Contribution from Dr. Naomi Win, Behavioral Finance Analyst, Orion
Here’s what we know for certain: we’re ramping up to an election, it’s slated to take place on November 5th, and the results will likely impact the systems and structures that contextualise our lives. What we don’t know, is what those changes will be. Worse yet, we can’t know, not for certain, and if interdisciplinary research tells us anything, it’s that human’s do not like uncertainty: so much so, that we prefer inevitable pain, to the potential of it¹.
Why is this? It has to do with predictability: we are hard-wired to prefer predictability because it increases our odds of being safe, something we’re hard-wired to prefer. When we can’t have that predictability, we’re at-risk of becoming a liability to ourselves, making decisions driven by emotions like fear and panic rather than from a place of wisdom.
In our effort to circumvent this unpleasantness, we might be fooled into thinking we can simply seek certainty. It makes sense: uncertainty feels awful, so, let’s seek certainty. But the reality is that uncertainty is inevitable, and the adaptive response is actually rooted in self-trust: we can’t control the sea, but we can adjust our sails.
When you find yourself disoriented by the volatility and uncertainty we’re submerged in, focus on these things:
- Stay the course: no storm lasts forever, and short-term reactive course changes will simply through you out of alignment with your north star, with no guarantee you’ll avoid any pain.
- Stay diversified: sea merchants knew to spread precious cargo across multiple ships, to account for the reality of unpredictable seas, to reduce the chance of catastrophic loss.
- Lean in: when your mind races with worst-case scenarios, lean in but reframe. Instead of responding to “what if X happens” with rumination, “if X happened, what are the limits of what I can control in response, and what steps can I take to manage that situation?”
- Stay goal-oriented rather than control-oriented: when you feel that urge to seek control over things you can’t single-handedly change, pause and refocus on your goals and the accomplishments within your reach.
- Reframe: When the changes around you feel disorienting, reframe the disempowerment of “so much is happening to me that I can’t control” to “lots of decisions to make in areas that are in my control”.
Anticipate that there’s a higher chance you will feel fear, panic, and anxiety, when faced with uncertainty; accept that you’re neurologically predispositioned to react to that by becoming liable to buying into illusions of predictability; then act, by focusing on augmenting your self-trust and skills to weather storms you can not control. As we head into this season of unknowns, we might do well to remember the old Parisian motto: Rocked by waves but does not sink. We simply adjust our sails.