Last week, I met up with a dear friend. If I were to sound like a little girl, I would proudly say, “my best friend”. The time I spent with her would easily be among the most memorable in my life. At the same time, in the days leading up to our much-awaited rendezvous, there was a lot of uncertainty, as I had no clarity about when we would be meeting. Here I was planning every hour to the T, pencilling in a venue or a sight we could discover as best buddies, scheduling my time — as I tend to do with to-do lists, planners and what-not — to ensure we were not disturbed by other duties. And there she was, jostling various responsibilities, torn between important commitments, assuring me, “Listen, we will go with the flow…but don’t worry we will do something. Just don’t ask me when and what.” At the end of the day, we met and had a wonderful time — that’s all that mattered.
These last few days reaffirmed something: I am not comfortable with ambiguity, as a rule. It was an interesting reminder that, in most situations, I need details, information in its totality to make confident decisions. While in my professional career, I have managed to tide over vague and uncertain circumstances with reasonable ease; in my personal life, I get stressed when I don’t have a plan or when items in my grand planner remain open because of factors outside my control.
All of us have dealt with crises ever since the pandemic struck. Besides the shock, grief, health distress and pain we suffered, we also realised that no matter how much we plan, life can always throw us off its predictable paths. In fact, we realised there was nothing predictable anymore. COVID brought us to our knees and helped us accept that ambiguity is a tunnel we all had to take, even if there was no light at the end of it.
The point is that the ability to tackle ambiguous situations, to be able to arrive at decisions with incomplete information, to take risks even when everything seems hazy has always been recognised as a critical skill, especially in the workplace. While I can confidently pat myself on the back for pulling off many ambiguous situations with elan in professional circumstances, I know I have a long way to go when it comes to my personal life. So, I have decided to apply the techniques I have applied so far in my professional life to tackle ambiguities in my personal life as well. Perhaps this will help me become a calmer, more peaceful and a spontaneous individual.
Keep hoping
They say the difference between faith and hope is that while faith is what we have developed based on what we have experienced so far, hope is what we aspire to achieve in the future. Hope is forward-looking and gives us reasons to live. Some say hope is not a strategy but, in my view, that’s the only one. And ambiguous situations are the perfect scenarios where hope can come in handy. When we do not have the complete picture, we must anticipate for things to go wrong. We must prepare for the worst-case scenarios. In the shifts the global workplace had to make to tackle the ambiguity that accompanied the pandemic, most teams followed the business continuity plans that anticipate unprecedented situations. Though some amount of chaos and confusion are unavoidable during uncertain moments, hope must rein supreme. Especially while taking decisions. Hope and positive thinking not only help us stay the course calmly, but also reassure co-workers that things are not totally out of control. So now, I’m asking myself, if I could do that at work, why can’t I practise this in my personal life?
Multiple plans
Overthinking is one of my traits; I overanalyse everything. I’m trained to spend hours thinking about something till it makes me sick. However, this seemingly frustrating quality about me has also helped me, especially while arriving at decisions. I turned it into my advantage, by balancing it with my sense of humour. Overthinking can be a boon, provided it doesn’t throw us off balance. When we overthink, we end up thinking of all possible scenarios and accordingly create a Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, and so on. This comes in handy when we are manging a difficult and vague situation. And all of a sudden, the unforeseen becomes foreseen. Cool, isn’t it? And if this can help our friends and family as well, why not?
Trust yourself
Then, comes the most crucial part. Trusting our gut instinct. Being kind to our experience, the skills and knowledge we have gathered knowingly and unknowingly over the years, and then trusting our own minds. I have found this to be particularly useful when I was wading through uncertain waters. We may not have access to a mentor all the time. We may not always be able to consult someone we respect when we are in doubt. In those times, we just need to take the plunge and go with our instinct. And I have done that. The risk paid off in some situations. And in a few, it didn’t, but the learning helped and now I know better.
Life brings us face to face with uncertainties and ambiguities most of the time. With many organisations now slowly going back to normal operations, we are now dealing with a different sort of change. Life in the office is not going to be the same. There are ambiguities there too. The only way to embrace this change would be to go with the flow, like my friend. But no harm in using some of these techniques, while we go along.
The author is a writer and literary journalist. She also heads Corporate Communications at UST. Views expressed are personal. @anupamaraju
