Why Some Uncertainty Feels Exciting—and Other Uncertainty Feels Terrifying
Have you ever wondered why some uncertainty can feel exciting, while other uncertainty feels terrifying?
Starting a new job, moving to a new country, or taking on a new challenge can involve enormous uncertainty and yet we may feel confident we'll figure it out. Meanwhile, uncertainty around funding, conflict, organizational change, or politics can leave us feeling anxious and powerless.
So perhaps uncertainty itself isn't the problem.
In this episode, Torrey explores what shapes our experience of uncertainty—and why our beliefs about what might happen, where we focus our attention, and how much we trust ourselves to handle what comes next can make such a difference.
You'll also learn why your relationship with uncertainty matters not only for your own resilience, but for how you lead your team—and how looking back at everything you've already navigated can remind you that you're far more capable of handling uncertainty than you may realize.
In This Episode You'll Learn:
- Why some uncertainty feels exciting while other uncertainty feels threatening
- Three things that influence how we experience uncertainty
- How focusing on what you can't control can increase feelings of helplessness
- Why trusting your ability to respond may be more useful than trying to create certainty
- How your relationship with uncertainty influences the way you lead your team
- How your past experiences can help you build greater confidence and resilience in the face of the unknown
Key Quote
“Resilience isn't certainty that everything will turn out the way you want. It's knowing that uncertainty can be present and you can still move forward.”
Reflection Questions
- What uncertainty are you facing right now?
- Where are you directing most of your attention—toward what you can influence or what you can't?
- What have you already handled that you once didn't know how you would handle?
- What did those experiences teach you about yourself?
- What strengths did you discover because you needed them?
- What evidence does your own history give you that you can respond to whatever happens next?
- How do you want to show up as a leader while you don't yet know what comes next?
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Have you ever thought about why starting a new job can feel exciting, while uncertainty around funding, conflict, or climate change can feel terrifying? In this episode, we're gonna look at what creates that difference and how understanding it can help you become a more resilient leader.
Hello, my name is Torrey, and welcome to Becoming the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast. I'm so glad you're here. So there's a lot of talk these days about uncertainty, and I've been reflecting a lot on it, and I think there are two things I find interesting. One is that uncertainty is always with us.
It is nothing new. Nothing is ever completely certain. I think you probably have heard me say that before if you listen to this podcast.
Also, in humanitarian and development work, almost by definition, [00:01:00] we live and work in uncertainty. It's the nature of our work. We don't know exactly how a project will turn out. We don't know whether a donor will suddenly change its priorities. Maybe the extension won't come through next time. Maybe they-- there will be a natural disaster.
Maybe there will be a security situation that will deteriorate. We don't know what a new government, a new leader, or a new policy in our work is going to mean. But recently, it seems like uncertainty and the talk about the uncertainty as of more recent is everywhere, and it's become much more obvious, much more in our faces.
And I don't think necessarily that's because there is sudden-suddenly more uncertainty in the world. It's always been here. [00:02:00] I think it's because so much of the uncertainty that we're facing feels new. It feels like unchartered territory: AI, climate change acceleration, political changes, and so on. These all feel like very new things, even though to some extent, they've all been around for a while.
So we're dealing with situations that become even more and more unknown and, and that we haven't really necessarily dealt with or come to the other side before. We don't have a roadmap. We don't have past experience that tells us, "Here's what you do." And what uncertainty in this type of situation can do is make us feel very uncomfortable.
And I know I myself have also experienced this. We can become a victim to the [00:03:00] discomfort of uncertainty. Like something is happening to us, and we don't have a choice but to participate in it. I think many of us have felt that way over the last year or so. And when we feel this way, it affects how we lead.
That's what I wanna talk about with you today. Because when it impacts how we lead, it impacts the decisions we make, where we put our attention, how much control we exert, and even the way our teams experience the uncertainty around them. So what I want to show you today is that we may have more influence over our experience of uncertainty than we realize.
Not necessarily over the situation itself, but over our relationship with it. And understanding that can help us become more comfortable operating without all the answers, [00:04:00] make better decis- decisions, and model a more resilient way of responding for the people we lead. And I realized this by comparing my own experience recently in two very different areas of my life.
So earlier this year, my husband and I moved to Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. And we were coming from Thailand. I have never lived here before. I don't know anyone here when we moved here. My French was, and still is, a work in progress. I didn't know exactly what my daily life was going to look like, who my friends would be, what communities I would be part of, or even how easily I would adapt.
There was a tremendous amount that I didn't know, and yet strangely, I wasn't particularly worried about it. I didn't sit around [00:05:00] thinking and worrying, "What if I don't make friends? What if I can't find people that I connect with? What if I don't fit in?" It barely crossed my mind. Instead, I thought about all the things that I enjoy doing, CrossFit, art, music, getting out and doing things, exploring. And I basically assumed I'll find my people, and I'll figure it out. And I did.
