Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Worry and anxiety › Living with uncertainty
Plenty of people hear any decision as permanent, so picking a course or a job or a city feels like sentencing themselves to it. A review date changes nothing about what happens next week and it changes what next week means, which is usually the part that was stuck. Write the date down and then actually keep it, otherwise the same reassurance will not work a second time.
Do not say of anything, 'I will do that tomorrow' (Quran 18:23), without adding, 'God willing' (Quran 18:24). The plan still gets made. It is simply held with an opening left in it, which is what a review date gives you.
الكهف
وَلَا تَقُولَنَّ لِشَاْيۡءٍ إِنِّي فَاعِلࣱ ذَٰلِكَ غَدًا
do not say of anything, ‘I will do that tomorrow,’
Qur’an 18:23read it in the library
الكهف
إِلَّآ أَن يَشَآءَ ٱللَّهُۚ وَٱذۡكُر رَّبَّكَ إِذَا نَسِيتَ وَقُلۡ عَسَىٰٓ أَن يَهۡدِيَنِ رَبِّي لِأَقۡرَبَ مِنۡ هَٰذَا رَشَدࣰ ا
without adding, ‘God willing,’ and, whenever you forget, remember your Lord and say, ‘May my Lord guide me closer to what is right.’
Qur’an 18:24read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In 670 adults worrying about a genuinely uncertain situation, a brief self guided online programme reduced how far the worry took over daily life, even though the uncertainty itself had not changed at all. The facts stayed as unclear as they were, and the relationship to them still shifted. It was a large but self selected online sample, so read it as a real signal rather than a precise measure.
Wahlund T, Mataix-Cols D, Olofsdotter Lauri K, de Schipper E, Ljótsson B, Aspvall K, Andersson E. (2021). Brief Online Cognitive Behavioural Intervention for Dysfunctional Worry Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Randomised Controlled Trial.. Psychotherapy and psychosomatics doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A decision you know you will look at again does not have to be the right one forever.
When something feels unbearable to risk, follow it downwards. If that did happen, what would it mean, and what would happen after that?
A no is usually information about fit rather than a report on your worth. Some of them have to happen before you can tell which places are right for you.
Listen for the condition you have attached to acting: I will apply once I know I will get it, I will go once I know I will like it. If that condition could never actually be met, it is not caution, it is a door you have quietly locked.