Living with uncertainty is very difficult, yet we do it every day. Certainty is often an illusion — a denial of mortality and the constant changes we are barely aware of.
Here and now, as we live with the uncertainties of the pandemic and the results of the USA election, the level of uncertainty is very difficult to live with. I’m certain how this uncertainty is affecting me, my family, my friends, and my patients:
insomnia,
changes in appetite,
stress eating,
anger,
hopelessness,
helplessness,
worry,
anxiety,
depression,
lack of motivation,
a reversion to old unhelpful habits,
withdrawal,
fear,
catastrophizing,
blaming,
all-or-nothing thinking,
mind-reading, and
the rest of the cognitive distortions (which I’m certain you can find here).
I’m uncertain how I and millions of other people are going to live with so much uncertainty in the days ahead.
In a sea of uncertainty, I’m certain that routines — like daily blogging — help. I’m certain I have new images to share but I’m uncertain exactly what they are.
I’m certain that I felt less uncertainty about the future when I took those photos than I’m feeling now.
Here‘s “The Courage to Live with Radical Uncertainty” — a Ted Talk given by “Compassion-Driven Oncologist Shekinah Elmore” in March 2020, right before our current age of uncertainty.
Here‘s “Coping with Uncertainty” by MindTools Videos:
What are your thoughts and feelings about living with uncertainty?
No matter how I’m living with uncertainty, I’m certainly grateful to all who help me create this daily blog, including YOU.
What’s your first guess about why today’s post is titled “First guess, best guess”? Let’s find out if it’s the best guess.
Since the first day I met my best friend/husband Michael, he’s been saying, “First guess, best guess.”
One of my other best friends wrote to me the other day, when I felt insecure about how I had run a board meeting: “I’m not sure 2nd guessing is helpful.”
Is it your first guess, best guess that both those pieces of advice — “First guess, best guess” and “I’m not sure 2nd guessing is helpful” — mean the same thing?
I love guessing and I don’t stop with my first guess. If I DID stop with my first guess, our ailing and adorable cat Oscar would not be alive today. Also, Michael’s first guess was that the Social Security office had his correct birthday on file and they did NOT. My next guess about filing our taxes is that we’ll have to do that by mail, which is not exactly a catastrophe (although my first guess — when the IRS rejected our e-filing this weekend because Michael’s birthday on the form did not match Social Security’s record — was that it WAS a catastrophe).
Catastrophizing is a common cognitive distortion (which we talk about in my Coping and Healing groups) where our first guess is that a catastrophe is imminent, even though it isn’t.
Since catastrophizing is a first guess, not best guess, I’m now guessing that “first guess, best guess” is not always best.
However, my first guess about Michael, when I first met him on okCupid, was that he was a wonderful person I wanted in my life. I’ve had similar first guess, best guesses about other people, including the other best friend I quoted above.
My best guess about guesses, here and now, is that it’s best to trust our intuition AND also be open to new evidence that comes along.
What’s your first guess, best guess about what’s next in this blog post?
If you guessed photos, your first guess was the best!
In today’s Daily Bitch Calendar, auto-correct’s first guess was not the best guess.
This is the first song I heard by The Guess Who, which I think is their best:
My first guess was that the title of that song was “She’s Come Undone” but my best guess is that it is “Undun.”
My first guess, best guess is that there will be great comments about today’s post.
First guess, best guess, constant guess is to express gratitude every day.
acting in old ways in the face of major new realities, and
personalizing, labeling, minimizing, magnifying, blaming, fortune-telling, mind-reading, negative-filtering, and all those other nutty cognitive distortions.
I hope that we nuts can figure out how to save ourselves and the planet before it’s too late, so we can keep being nuts together in less nutty ways.
All my photos today are nuts!
If you’re nuts about any of those photos, you can click on them to enlarge them.
Here‘s one of my favorite songs about how we’re all nuts (from before the days of social distancing):
If you’re nuts like me, please leave a comment below.
I am grateful to share this nutty blog with you, every day!
Do you see any metaphors in my other captured images from yesterday?
I wonder if it’s a metaphor that on this Presidents’ Day weekend my phone and my laptop are not communicating and are refusing to share images with each other. Maybe it’s a metaphor that I’m working harder to create these posts, starting on my phone and then completing my daily blog on my laptop.
Nevertheless, it’s easy enough to share this metaphor-filled song, performed by The Temptations and UB40:
I look forward to any metaphors, similes, or other figures of speech in your comments, below.
Thanks to all who helped me create this “Metaphors” post, including YOU!
Emotional Reasoning.
We take our emotions as evidence for the truth. Examples: “I feel inadequate, so there must be something wrong with me.” “I feel overwhelmed and hopeless, therefore the situation must be impossible to change or improve.” (Note that the latter can contribute to procrastination.) While suppressing or judging feelings can be unhelpful, it’s important to recognize the difference between feelings and facts.
My definition of “Emotional Reasoning” does NOT include examples of the negative aspect of that, as in “I do NOT feel that way, therefore it’s not true.” I’m reasoning that I could have written that definition with this example: “I do not feel adequate, so there must be something wrong with me.”
All this came to my emotional mind this morning when I read this news headline:
That is all emotional reasoning. I know that two of those statements are true, no matter what I’m feeling. And I have many emotions about the third statement, so who knows if it’s true?
Do you see emotional reasoning in any of my photos from yesterday?
While artfully couched in the iconography of the Christian nativity, the songwriters were making a political statement: a plea for peace, and a reminder of the ravages of war.
The song opens with the night wind speaking to a lamb, long a literary symbol of peace. Soon we hear the line, “A star, a star, dancing in the sky//With a tail as big as a kite.”
“The star was meant to be a bomb,” said Gabrielle Regney.
Later we hear the lyrics “A child, a child, shivers in the cold,” which Regney said is a reference to the “real children” who inspired the song.
And the line, “Let us bring him silver and gold” was a reference to “poor children,” said Regney — a reminder of the human cost of war.
But no matter how you interpret the song, Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne left no mistake about the central message at the climax of the song.
“The biggest part for them was the ‘pray for peace’ line,” said Regney. “That line, ‘pray for peace,’ was very big for both of them.”
These days, I don’t ask myself “What could possibly go wrong?” because I know the answer might be:
every little (and big) thing one’s catastrophizing mind might think of and
other things, too.
Asking myself “What could possibly go wrong?” is not my favorite waste of time, because expected and unexpected things go wrong every minute, every hour, every day.
However, there is a way of asking that question that assumes a positive outcome. For example, what could possibly go wrong if I share all my photos from yesterday?
I don’t want to get too hung up on presenting definitions and synonyms of “hang-up,” so here’s a list of hang ups that preoccupy me and others, these days:
