The Psychology of your 20s - The psychology of uncertainty

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

Uncertainty is the defining emotion of our 20s. Career paths, relationships, identity, purpose ... so much of this decade is marked by not knowing. Does that have to be as uncomfortable as we think it does? In today’s episode, we unpack the psychology of uncertainty: why our brains fear it, how it triggers anxiety and avoidance, and why trying to “figure it all out” might be doing more harm than good. We explore: The neuroscience behind our discomfort with the unknown Why perfectionism is often a mask for our fear of uncertainty The cultural myths that make us believe we need a step-by-step life plan How to assign meaning to uncertainty and build resilience through it Practical strategies to take action even when the future feels unclear If you've never felt more confused than you do now, and are unsure 'what's next', this episode is for you.  Watch on Netflix: HERE Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast Subscribe on Substack: @thepsychologyofyour20s For business: [e-mail]  The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Why do some women yearn for Shakira's black hair to make a comeback? And whatever happened to the power couple of my dreams, Mariah Carey and Luis Miguel, I'm Maria Garcia. You may remember me from my podcast, Anything for Selena, or My Thivo. And now I'm back to unpack more stories from the present and the past. Listen to Mui excited with Maria Garcia on the IHeart Radio app,

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This is Michael Rappaport, and my podcast, the I Am Rapaport Stereo podcast, is unlike anyone you've ever heard. If you're looking for strong opinions about sports, entertainment, politics, pop culture, and whatever else catches my attention, then subscribe now. This kid Jafar Jackson should absolutely positively get nominated for his portrayal as Michael Jackson. Listen to I Am Rap Report on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hello everybody. I'm Gemma Spike and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. This episode is a rerun. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the

podcast, new listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of your 20s. Today, to just jump straight to the chase, we are talking about perhaps one of the most defining parts of our 20s, the overwhelming uncertainty of just being in this decade. If this decade had one word to describe it, one thing, to trump them all, it would be uncertainty. We are lost in this very weird haze of not really knowing who we are, not really knowing what the future holds, what's going to happen with our jobs, with our friends, with our finances, with our love lives. And even once you think you have some part of it figured out, another part of your life suddenly crumbles. And you're kind of

just left feeling as lost as you were before. So I got this DM from a list. the other day that I wanted to share, which really inspired me to talk about this, because going back through the archives, I realized we have never sat down and done a full episode dedicated to this feeling, despite it being, I would say, universal. This is what her DM said. Hi, Gemma. I'm in my 20s, like I'm sure most of your listeners are, so there must be others who relate to this feeling. My dilemma is that everyone tells me to just try something, and that it doesn't matter what path I'm taking in my 20s as long as I'm moving forward. What really paralyzes me, though, is not knowing whether the path I choose to take will make me

happy or at least happier than any other path. When I visualize my future, it just feels like a big, ominous gray cloud, and I can't help but feel like if I just knew one part of the story, I could decide once and for all what direction to take. How do I deal with my fear of uncertainty? it's the biggest thing holding me back. I just knew like instantly upon reading this how many of us, and I can include myself in this group, can relate to that feeling.

The feeling that our futures are not necessarily exciting, but actually really scary and really ominous. And a lot of that fear of the unknown really fuels indecision. And it fuels not making decisions that are important to make at this stage in our life, which of course fuels later dissatisfaction. But I think when you understand why we feel such uncertainty to begin with, why it is human nature to turn away from the unknown, but also how we can shift our feelings about uncertainty so that it feels less scary. That is when this sensation has less control of you. You know, you're no longer fighting a losing battle against it. Uncertainty can become perhaps your sign that you're going in the right direction. It can be a sign of growth. It can be a sign that you are trying new things and you're expanding as a person. So you welcome it.

