Director of Influenceo Global Inc., leadership strategist, speaker & personal mastery expert helping professional women excel.
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Uncertainty will forever be a hallmark of 2020. Never before have we experienced a time when uncertainty was so ubiquitously global. Not a single industry or market was spared the frustration of navigating "business as unusual."
And here’s the thing — as humans, we find uncertainty more stressful than even the certainty of imminent failure. A 2016 experiment highlighted this phenomenon when subjects who were told they have a 50% chance of receiving an electric shock were more stressed than those who were told they will “definitely” receive a shock. In a business context, it’s far less taxing for a leader to deal with the anticipation of a guaranteed bad quarter based on known factors, rather than having no idea what’s around the corner.
Thankfully, neuroscience sheds light on brain processes that you can easily take advantage of to help you perform during uncertainty. Here are three practical insights:
1. Break free from stress-induced ‘tunnel vision.’
Uncertainty threatens our innate preference for predicting future events. It elevates stress and anxiety levels by triggering the amygdala (the brain’s fear center), which puts you into "tunnel vision" mode. Meaning your vision literally becomes "narrowed" as a survival mechanism to help focus your attention on the immediate "threat." Unfortunately, this state also gets in the way of your rational thinking, which doesn’t help you deal with the uncertainty.
What if I told you that your eyes can help break you out of that state? Research published in the Journal of Neuroscience found that lateral eye movement (side-to-side) during self-generated forward motion (e.g., walking or cycling), has the effect of quietening the amygdala. In other words, you can hack your brain to break free from stress-induced tunnel vision by something as simple as taking a walk in open space. When walking forward, our eyes naturally scan the space ahead laterally. This triggers a hardwired process that tells your brain: “Hey! There’s no imminent threat ahead. So chill out!” This breaks you out of flight or freeze by hushing your pesky amygdala.
And the benefits don’t end there. According to one study, there’s actually a brain area responsible for confronting a threat, as opposed to defaulting to a flight or freeze response. Lateralized eye movements actually engage this part of the brain that encourages “leaning into the friction." In a recent video interview, one of the researchers, Stanford’s Dr. Andrew Huberman, spoke about how forward movement in the face of agitation activates the winning circuit in the brain (linked to boldness and courage).
So, the next time you find yourself experiencing uncertainty-induced stress, instead of banging your head on your laptop keyboard, peel your eyes away from that narrow screen and expand your vision with a calming stroll.
2. Repurpose the struggle.
In the face of prolonged uncertainty, the natural tendency is to give up. Why? Neuroscience suggests it’s due to a prolonged absence of dopamine (the reward neurotransmitter) in the brain as a result of not being able to achieve goals due to unforeseen circumstances or other factors. Achieving goals at work drives your momentum as it continually activates the dopamine-reward pathways in your brain. But what can you do to replenish your dopamine when you’re not even able to have clear targets?
Well, it turns out there is a bio-hack around this because dopamine can also be released on the "path" to goal attainment. But the prerequisite is that you need to be clear that your perseverance and struggles are aligned with your overarching purpose. This is a powerful insight because it indicates that if you can reframe even the suffering and "pain" that comes from uncertainty as part of the journey, you’re able to tap into the reward pathways and increase your drive to cross that undefined finish line.
First, you need to be very clear about your overarching purpose. Importantly, you need to continually reward these incremental steps that focus on forward progress. Take a moment to appreciate your efforts. Say to yourself, “I’m on the right track. I’m still moving toward my goals, even if they’re not clear. This suffering is for a purpose.”
Here’s an example. A client recently accepted a very senior position that involved creating a highly specialized team. She was excited about having a team but struggled to motivate herself during the recruitment process. Because of the uncertainty in the industry, she was finding it tough to find the right level of expertise in candidates. By helping her recognize how the "struggle" of recruitment was part of the bigger picture — of creating her dream team — she started reframing the struggle as an essential part of the pursuit of creating the team. She essentially bio-hacked her brain’s dopamine-reward pathway. And you can too.
The question to ask yourself on your journey is: “Is this decision, this task, this action drawing me closer to my bigger purpose?” Each "yes" that you answer builds your capacity to keep persevering. Each step made towards the goal, when rewarded, motivates you to keep moving forward.
3. Embrace uncertainty as a learning opportunity.
Daeyeol Lee, professor of neuroscience at Yale, said, “We only learn when there is uncertainty, and that is a good thing.” His research published in Neuron found that there’s greater neural activity in the prefrontal cortex when faced with uncertainty, and it's in these environments that the brain is primed for learning.
One implication of these findings is that while one of the natural human responses during uncertainty is to run and hide, these are situations when we can learn the most about ourselves and our hidden potential. So reframe your relationship with uncertainty to see it as an opportunity to learn and discover rather than as a threat. And use this as fuel to propel you forward. It will help you regulate your state, improve your performance and even make you an inspiration to others during challenging times.
Thanks for the insights, neuroscience!
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