Our world is currently in a very precarious state. Right now, many countries and economies are tottering on the brink of collapse. It’s been barely two years since the darkest moments of COVID 19 – which is still raging – with countries still trying to find their balance to normalcy and embrace the new normal. Then the Ukrainian war was triggered, and this has had a global ripple effect with fuel shortages resulting in hikes in fuel prices, high cost of production, inflation, and the resulting hike in living costs. Significant global food shortages have also resulted from the war.
Lately, there have been reports of demonstrations in major European cities to protest the rising cost of living and dwindling income. While the nation of Sri Lanka has officially declared bankruptcy, Ghana is reaching out for an IMF loan to meet up with its obligations and stay afloat. Many more businesses and economies stand at risk of impacts from events on the global scale. The unflattering realities that are unfolding around us are likely to take a toll on our mental health and wellbeing as it forces us to ponder our fate in the face of the unpredictable future and what this might mean for our jobs, careers, and income levels.
So, what do we do? How does one respond to these external forces over which we have absolutely no control? How do we keep calm and sane and not lose hope and drive? The most important fact to note when navigating through uncertainty is the fact that your mind is your greatest asset; it could also be the converse. The battle is fought and won in your mind, so you must pay utmost attention to your mind, and the inputs that shape your outlook on the situation.
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Here is a list of important mindsets to help you stay strong in navigating uncertainty and coming out of it stronger and better.
Mind Your Focus:
Keep your mind fixated on only the positive. This is not to be misunderstood for denying reality, instead, it should be seen as an attitude for dealing with negativity. Look out for what is working in spite of all that may not be working around you. Be mindful of every progress made and consciously celebrate them. As humans, we have a high sense of aversion to loss, so we tend to amplify any experience of loss, either it happens to us directly or we hear of it remotely. Whatever you focus on shapes your perception and realities to a great extent, it also shapes your expectations as well, so keep your eyes on positivity.
A certain research that was performed with two groups of monkeys. The first group were given one piece of banana each, the result is that it made them very happy. The second group of monkeys, however, were given two pieces of banana each, but then, one banana was taken away from them almost immediately. The result was angst amongst the monkeys. They lost focus on the fact that they still had one piece of banana like the other group, instead their focus was on the one piece that was taken away from them, and that determined their reaction.
Most times, as humans, we exhibit the same kind of cognitive biases. We focus on our loss, instead of our gains. This mindset can only lead to one outcome – defeat. We cannot make progress and move forward when our focus is wrongly placed on what we’ve lost, or don’t have ahead of what we do have, and what we have going for us.
This is particularly important when going through rather uncertain times like we currently are. Do not keep your focus on what is wrong, and not working. It is important to acknowledge these, but they shouldn’t be the main focus or the determinant of our happiness.
Retune Your Decision-Making Mechanism:
In his book Peaks and Valleys(1), author Spencer Johnson posits that life is really made up of peak and valley experiences. The peaks are the good times, when we experience success, and are coasting on to victory, while the valleys are the downtimes, periods when we experience failure and adversity. However, he further posits that it is the bad decisions and actions made in our peaks that oftentimes create our valley experiences, and conversely, it is the good decisions made and the corresponding actions we that take when we are in the valley season that helps us create the next peak experience or season of our lives.
This holds quite true not only for individuals, but is applicable on a collective level for societies, nations, and economies. One could say that the world is going through a valley phase at the moment, and the cause is not far-fetched. Escalating a war, while the world was still grappling with the setbacks from a pandemic and thereby plunging the world into an energy and food crisis, and the ripple effect on national and individual economies is obviously the trigger for the current valley. And whether we will make it to another peak, and how soon that will happen depends squarely on the quality of decisions and actions that the leaders will choose to pursue as we navigate the current valley situation.
The global economic valley will likely create valley experience for a lot of people as it threatens careers, incomes and likelihoods, however, the most important thing to do while we go through the valley experience is to keep our focus on making the kind and quality of decisions that will help us exit the valley experience and to a good extent, insulate us from the external valley experience that we have no control over.
This is the best time to invest heavily in yourself and anything that helps you make progress, and keeps you less affected by economic upheavals. If it is necessary, register for a professional course, diversify your investment, look to create other streams of income, or even hire a coach if that will help you get clarity needed to move ahead. Immerse yourself in social, spiritual, and emotional networks with positive energies, impacts and influence. By all means don’t get stuck in the valley, whether it is self-induced or inflicted by global turn of events. Investments have their costs, but such costs are not necessarily and essentially financial; they could be in the form of discipline, tough but purposeful life decisions on how to optimise the use of resources, time as well as physical, relational, and emotional energy.
Review Your Goals:
When hit by periods of uncertainty one important thing to do is to review our goals. The parameters on which we made our initial projections when we set our goals initially have been drastically altered, this makes it necessary to review our goals based on new realities. Even more important is the fact that we need to consider the mindset that frames the kinds of goals that we set.
There are two kinds of goal mindset possible. First is the ‘approach’ mindset, and the second is ‘avoidance’ mindset. Approach goals are goals that we set for ourselves based on a desirable future; these kinds of goals are of an aspirational nature, and they get us working towards creating a new experience at a higher level than we currently are. On the other hand, avoidance goals are set from the place of pain and loss experienced in the past. They are set on the basis of what we don’t want.
When we are hit with unpleasant experiences, they tend to shape how we view our future and how we set our goals in life, and the result of this is that we tend to set our goals from an avoidance mindset. The danger with this is that it keeps the focus on the past, unpleasant experience, and this leads to a fixed mindset that makes growth almost impossible. What we should do however, is ensure that our goals are made from an approach mindset. In this way, we are forward looking, and this shows to us that we believe in our future more than our past.
Seasons of uncertainty are a very tough experience to deal with, however, with the right mindset in place, they can be successfully navigated with minimal casualties. By keeping our focus on the right direction, making the right decisions, and setting the right goals, we can make unpleasant times work positively for us.
Notes
- https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Peaks-and-Valleys/Spencer-Johnson/9781501108082