You welcome the sensation rather than running away from it. If that sounds kind of implausible and out of reach, let me explain how exactly we can get to that point. If you want to get to that place, we're going to have to make uncertainty feel like an asset. And we need to have a better strategy for coping with this feeling. And so that is exactly what we're going to. are going to talk about today, how we can celebrate rather than fear the unknown, how we can integrate this feeling into our life plan, see it as a sign, but also some of the origins of why we feel this way, not just in our 20s, but as a species. All of that and more and so much

psychology, so stay with us. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Do we want to jump right in? Watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish right inside the free IHare Radio app. Make some noise. Wooee! Catch every laugh and eye roll on shows like Bestie Listen, Hey Jonas and Los Culturistas. Now with full video. I'll just leave that there. It's the same hosts and the same chemistry with all the hilarious moments you've been missing right on your screen.

Open the free I-Hard Radio app. Search video podcasts and tap watch. Bill, why is my eye twitching? Does this mean I'm in perimenopause? Maybe I have adult ADHD. I need to look this up. Where's my phone? Julianna, your phone is hot to the touch.

I think it's asking you for a break. You know what? Maybe I should just ask chat GPT. Or maybe we can ask an actual human. Yes, like a couple sex therapist. Whoa, that escalated quickly, but okay. Because I have questions. We have questions. And I bet everyone has questions.

Like, is it normal to sleep in separate bedrooms? We do that. How about this one? Is bribing your kids bad parenting or just negotiating? Oh, and I still do need to know why was my poop green that one time? hypothetically, right? Okay, well, instead of letting the internet guess, we've got actual people answering these exact questions. And laughing with us has got to be better than spending three hours down a rabbit hole online. Listen to Bill and Juliana. The podcast. On the Iheart

radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hey, guys, Paul Verzi here, and I want to talk to you about Paul's best podcast. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network and IHart Radio. I sit down each week with a special guest, and we discusses. the absolute best of things. It's that, and then there's everything else. He would just shout one line, and it would murder. Marie, lunch! No, burn.

Let's talk about the best moments that we had on the road. I would love a cocktail. Dude, Joe could get last row, middle scene on a Southwest Airlines flight. Joe, I was your flight. It was great. The guy on Penn State moving on the field, and the player thought Joe is his former coach. And he hugged him, and he hugged him,

and Joe just went with it. And the guy goes, what are you doing here, coach? Coach and Joe just goes, man. And you walk in, and it is bananas. I mean, it's a feast for the eyes. And I was like, it's not my thing either, but we're here. When in Rome? Top athletes, chefs, musicians, everybody.

Listen to Paul's best podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2015, teenager Joy Morgan discovered strangely compelling YouTube sermons from the religious group, Israel United in Christ, or IU.I. Her initial curiosity developed into devotion. She distanced herself from friends and family, embraced new identity, immersed herself in the IUIC, and believed she'd found the truth. IUIC is the best family that I've ever had. In fact, she had found what many called a cult. And on Boxing Day 2018, Joy disappeared forever.

In the new six-part investigative podcast, The Missing Sister, Charlie Brinkhurst Cuff and Freiturn explore Joy's story, the family she left and the religious group she found. You know when you get that a freedom, I don't want to be here. I want to get out. I want to go ahead now. It's a story about truth, lies, a young woman yearning to belong, and a family still waiting for answers.

All episodes available now to binge. Listen to The Missing Sister on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. This season, we've got some awesome guests ready to dole out advice. guests like Tiffany Haddish. Kind of slide into people's DMs. I like Bumble. Also, girl,

Farmers Only.com. At state sales, funerals, auctions are usually good. There's a lot of good men there. Grocery stores near gyms. Darcy Cardin. I remember being like, I know this is good advice, but like I really don't want to do that.

So you didn't take her advice? I didn't take her advice. Are you still friends with that woman? No. She actually was kind of toxic. Neil degrass Tyson. I spent my whole life looking up. I was a geek kid.

I had a telescope at age 12. So you didn't have sex for a long time. Sherry O'Terry. Were you a soap opera person? Young and restless. Okay. Well, first of all, you should know it's the young and the restless.