And here's where it gets interesting because over the summer, there was another area of uncertainty that I was handling very differently, and that had to do with the political situation in the United States. I was visiting my family there, and I was consumed with information about what was happening because there's a very important midterm that's approaching that could determine a lot of things for my [00:06:00] country. So I found myself starting to think about, like, what could change, what could the consequences of this be, how could it impact the people I care about, what might happen to the country?
And if I allow myself to keep going down that road of thinking, I can easily start to feel my anxiety become immense, to start increasing. So I started wondering why. Why is it that this is making me so anxious, this uncertainty around the midterms? Why could I move to a country that I've never lived in, where I don't speak the language, and I don't even know what my life would look like, and feel almost completely confident that I'd figure it out, and meanwhile, under another uncertain situation could leave me feeling anxious and powerless?
Both [00:07:00] situations are uncertain. Both involve things that matter to me. And in both situations, there was enormous things outside my control. So if uncertainty itself was the problem, shouldn't I have just reacted to both in roughly the same way? But I didn't, and that made me realize something. We don't simply react to uncertainty.
We react to what we believe that uncertainty means. And to how capable we believe we are of handling what comes next. And I think understanding that distinction is incredibly important to us as leaders. So what determines how we experience uncertainty?
Well, I think there are at least three things happening here. One, what do I believe could happen, right? What am I thinking that could happen? [00:08:00] It might even be a more subconscious belief that you have. So some uncertainty has much higher stakes than other uncertainty, right? Not all uncertainty is equal.
There's a big difference between, "I wonder whether I'm going to find a CrossFit gym," versus, "I wonder whether my organization is going to lose forty percent of its funding." So I don't want to suggest that uncertainty itself is always neutral or that we should simply decide that everything is wonderful.
Sometimes the possible consequences are genuinely serious. Funding cuts can mean people losing jobs, conflict puts lives at risk, political instability can have profound consequences. A change in leadership can threaten programs, jobs, or even an organizational culture. This isn't about pretending those things don't exist or they aren't real.
But here's a second thing which determines how we handle [00:09:00] uncertainty. Where am I directing my attention? When something feels threatening and uncertain, our mind naturally starts scanning everything that could go wrong. It's just ingrained in us. It's the way that we're wired. And often, those are precisely the things that we have the least control over.
So for example, what will the donor do? What will the new leader do? What will happen in the election? What will happen in the conflict? What if the funding doesn't come? We start to mentally solve things that, at least right now, cannot be solved and are out of our control. And the more attention we give those things, the more helpless we are going to feel.
But compare that with my move to Abidjan. There were plenty of things that are outside my control. I just wasn't focused on them. So my attention was on what was [00:10:00] available to me. I like CrossFit, I'll find a gym. I like art, I'll look for art. I like music, I'll go to places where I can find people that also like music.
I wasn't trying to control the outcome. I was thinking about what I could do and control. And then there's a third piece to how we experience uncertainty. And I actually think this may be the most important one. Ready? Do I trust myself to handle what's next? When I think about my move to Abidjan, there was one underlying belief beneath almost everything.
I'll figure it out. I didn't know exactly how. I didn't know what would happen. I didn't have control or certainty about the outcome. But I had confidence in my capacity to respond to the outcome. And those are two very different [00:11:00] things.
We often believe that what we need in order to feel better is more certainty. Just tell me what's going to happen. Tell me where we're gonna get the funding. Tell me who's going to be leading the organization. Tell me whether my job is safe. We want certainty because we believe that certainty will make us feel safe.
But often we can't get it, right? Or not right away in the timeline that we would like. So perhaps the question isn't how do I become more certain? Perhaps it's how do I become more confident in my ability to respond no matter what happens, even when I don't know what comes next? And that I think is a huge part of resilience.
What's also interesting to me is that I don't think I would always have reacted to moving abroad the way I did this time. [00:12:00] 20 years ago or so, I remember reflecting on when I first moved to Spain, it was just for the summer. It was like a study abroad program, and I remember feeling quite anxious about adapting.
And in fact, I remember because I was so anxious and I had so much culture shock at the time, I went to a local mall where I felt more at ease being in a mall versus, uh, you know, just outside. And I bought this huge jar of Nutella, and I finished it in one sitting. I ate all of it. And I'm not recommending that as a resilience strategy, but I think it made me realize something.
The person I am today has accumulated 20 more years of evidence. I've moved, I've traveled, I've lived in different countries, I've navigated different cultures and [00:13:00] languages. I've figured it out. I've figured it out. And so when my brain asks, "But what if you move to Abidjan and you don't know anyone?" I have a lot of evidence that says, "I'll figure it out."
