The speaker emphasizes our innate desire to control the future to experience happiness and relaxation, citing the stress people face when they cannot predict their daily events. By evaluating comfort levels with uncertainty, it's noted that those who handle uncertainty better encounter less anxiety and depression, especially during stressful periods like the pandemic. The speaker sheds light on the potential for this ability to be cultivated as a skill, akin to building a muscle, and urges adopting a mindset that appreciates uncertainty as life's inherent mystery.

In discussions with a fellow researcher, they address stress management through two stances: taking control to face challenges head-on, and adopting a receptive mode that acknowledges the unexpected nature of life. They explore various stress mitigation techniques and emphasize the importance of choosing the right approach depending on the situation. This nuanced understanding allows individuals to balance assertive and receptive strategies, thereby managing stress effectively.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. vigilant [ˈvɪdʒɪlənt] - (adj.) - Keeping careful watch for possible danger or difficulties. - Synonyms: (watchful, alert, attentive)

We're not vigilant and looking ahead and being prepared for what might happen.

2. resilience [rɪˈzɪlɪəns] - (n.) - The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. - Synonyms: (tenacity, perseverance, strength)

Being comfortable with uncertainty is a beautiful but rare resilience factor.

3. intolerance [ɪnˈtɒlərəns] - (n.) - Unwillingness to accept views, beliefs, or behavior that differ from one's own. - Synonyms: (bigotry, narrow-mindedness, prejudice)

intolerance of uncertainty pretty strongly predicted pandemic anxiety.

4. receptive [rɪˈsɛptɪv] - (adj.) - Willing to consider or accept new suggestions and ideas. - Synonyms: (open-minded, responsive, amenable)

And that's just a way of saying I am in a receptive mode and I'm going to just be curious about what arises

5. dementia [dɪˈmɛnʃə] - (n.) - A chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury. - Synonyms: (mental decline, senility, memory loss)

This idea of, okay, stress can give us early dementia, stress can limit our sleep.

6. archetypes [ˈɑːrkɪˌtaɪps] - (n.) - A very typical example of a certain person or thing. - Synonyms: (model, prototype, embodiment)

Different people come to mind, different archetypes really have emerged.

7. discernment [dɪˈsɜːnmənt] - (n.) - The ability to judge well. - Synonyms: (judgement, insight, perception)

And so that letting go is a really important wise, you know, discerning way to mitigate stress in the right situations, in the right time.

8. navigating [ˈnævɪˌɡeɪtɪŋ] - (v.) - To find a way through a difficult route. - Synonyms: (steering, maneuvering, piloting)

It's this skillful surfing or navigating that we can do better when we realize when we control things, when we can't.

9. deterministic [dɪˌtɜːrməˈnɪstɪk] - (adj.) - Relating to the philosophical doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. - Synonyms: (predetermined, fated, foreordained)

So given all of that, we have some deterministic forces on us.

10. mitigation [ˌmɪtɪˈɡeɪʃən] - (n.) - The action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something. - Synonyms: (alleviation, reduction, lessening)

And then on the other hand, there are these stress mitigation techniques, both mental and physical, body oriented, mind oriented, et cetera, that are more of the sort that you described that are they're not being back on your heels, so to speak, like letting things bulldoze you, but are more of this receptive mode and more of an awareness mode

How to Lower Stress & Become Comfortable With Uncertainty - Dr. Elissa Epel & Dr. Andrew Huberman

We really, really, really love control. And we want to control the future. Not just because it makes us feel powerful and happy, but because then we can relax if we know what's going to happen next. If it's predictable, we're that much happier. We're not vigilant and looking ahead and being prepared for what might happen.

So let me ask you that. So I have two whole chapters in the stress prescription. One is on uncertainty and one is on control. And these drive us crazy until we can somewhat master and understand how little control we have and how much uncertainty there is and will always be. So let me ask you this. If you couldn't plan your day tomorrow and you wanted to know with certainty what your plans were, what was gonna happen, how much ease and relaxation would you feel at the not knowing what's gonna happen tomorrow?

Very little. So like on a 1 through 10 scale, how much would that drive you crazy tomorrow? Tomorrow, Real tomorrow, real Saturday. So I'm a little more flexible. Oh, Monday. Oh no, Mondays are mine. I own Monday. No, I'm kidding. I'm just kidding. I love Mondays. It's always been my favorite day of the week, even when I was in school. Yeah, that would be on it. That would be a 6, 6 out of 10. And that's not unusual. And we have a scale to measure how comfortable people are with certainty.