I can't even believe you're mispronouncing the title. Some of us abbreviated because we've been so weird for so many years. T.S. Madison. Are you into Polly? No, no. I don't think so. No. I could have told you no on that.

Girl, why do not into Polly? Just based on. what she's wearing and the way her hair is styled. She was not in a polly. She's not in a polly. Anna Ferris, Dave Franco, Madeline Klein, Hannah Gadsby, Adam Scott, Wanda Sykes, and more. Listen to Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My fear of uncertainty, I think, definitely shifted when I realized that

uncertainty is the opposite of boredom and predictability. If I knew, exactly how my life was going to turn out if I knew what was around every single corner, the name of every single friend I would meet, my entire resume until the time I retire. Yes, I would feel less uncertain. But what would the point of being alive even be? I think the newness of life, the experiences, the surprises, they are really what makes this whole thing worthwhile in a sense. You can't have surprises.

You can't have unexpected joy. You can't learn. you can't have excitement and anticipation without uncertainty. It is a core ingredient in so many otherwise really amazing and pleasurable experiences. And that's what I'm personally learning to appreciate and focus on when I do have those very natural moments of being paralyzed by all that I don't know yet. I'm kind of jumping the gun here. Yes, uncertainty may have its upsides.

We definitely can think about it differently. but why do we even experience it to begin with and what makes it so freaking uncomfortable? That's really what we have to nail down first. Like I said in the beginning, uncertainty in our 20s are basically two peas in a pod for a variety of reasons. Firstly, I want you to give yourself some grace. You are doing everything for the first time ever, basically. You are basically an adult toddler or an adult child who, yes, can read, hopefully and can write and is hopefully potty train and all those things,

but you are now experiencing the next level of situations, the next level of learning experiences that are emotionally complex and not straightforward. And as you're experiencing that, you also are without the same safety net that you relied upon when you were younger. And you're without the reassurance and the security of teachers and parents and a school system and a societal system that hopefully isn't going to, you fall through the cracks. You're on your own. And uncertainty, therefore, feels a lot more alarming because you feel like you're the one who is going to hold the burden, experience

the full burden of any poor decision or any poor outcome you made. It's all on you at this point. Another element of this is that because you are an adult toddler, you haven't had enough life experience yet to know that things will eventually work out for you. even if they don't the first time, even if they are not working out right now. People in their 40 years and their 50 years and later, they know that the breakup isn't the end of the world because they've experienced them and survived before. They know making a major mistake or losing a friend or losing a job isn't the end of the world because they have evidence from previous life experience to tell them that.

But you, you don't have those same data points. You don't have that same catalogue of examples that tell you everything is going to be okay. Uncertainty for you and uncertainty for a lot of us in our 20s doesn't have a conclusion the way that it has for people who are older. Then, of course, just to add even more fuel to the fire, there's the fact that you're kind of living between milestones. And this decade is definitely one of perpetual transition. You know, you're no longer a teenager, but, you know, you don't really feel like an adult yet. You're not at that financial level. You're not settled in a career.

You're not settled in a relationship, the way that you expect adults to be. What are you really? It's what psychologists call a liminal space, the in-between. And liminal emotional spaces are, by nature, by definition, disorientating because they don't come with a clear script. And, of course, there's no accurate way. and there's no one who's going to be able to tell you, like, okay, you're doing, you're doing well. You're doing fine. You are being, you are successful. Earlier in life, this is something I talk to

people about all the time. Earlier in life, your entire days, weeks, months are set up in a structure that will tell you if you are doing well. There are clear benchmarks for life performance. Things like grades, things like passing to the next year level, things like a whole cohort of people in the same situation at the same time and the same age as you with whom you can mark your progress against. And they're probably all in the same environment like at school. You don't have that anymore. You don't have that same framework to look around and think, okay, I'm doing okay or I'm not doing okay. And these are the areas I can improve or these are the areas that I'm excelling. You don't have that anymore. And it might seem really arbitrary, but those social structures and those

environmental structures, and that context actually provides a great deal of, and a great sense of calm and stability. So you have, during this decade, almost suddenly lost a lot of what previously allowed to just stay grounded. Security, structure, direction. And of course, finally, what may feel like a curse, but certainly isn't, is the fact that as a generation we have more choices than ever. We really do. And it's a beautiful thing and everyone tells us we're very privileged. We also know that that creates a real paradox of choice that can be quite stifling. You know, it is amazing that when we're in our 20s, like 80% of the doors are open to us. Definitely there are some things that we probably can't do anymore. You know, unfortunately, you're probably not going to become an