And that's important because it means my tolerance for uncertainty isn't necessarily fixed, and neither is yours. We can build that tolerance. In fact, this is something that we spend time exploring in my course, Becoming the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader. When we talk about building resilience, we're not just talking about the traditional things we often associate with resilience, like taking care of ourselves or setting boundaries or managing stress.
Those are important, but we also wanna look at what is our relationship with uncertainty itself. Because if uncertainty automatically triggers things like [00:14:00] the thought, "This is bad," or, "I can't handle this," or, "I need to know what's going to happen," or, "There's nothing I can do," then think about the emotional experience that those thoughts will create.
And then think about when you're feeling that emotion, how you will lead. Probably not so well, right? Part of becoming more resilient is increasing our capacity to be in that space of not knowing without immediately needing to escape it, control it, or assume the worst. And that doesn't mean becoming indifferent to uncertainty or convincing ourselves that everything's going to be okay.
It's developing the ability to say, "I don't know what's going to happen yet, so what is within my control right now?" And that, I think, is an incredibly important capacity for modern leaders to develop [00:15:00] This is where this becomes much bigger than how you personally feel because the way and your relationship with uncertainty will impact how you lead.
When you're leading other people through uncertainty, your team is also trying to make sense of what is happening, and they're watching you. I remember when I was in South Sudan and war broke out in 2014. I was in my bedroom, and I could hear the gunshots from my window. Suddenly, everything was uncertain: our projects, my team's safety, my own safety. And my first response was everything was collapsing, and I had no idea what to do. I felt out of control, and when I showed up to work, it impacted the way I started leading. I became more controlling. I stopped delegating. I delayed decisions.
I [00:16:00] became reactive, and I could see that my team was working in the fear and anxiety that I was reflecting. So I switched my focus because I realized that I could not eliminate the uncertainty. The uncertainty was here to stay for a while, and this was something new as well for me to experience. But I could decide, how do I want to lead while I'm in it?
And that brings us to a much more useful question than, how do I get rid of uncertainty? The question then becomes, given that this uncertainty exists, what can I do now? How do I want to lead? And when I changed the focus to what was within my control, including who I wanted to be as a leader, how I wanted to show up, I felt calmer.
I felt more in control. I became more focused. I was able to make better decisions. I started [00:17:00] delegating again, and my team also calmed down and operated more efficiently. So what changed wasn't the uncertainty because we still didn't know what was going to happen. What changed was our focus on how we responded to that uncertainty.
Because you may not be able to choose what's going to happen next, but you can be intentional about how you want to show up while you wait. So what kind of leader do you want to be? Do you wanna be curious, calm, courageous, compassionate, resourceful? How do you wanna operate in uncertainty? Do you wanna make the best decisions you can with the information available today?
That's leading through uncertainty. It isn't about having all the answers, it's learning how to keep leading even when the answers aren't available. And here's one final thing I want you to remember, and this [00:18:00] is very important. As a humanitarian and development leader, I want you to think for a moment about everything that you have been through.
Really think about it. Think about all the projects when the original plan went completely out the window, the funding that changed, the donor that changed priorities, the vehicle that broke down, the leader that left, the government that changed, the crisis nobody anticipated, the security situation that deteriorated, the team member you suddenly lost, the pandemic, the restructuring, the moments when you had incomplete information and you still had to make a decision.
Think about how many times you didn't know what was going to happen next, and yet you figured it out. You figured something out because you're listening to this podcast right now. Maybe you didn't handle it perfectly, maybe it wasn't the outcome you wanted, maybe there were times you felt overwhelmed, [00:19:00] anxious, or unprepared, but that's not the point.
The point is that you're still here. You adapted, you learned, you grew, you made decisions, you found resources, you handled things that you had never handled before, and every one of those experiences is evidence. Evidence that your ability to deal with uncertainty is probably much greater than you give yourself credit for.
So if you're facing something uncertain right now, perhaps the question isn't, "How do I know everything is going to be okay?" Because you don't, and perhaps you don't need to. Instead, look backward for a moment. Ask yourself, "What have I already handled that I once didn't know how I would handle? What did that teach me about myself?"
What strengths did I discover about myself because I needed them? And what evidence [00:20:00] does my own history give me that I can respond to whatever happens next? Because resilience isn't certainty that everything will turn out the way you want. It's knowing that uncertainty can be present and you can still move forward.
You can still make decisions, you can still lead, and you can trust yourself a little more when you say, "I don't know what's going to happen. I know what matters to me. I know what influence I have today, and whatever comes next, I'll figure it out." You've already done that many more times than you realize, so the next time uncertainty shows up, remember you're not starting from zero.
You've been practicing for this throughout your entire career. You've handled uncertainty before, and you're handling it now, and you can handle what comes next. All right. Until next week, keep evolving. Bye for now