Why Uncertainty Triggers Stress and Anxiety

We, as humans, have an issue with uncertainty. Our brain is a prediction machine: it constantly tries to predict the future. Paradoxically, in the Western world, our lives have become so safe and predictable that we have become even less tolerant of uncertainty, because even the tiniest short-term risks are relentlessly eliminated, and we expect our lives to go completely according to plan.

We live under the illusion that we have much more control over our lives than we actually have. This illusion of control is a huge anxiety and stress trigger, because while we think we should be able to control everything, we obsess over the tiniest imperfections. We feel that if we aren’t exceptionally successful, we have somehow failed at life. After all, if everything is in our control and we fail, it must be our fault, right?

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, because I live a life of uncertainty much more than most people do. In doing so, I am constantly confronted with the stress that comes from not knowing what the future will look like in terms of work. And because I deal with a fair level of uncertainty on a daily basis, it feels worthwhile to share the practices that I personally find most useful in dealing with that feeling.

Living With Uncertainty as a Self-Employed Parent

The past few years have been intense in a particular way. I’m a mom, I work for myself, and my work lives at the intersection of yoga, coaching, IFS therapy, and online content creation, which means things are always shifting. Yoga is out, Pilates is in, coaching depends on economic changes, platforms change their rules and algorithms, and there is a constant sense of needing to adapt, stay visible, and think ahead.

Freelance life never really settles. Uncertainty is at the heart of it. Income goes up and down, attention is spread across many projects and methods at once, and my mind is always one step ahead, trying to make sure there will be enough stability and creative enjoyment later on.

In the midst of all this, I have a fairly clear sense of where I want things to move. Toward working more with groups, retreats, and events where yoga, IFS, breathwork, and behavioral design come together to tackle stress from multiple angles, in an affordable, community-based way.

When Vision Pulls You Out of the Present

...and Why This Matters for You

That direction drives me, but vision also comes with a strong focus on the future. Lately, I’ve noticed how much of my attention lives there, and how rarely I fully land in where things are right now.

So if you are, like me, ambitious, driven, curious, and you want to do meaningful work, you either have to deal with quite a lot of uncertainty too and/or you are growth- and future-focused, which means you spend a lot of time ‘living in the future’. This triggers ongoing activation, making it hard to slow down.

When you’re oriented strongly toward the future, even when that future is aligned with your values and sense of purpose, it’s easy to end up living slightly ahead of yourself. There’s often a sense that things will feel better, calmer, safer, once you arrive in the fantasy you have created of what your life will look like 5 years from now. Once the structure is clearer. Once the income is steadier. Once you get the promotion, the project, the grant, the sabbatical, move abroad, or finally find the right venue for your business. Once the vision has taken form.

The Mountain Metaphor: Always Chasing What’s Next

I often think about this using a mountain metaphor. When you’re climbing and your eyes are fixed on the top, all you really feel is the gap between where you are and where you want to be. You’re constantly aware of the distance, the effort, the unfinishedness of it all. The climbing itself fades into the background, the landscape barely registers, and everything is measured against a future point you haven’t reached yet.

I recognize this pattern very well in myself, and I see it often in the people I work with, especially those who are driven, curious, and deeply invested in doing something meaningful with their lives. And just to be clear, the problem isn’t ambition or vision. It’s useful to know where you would like to go, and to be committed to living a meaningful life. The problem is what happens when there’s nothing that regularly brings you back into the present moment, into the version of life that is happening right now.

For me, one of the practices that does that most reliably is gratitude. Gratitude is not to be mistaken for ignoring problems or faking positivity. It’s more about re-focusing your mind on what you already have, instead of what you’d ideally want in the future. Because how we feel is created by how we perceive the world. And how we perceive the world is shaped by where we choose to focus our attention.

What Ancient Philosophy Teaches Us About Gratitude

Ideas about gratitude and contentment aren’t new. Across yoga philosophy, Buddhism, and Stoic thought, there’s a shared understanding that a lot of our suffering comes from constantly wanting reality to be different from what it is. In yoga this shows up as Santosha, contentment: learning to relate differently to what you already have, rather than letting happiness be dependent on external circumstances.

In Buddhist and Stoic traditions, the same idea appears in reflections on impermanence and on focusing attention on what is within our control, rather than fixating on what we lack. Different languages, different traditions, but a very similar insight: peace doesn’t come from arranging life perfectly, but from changing how we relate to what’s already here.

The idea is that happiness depends on your internal representation of the world, rather than the external events in the world.

The Happiness Gap: Why Getting What You Want Won’t Fix Your Stress

So how do we place these ideas in the context of our day-to-day lives? How do we apply them in a modern world? According to psychological science:

“There is a gap between unhappiness and happiness, and it is about as wide as the gap between what you have and what you want.”

We tend to think we can bridge that gap by getting what we want. That’s how both our society and our brains are built. We are constantly triggered to run after desires. A once useful survival mechanism, but in a world overloaded with choice, goals, ambitions, and companies trying to sell us things, it easily turns into a maddening rat race.

The problem is this: to keep us moving (and spread our genes), what we want is always changing. Dopamine drives us to go after what we want, but once we get it, after the initial good feeling of reward, dopamine returns to baseline, and our attention shifts to the next thing.

And what’s more, humans under stress naturally develop a negativity bias. The brain prioritizes threat, loss, and what might be missing. So the more we work to bridge the gap, the more stressed we get, the more we focus on what is missing, and the more we perceive a gap.

