By: Ann Friedman, Ph.D.
Over the last six months, people have been calling me with increasing anxiety. In 2024, 43% of US adults reported feeling more anxious than the previous year’s 37%, citing current events, the economy, and safety as top issues. My guess is that anxiety has already risen significantly again in 2025. Whether you support the President or not, most would agree that he is taking us in an entirely new direction, and we cannot know what that means.
The only constant in our lives is change; yet it is hard for us to accept. Our minds are hardwired to construct and predict stories to explain what is happening, why it is happening, and how to prepare for the future to keep us safe. We want to control outcomes to feel secure. The problem is that none of us can read minds or have crystal balls. And, trying to figure this out can cause rumination– repeated what ifs, with no answers.
Mindfulness is a tool to help us be with uncertainty. Fortunately, humans are gifted with mental abilities to analyze and plan. If you can explore how to handle possible future scenarios in an uncertain situation, do so, then DROP it. You have a plan. If your mind drags you back, gently say, thanks mind; I have a plan and don’t need to rehash this again.
Secondly, the mind tends to jump to conclusions of this is good; that is bad. Yet, we cannot know. Perceived good comes from perceived bad and vice versa. A wonderful story illustrates this:
A farmer struggled without a horse to pull his plow. The villagers told him that it was terrible that his teenage son wandered in the mountains and didn’t help him on the farm. The farmer, uncertain, responded Is that so? Several months later, the boy was in the mountains, saw a horse, lassoed it and brought it back to the farm. Now the villagers told the farmer, it is all good. Again, the farmer wasn’t sure: it could be good; it could be bad.
As the boy was riding the horse to tame it, a loud crash caused the horse to rear and throw the boy on the ground. The boy broke his leg and wouldn’t walk for 6-8 months. Again, the villagers told the farmer, this is terrible. The horse was not trained. The farmer still had to farm—and now, he had to take care of his son who could not get out of bed. The farmer was again uncertain, could be good, could be bad he replied. And, two weeks later, the military marched into town to take all fit young boys off to war…
In mindfulness, we try to stay in the mind of the farmer– don’t know mind.
Can you remember something that happened that you perceived as negative, but which ended up positive? Can you remember something that you perceived as positive, but which had unintended negative consequence? This does not mean that we don’t have opinions or take action around issues of consequence, but we speak and act with humility. We cannot know what will happen next. We also surrender. Surrendering involves the willingness to accept the outcome of situations, no matter what, after we have done what we can. We let go of the need to have control, to know and to predict. We train our minds to live in the moment to enjoy the good we have now rather than focus on future worries.
And, we have faith in the Universe. One of my heroes, Martin Luther King Jr. said it best: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. I remind myself of his words regularly and have found this true in my own lifetime.