And what we already knew was that being comfortable with uncertainty is a beautiful but rare resilience factor. People who tolerate uncertainty have much less anxiety and depression and when stressful things happen, they get over it more quickly. So we measured this during the pandemic and what we found was that intolerance of uncertainty pretty strongly predicted pandemic anxiety, ptsd, depression and distress about the fires, the climate situation in California.

So this is interesting. I mean, is this like a fixed personality and we're just stuck with our rigidity around wanting certainty or is this something that we like a muscle that we can build? So I think it's the latter. And I think there are practices we can do that help us feel ease with the uncertain future. Some of these mindful check ins, noticing that we are carrying around uncertainty, stress is one way.

And then reframing uncertainty as the beauty of the mystery of life and the freedom that we can feel when we realize we don't control tomorrow, we just go with it and we, you know, we do our best. And what delight there is in just viewing things with curiosity and just seeing what emerges. So even just our posture. Well, here's an exercise for dealing with uncertainty. Instead of like kind of that alert posture when we're like trying to take it all in and predict the next second and like just lean back and take some slow breaths, we know that's going to help orient us and realize that we can actually face time in that way by letting it come to us and receiving what happens.

And that's a completely different body stance than our usual go mode during the day. And that's just a way of saying I am in a receptive mode and I'm going to just be curious about what arises. And so I actually learned that on a meditation retreat because I tend to be type A and I leave a retreat going from like very relaxed to like that leaning forward tense of like, where's the to do list? And so carrying with me that posture of like, just see, let time unfold as it will without trying to control things. It's really interesting.

It gets right to the heart of something that I spent a lot of time thinking about in the context of stress management and also just general thriving, which is that I think that about half of the messages that we get related to stress and mind body interventions relate to adopting this forward center of mass. Interesting. This idea of, okay, stress can give us early dementia, stress can limit our sleep, stress can impair our cognition, or stress can make us more resilient, stress can activate all sorts of positive anti inflammatory pathways as well.

That the mindset matters. And here I'm doing a terrible job of it, but I'm trying to scrape off and capture the top contour of the beautiful work of my colleague, Dr. Aliyah Crum, who's love her work has been on this podcast and I'm a huge fan of her work as well. And that mindset matters because it shapes physiology for sure. Her data point to that.

So there are these kind of forward center of mass type approaches and these are abundant on social media. Different people come to mind, different archetypes really have emerged. Millions and millions of followers that are the archetypes of when challenge arises, you smash into it, you go through it. And then on the other hand, there are these stress mitigation techniques, both mental and physical, body oriented, mind oriented, et cetera, that are more of the sort that you described that are they're not being back on your heels, so to speak, like letting things bulldoze you, but are more of this receptive mode and more of an awareness mode.

Exactly. And I think that since here we are at the table, two researchers who focus on these issues a lot. Do you think it's fair for us to adopt a sort of a general framework and model that perhaps people can adopt for themselves if they like, that of course, it's not an either or, but that having both of these in one's kit of tools could be valuable because one is less energetically demanding, but of course offers less opportunity for agency, or at least apparently so that's the leaning back.

And then the other is certainly gives an opportunity for agency. But we know from 100 years or more of psychology and psychiatric literature and from the emerging literature on stress mitigation that it's work. It's not something that is without a cost. It can get you far better results than it were you to just let stress bulldoze you, but that it's work. And so we have to emphasize that work in very deliberate ways.

Exactly. I couldn't agree more. It's work. When we know it's productive, we should work. And when we know there's a brick wall, we should let go. So I think of it, I like this forward mass idea. I think of it as you muscle it and or you release it and we need both.

And so that letting go is a really important wise, you know, discerning way to mitigate stress in the right situations, in the right time. And, you know, we can't muscle through everything. Right. So another way I like to think about it is just the waves of life. Like, I mean, we are in an ocean and we have small waves, we have big waves. Some of these tidal waves are going to hit all of us, the global stressors, the climate disasters that will come.

And so when we're not in the middle of a wave, which is when we need to muscle it, we're between waves. How much control do we have to fight the tide there? Some. It's not black or white. We can't fight a riptide. We need to go the direction of, of the tide. But we can have some control in our direction.

And it kind of goes back to our colleague Robert Sapolsky's very biologically based idea of us having, you know, he's a little bit extreme with a no free will. We are influenced by all of these things around us as well as all of our biological, you know, I'll say brilliant evolutionary animal instincts. So given all of that, we have some deterministic forces on us. And within that we get to ease up between the waves when we can, we get to change our direction, but we're always going to be hit by the next wave. And so it's this skillful surfing or navigating that we can do better when we realize when we control things, when we can't, when we can truly feel safe and have ease versus when we need to kind of gently paddle.

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