This once made sense, because stress was rarely chronic (think ongoing work issues that last for years on end), and was more likely day-to-day (run from predators, fight neighbouring tribes) or seasonal (food shortages). It made sense to be wired for threat for a short period of time. But now, it has become the default for many of us.

Because of this built-in survival mechanism, no matter what we do, we will keep experiencing that gap, and we will keep feeling dissatisfied if we try to make ourselves happy by getting what we want.

Bridging the Gap by Wanting What You Already Have

But what if there is a solution? What if we could also bridge the gap by wanting what we already have?

Gratitude practices, where we become aware of and learn to appreciate what we already have, are associated with profound changes in well-being. Regularly expressing gratitude increases positive emotions, meaning, and life satisfaction, reduces symptoms of pain, depression, and anxiety, promotes resilience in the face of adversity, improves sleep quality, strengthens social relationships, and contributes to better physical health outcomes.

One of the most robust findings in research on gratitude is that gratitude changes the attentional bias that comes from trying to bridge the gap. It broadens the perceptual field (how you experience life) so you don't just see threats and deficits, and in doing so, it actually makes you cognitively and behaviorally more flexible. So the paradoxical thing is that once you stop constantly obsessing over the future, you are actually much better able to create that future.

So a few weeks ago, in the middle of a period where my mind was very busy with questions about safety, stability, and what still needed to change, I became aware that I was actually pretty stressed. So I sat down and wrote out everything that was already going quite well in my life. I didn’t do this to convince myself that I shouldn’t feel stressed, or to override the very real challenges, or to fake positivity. It was simply a way of redirecting my attention from what I wanted to go better in the future, toward what I already had right now.

A Personal Gratitude Practice During Stress and Uncertainty

Writing it out slowed something down, and with exactly the same circumstances, I slept well that night instead of lying awake wondering how I would generate new income streams. And this effect has lasted over the past few weeks (as I have been doing my gratitude practice weekly).

I noticed that even with financial uncertainty, my life is still incredibly privileged. That on a global scale, our family is probably among the richest 10% of people in the world, and that many people would likely trade places with me without hesitation. I wrote down that I get to move my body every day because movement is part of my work, not something I have to squeeze in. That I work four days a week and get real, unhurried time with my child. That my work is autonomous and creative, that I get to write, think, teach, and learn about others, but also about myself. And most of all, that I get to study and help people for a living, which still feels incredibly meaningful.

I also noticed that apart from stress related to uncertainty, my physical health is generally excellent. I’m fit, flexible, and strong. I have a partner who goes above and beyond to make my life easier and is the best father I have ever seen. I have a curious, funny, open-hearted child who dares to share all her feelings with me, and she has all four grandparents who are still alive, present, and reasonably healthy. I have friendships where I don’t need to perform, where I can be honest and unpolished.

Seen from that angle, it became hard to deny that, taken as a whole, my life is actually pretty fucking good. Sure, we don’t own a car, we have exchanged holidays in New Zealand and Canada for camping trips in Europe, and I don’t buy new clothes every month, but that feels like a reasonable bargain for all of the above.

Three Simple Gratitude Practices That Actually Help

Here are three exercises that only take a few minutes and can instantly change how you feel, without changing anything about your actual life:

1. Gratitude Journaling

Set aside ten minutes per week to write down everything you are grateful for. Even doing this once a week can shift the way you relate to your days, from feeling like you’re always behind or never doing enough, to feeling more relaxed, connected to what matters, and appreciative of what has already happened.

2. Express Gratitude to Others

Take a moment during the day or week to express appreciation toward someone who has had a positive impact on you. This shifts your focus toward what others are already doing, changes how you see them, and makes people feel seen and valued, all of which strengthen connection. In our family, we do this once a day at dinner (we sit down anyway, so its not an added to-do). Our daughter, who is almost three, loves it, and it has completely changed the energy at the table. It went from a conversation between me and my partner about everyting that still needs to fixed, and both of us feeling like we are never doing enough, to a moment of connection and laughter where we both feel appreciated, and my daughter feels included.

3. Negative Visualization

Negative visualization is a Stoic practice closely related to the Buddhist practice of impermanence. It involves briefly imagining the loss of things you usually take for granted, such as loved ones, health, or opportunities. By touching that possibility for a moment, you become more aware of how precious these things are.

This can sound gloomy, but the point isn’t to dwell on loss. You imagine it briefly, just long enough to feel appreciation and relief flood your system. The next time you eat a meal or sit quietly with someone you love, the moment often feels fuller, more alive, and sometimes you fall in love with the simple things in life all over again.

Framing Reality: How Perspective Shapes Experience

All of these practices involve framing the same situation differently. Instead of investing more time, energy, or money into getting what we want, we learn to appreciate what we already have. The mind is a powerful meaning-maker. How you perceive your life, whether through scarcity or gratitude, often has a bigger impact on how you feel than your objective circumstances.

So if you are ambitious, curious, and growth-oriented, doing a gratitude practice once a week or once a month is not optional if you want to stay grounded. Every time I do this, something shifts. My nervous system settles, I sleep better, my perspective widens, and the present moment becomes something to enjoy.

Gratitude doesn’t remove stressors. It doesn’t fix uncertainty or erase structural challenges. But it changes the internal landscape from which you relate to them and it makes them not be the center of your universe. There is a time and a place for problem solving, and there is a time and a place for acceptance and presence. Both are useful and necessary.

For people who are strongly future-oriented, a gratitude practice can be the difference between constantly chasing the top of the mountain and actually feeling the ground under your feet while you’re climbing.

Its good to know where you’re headed. Just don’t forget that the climb itself is your life.

With love and gratitude,

Inge