Olympic gymnast if you haven't been training since you were a trial. But in general, you know, you're at the start line of pretty much everything else. All the doors are open. Do you know how utterly terrifying that actually is? You probably do because you're experiencing it, but it certainly does feel like with each decision you make, the more doors you seem to close with no certainty around whether you might actually want to go back through that door later. And no certainty around what might happen next. Closing those doors seems a lot more scary than it does fulfilling. So you do nothing. You're paralyzed by choice and the endless pro-cons list that we know as decision paralysis. That's really the 20-something explanation for uncertainty. There's also a more human explanation as

to why uncertainty in any capacity, not just when it comes to the big ticket items of our 20s, is so uncomfortable for us as a species. To firstly really state the obvious, our brains, they are wired to seek out stability and clarity because when something is known and familiar, there are, of course, less opportunities for danger and threats. Now, the part of our brain that controls this primal urge, there's two specific regions, actually. It's the prefrontal cortex, so right up here at the front, and the limbic system, which is really deep inside our brain. It's part of what we call the old brain. A series of studies done in the early

2000s basically found that when we are exposed to ambiguous things like an ambiguous image or ambiguous scenery, the limbic system, particularly the amygdala, light up. Even when these participants were in a laboratory setting where there is no immediate danger, your brain is always going to respond overcautiously and overzealously to something it doesn't understand, such as the unknowns of the future. But that feeling is also something that we can't suppress. It's automatic. And for good reason, you know, we want that part of us that assesses danger to not be reliant on our judgment and to be able to act quick. And, you know, the reason that we have such an aversion to uncertainty is primarily rooted in the fact that we needed to and

order to survive. When you face an unknown, you know, your brain will immediately seek out as much information as it can, real or imagined to fill the gaps. Our brain is wired to do this. You might know this by another term, which is catastrophizing. Your brain is trying to figure out what's every possible thing that's going to happen here. It's going to simulate outcomes. It's going to generate predictions. The problem is, it actually has no idea what's going to happen. So it's serves up all these situations, some of them completely impossible, some of them may be more likely. We can't always discern or tell the difference between what is more likely and what is less likely. We are just receiving information from this very old, ancient part of our brain.

And we're experiencing it as it comes. We're experiencing all the fear as it comes without being able to interrupt that and say, wait, how do I, why do I think this? How do I know this is going to happen. Oh, wait, I actually don't. So this brings me to a next point. A lot of our anxiety and our fears don't actually emerge from necessarily something having gone wrong in actuality, but from the question of what if, what if this happens, what if this even worse thing happens? What if the worst thing happens? This is because our brain will stay in this loop of providing us with potential outcomes until it has some kind of resolution or closure. It doesn't want to switch off the alarm system until the reason for the alarm has been given meaning or it's identified what the problem was.

And like I said, in the past that was useful, now it's just plain old annoying. It's annoying. And your uncertainty is meant to feel that way. It's meant to feel annoying and awful and frustrating because, again, it wants to keep you alert. It wants to grab your attention. like a big shiny billboard or a big red stop sign, it wants you to be looking straight at it. It wants you to be directing. It's focused onto the thing you don't understand and that you're unsure about so that you can provide it with a sense of closure. The thing is, if you give your anxiety and your fear of the unknown an answer, if you give yourself a reason for the uncertainty, more specifically, you give it a purpose. It will actually go away.

