Yet I've got a shift for you. Letting go is not giving up. It's giving you the illusion of control, and that's what you're giving up. It's a huge difference. Letting go is not giving up. It's giving up the illusion of control. So let's use some really tangible examples that you might see yourself in. Imagine you had a job interview. If we put it into the three columns, control might look like you prepared for it. You showed up fully. You sent the follow-up email. If it's required, don't be a stalker. If if it's required, if you need to do some steps afterwards and you did them, that's control. Influence, second column, might be that you communicated really clearly, you focused on building rapport. And then the third column, letting go, might look like whether they choose you, whether or not there's an internal candidate, whether the budget changes. And once it's in the let go column, your job becomes how do I handle the waiting? How do I handle the waiting? That's where the steadiness is going to grow for you. And if you're focused only on On your control column this week, what would change? Like if you literally just pivoted, like I said, where focus goes, energy flows, if you pivoted your whole direction to looking at that column of these are the things that I can control, what would change for you? If you release 10% more from the let go column, how much more mental space would free up for you? Anxiety grows when we try to control what isn't ours. Yet steadiness, which is the stability or craving, grows when we focus on what is. What is actually true here? What do I actually know? What can I take direct action around? That gives you grounded certainty, not outcome certainty. It's behavior certainty. And it looks like I don't know how this will end. And I also know how I will show up. And you start operating instead from this feeling like you're like a little mouse on one of those wheels that's just going spin, spin, spin, to actually standing shoulders back, chin up, chest out, like I don't know how this is going to end. And I know how I'm going to carry myself through it. I know how I'm going to show up for myself. I know what actionable, tangible things are within my control. And you might be thinking, yeah, yeah, sounds all good in theory, Katie. And I don't want this to be toxic positivity. I do want to talk to you about something, though, that's really important. And that is that I do believe in glimmers. And a glimmer isn't about forcing yourself like to be this abundantly grateful person, although it's not a bad thing, can I just say? Like it's not about sugarcoating shitty situations or things that are hard or suppressing your emotions. It's noticing instead like a steady moment in the middle of the uncertainty for you. They they're so small that we often miss them. Because often we're too much in our heads and not actually in our bodies. So it might be the warmth of the sun on our face, or it might be that sip of coffee from your favorite barista, or it might be that your dog is just like the one that bounds up to you when you walk in the door and it's just so excited to see you. Or it might be like a really genuine belly laugh, like where you're caught off guard and you like literally got tears welling in your eyes because you're laughing so hard. It might be the hot water in the shower, just that moment of peace when you don't hear a mum. Maybe you do. Like there is a whole thing, um, particularly when my babies were little, where I used to hop in the shower. I'm sure it's like some kind of condition. I mean, not that we're here for labels, but like when you stand in the shower and you immediately start thinking you can hear your baby crying. And then so you turn off the taps and then you step out. There's no baby crying, then you hop back in. Anyway, I don't know what the name of it is. And if you're in that phase, maybe this technique won't bring you as much peace or calm or glimmer as you would like if you're also experiencing that. However, me now, I'll know if my kids, they'll be banging on the door. But that hot water in the shower can be really grounding for you. Or maybe it's actually just switching everything off and like having no music playing while you drive the car. You're not multitasking, you're just sitting in silence while you drive. Or when you pull up, just take a few big deep breaths in silence. Because two things can be true at one. You can say something like, I'm really uncertain about my relationship. And I had a really lovely moment with a friend today. It doesn't make one wrong or one right, and it's not about you being in denial. It is about giving your nervous system some balance and you're allowed to hold both. Things can be hard and also beautifully good. When my dad died, it was one of the hardest weeks of my life. Like we were really confident the day before he died that he was actually starting to turn a positive um pivot towards recovery. He opened his eyes, which was the first time he'd been conscious. He'd been unconscious in ICU after his heart surgery for a really long, I think it was about three days, and he'd had a 17-hour heart operation. And I remember that he'd been so heavily sedated, and the news had been so dire, like it was really bad. And then we walked in one day, and I remember it was on the Wednesday, um, and he'd opened his eyes and he had tubes down his throat and stuff, but he mouthed, I love you to me. And I was like, Oh my god, I remember running out to the ICU waiting room and saying to my sister, he opened his eyes. He's like, he's getting better. And I don't know whether people that are more involved in the medical sphere than I am may have known that that was the last rally by him. Um, but it certainly did not indicate that he was in good health. And then we got some really devastating news the next day that all of his organs were shutting down and only half of his heart was working. And so, yeah, it was a matter of hours and he passed away. So it was one of the hardest times. Huge roller coaster, so much uncertainty. And yeah, we had so many people supporting us in that space. We were so held in that. People reached out to me that, you know, I wouldn't have thought would reach out to me. Flowers were arriving like on my doorstep. Like it was just it was such a beautiful time in the hardest of times as well. And so it's about seeing that we can hold both. This is a capacity conversation. If other people are involved, and often our uncertainty involves other humans, there are moments where we can, instead of curiosity, move into things like mind reading or avoidance or accusation. And so another strategy I want to give you is to try shifting from why would you do that, you wanna? That might not be actually the words that you would use, but like, why would you do that? It implies the wanker bit, to help me understand what's going on for you. I often have to ask my children this, and I don't use the word wanker, but like I have to often say that reframe in my head because some of their decision making, as their brains are not fully developed yet, makes you go, why would you do that? Um, so instead I have to reframe and really come from a place of curiosity and say, help me understand what's going on for you. Also, the other thing is that we often see it as someone else's responsibility to give us all the information so we feel really clear. And also, like, there's a way that we can frame that because it's not always our story to hold either. Sometimes we can create a whole story about someone's silence or withdrawal meaning something about us, and it's actually not, it's just their way of processing. Like instead of saying, you never tell me anything, perhaps it could be reframed instead to like, I just notice I'm sometimes feeling out of the loop sometimes, and I'd love to talk about that. And I'd also love to know how I can support you because this is what I've noticed lately. So it's curiosity to the max rather than like accusational defensiveness. And there's a really simple structure around that, and it looks at this is what I've noticed, this is how I felt, and this is what I'm hoping for. And then it reduces the defensiveness dramatically. So, as we've touched on in this conversation, this is about capacity over certainty. You cannot control outcomes or other people or timing. I couldn't control whether or not my dad was gonna make it through that operation. Every twist that life throws at us, that's not within our control. However, we can name what's happening, we can understand why there is a basic human need for certainty. We can do strategies for regulating ourselves and our nervous system. We can focus on the control column. What can I directly act upon here? We can release what is in ours, we can notice a glimmer, and we can speak up with curiosity. But the goal isn't to eliminate uncertainty, it is to instead increase your capacity to steady yourself within it. And if this is the reminder that you needed to hear, you have absolutely handled 100% of your uncertain moments so far, and you didn't need perfect clarity, you instead need some steady steps. And I hope that that is what this episode of the podcast has given you today is some ways to kind of bring that clarity from within yourself as opposed to externally seeking it. And you are far more capable than your anxiety ever gives you credit for. So don't forget that. Thanks for spending time with me today on To Our Core. If something landed in your heart or gave you a much needed giggle, consider sharing it with a friend who also may need this as a timely reminder. And go on. You know you want to. Give me a five-star review so that this podcast can land in the ears of many, many more people. Because remember that life is too short to stay on the surface. Keep living, loving, and laughing all the way to your core. Go make life great. And if you want support around this, go to the show notes to find out more. Until next time, I'll meet you back here with more truth, laughter, and a whole lot of heart.