We are going to discuss that more in a second, so just bear with me. But it's also important as well before we move on to understand that how you experience uncertainty in your 20s is not the same as how everyone else is going to experience this feeling. So you can't beat yourself up if you feel like you are struggling with it more than others. Psychologists in the early 90s, they identified what they called an intolerance for uncertainty spectrum. Basically, they found that where you sit in terms of your tolerance or intolerance for uncertainty will determine how much information you think you need before you make a decision.

They discovered this spectrum, almost by accident. They were actually trying to determine what personality traits caused anxiety. And in that research, what they kept realizing was that a number of their participants all reported the same experience, this sense that they weren't necessarily scared about what was going to happen. They just really wanted to know what was going to happen. And these same people were the ones who would read ahead in books, even if they were excited by the plot line. They would read spoilers in the papers of movies that they were really eager to see, even though they knew it was going to kind of ruin the enjoyment.

They would also at times make more impulsive decisions in their relationships when they felt something was fading or feeling off, not because they necessarily wanted the relationship to end, but because to them, and this kept coming up over and over again, a known bad outcome was better than an unknown good outcome. These same individuals were also, surprise, surprise, more likely to have a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder. Most people in society and in our world will score in the middle of this spectrum for an intolerance for uncertainty.

But people who score higher, probably like you and I, tend to spend a lot more time ruminating on the future than being in the present moment. And they just can't help it. Someone with a high intolerance for uncertainty, they might make lists repeatedly. They plan out conversations in their head. They look at food menus well before they're going to a restaurant just to make sure that they know that there's something they're going to like and they know what they're going to order. They triple check driving routes. They do all these things. Basically to calm this sense that if I don't know, well, then something's going to go wrong.

This cloud ahead of me, it can only be dangerous. If this is you, your 20s are naturally, and I'm sorry to say it, they are going to feel a lot more stressful. And they're going to feel harder than someone who can naturally go with the flow, because you are constantly being bombarded with unknowns, and it's not you, it's this decade. I promise you I'm going to give you some good news and some solutions in just a second, but I do want to talk about what can happen if we let uncertainty force us into a corner or force us into a place of an action. Because uncertainty is so uncomfortable, it can be a very powerful maladaptive motivator,

i.e. something that motivates us to do things that are actually against our interests. And it's really important that we are aware of that. So that when we pause and are choosing whether to act, whether not to act, we can carefully examine whether this is in our best interest or just because we are scared of an outcome that is no more or less likely than any other outcome. The ways this shows up in our 20s could be a very long list. But I'm going to keep it brief. And I want to scare you. I'm just going to touch on two of the big consequences of letting this feeling rule your life. Firstly, you accept what you don't deserve and also less than what you're capable of and less than what you've actually worked for.

It's like what I said before, a known bad outcome over an unknown good outcome is what you prefer. And how that might look like is accepting the first grad offer because you're scared of not getting another even though you don't really want the job. Accepting the first person who, I don't know, starts talking to you on hinge because you're scared that no one else will talk to you and you're scared of what it will mean to be single after a certain age. You choose the first apartment you see, the first car you try out. You go to the same places, on the same trips over and over again.

Because an uncertain outcome, even if there is a chance that it could be amazing, you don't want to take that risk. bear in mind I have no judgment on this I have done this myself all of that is basically anecdotal all that is basically my lived experience because I am someone who is in this in the same boat with you the second consequence of a failure to embrace uncertainty in our 20s is that we actually don't act at all we don't choose any job we don't choose any partner because what if it's not the right one You know, in the first scenario, we chose the first thing, and the scenario we don't choose anything at all. It probably won't surprise you that perfectionism and the fear of uncertainty are actually, in fact, sisters.

They are incredibly aligned. In fact, I personally think that perfectionism is basically just the fear of uncertainty with a different name. It's like a subgenre of the feeling. Perfectionism often disguises itself as ambition or high standards or great expectations for yourself, but underneath it's usually just fear. It's just a fear of the unknown, the fear of what failure might bring, the fear of making the wrong move. It is actually less about doing things perfectly and more about trying to eliminate the possibility

of regret. That's what makes it a close relative of uncertainty. They both come from a deep discomfort with not knowing how things will turn out. Think of perfectionism in this case as kind of like an emotional armor. If I just plan enough, if I delayed the decision long enough, if I do everything just right, then maybe, maybe I can avoid disappointment. But what you're really doing is just trying to outrun uncertainty. A 2022 study actually looked at a group of students to determine whether perfectionism meant people were less quick to act when it came to making a decision.

They asked these students to complete a questionnaire, which would essentially rank each student based on perfectionist tendencies. So the most perfectionist down to the least perfectionist. And then they asked those students to consider a bunch of would you rather questions. So would you rather, I don't know, this or that? Would you rather X or Y? There was about, I think, 50 of them, 50 scenarios. And they measured how long it took them to complete these entire range of scenarios.

The top 25% of perfectionist took the same amount of time combined to complete the exercise as the remaining 75% of students. They took so much longer because they were sat there considering wanting to make the perfect choice. The thing is, opportunities don't always wait for us to make up our minds. big decisions aren't always going to let you delay them. They will find the next person or they will disappear. A big part of our 20s is being able to say yes to that thing that feels really scary. Yes, I'm going to try. Yes, I don't know what's going to happen.

Let me just do it anyways. But when you are battling the fear of all fears, the fear of the unknown, that's going to be a lot harder for you. finally I'm here to give you some good news. This is actually something you can change. And it's something that many people have proven to themselves that they are able to overcome. So I want to explain exactly how you can do this, including something you could literally do in the next five minutes if you wanted to that will allow you to better act on your dreams, on the opportunities, on the desires of our 20s. So we're going to talk about all of that and so much more after

this short break. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Do we want to jump right in? Watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish right inside the free IHartRadio app. Make some noise. Wooee! Catch every laugh and eye roll on shows like Bestie Listen, Hey Jonas and Las Culturistas.

Now with full video. I'll just leave that there. It's the same hosts and the same chemistry with all the hilarious moments you've been missing right on your screen. Open the free IHHRRRRRRESA. radio app search video podcasts and tap watch hey guys paul verzi here and i want to talk to you about paul's best podcast will furrows big money players network and i heart radio i sit down each week with a special guest and we discuss the absolute best of things david's it's that and then there's everything

he would just shout one line yeah it would murder marie lunch no burr let's talk about the best moments that we had on the road i would love a goddamn do joker get last row middle scene on a Southwest Airlines flight. Joe, I was your flight. It was great. The guy on Penn State, moving on the field. And the player thought Joe is his former coach. And he hugged him.

And he hugged him. And Joe just went with it. And you know, the guy goes, what are you doing here, coach? And Joe just goes, man. And you walk in, and it is bananas. I mean, it's a feast for the eyes. And I was like, it's not my thing either. But we're here.

Went in Rome. Top athletes, chefs, musicians, everybody. Listen to Paul's best podcast on the IHeart Radio. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Bill, why is my eye twitching? Does this mean I'm in perimenopause? Maybe I have adult ADHD. I need to look this up.

Where's my phone? Juliana, your phone is hot to the touch. I think it's asking you for a break. You know what? Maybe I should just ask chat GPT. Or maybe we can ask an actual human. Yes, like a couple sex therapist. Whoa, that escalated quickly, but okay.

Because I have questions. We have questions. And I bet everyone has questions. Like, is it normal to sleep in separate bedrooms? We do that. How about this one? Is bribing your kids bad parenting or just negotiating? Oh, and I still do need to know why was my poop green that one time?

Hypothetically, right? Okay, well, instead of letting the internet guess, we've got actual people answering these exact questions. And laughing with us has got to be better than spending three hours down a rabbit hole online. Listen to Bill and Juliana. The podcast. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. podcast. It's Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. This season, we've got some awesome guests ready to

dole out advice. Guests like Tiffany Haddish. Kind of slide into people's DMs. I like Bumble. Also, girl, Farmers Only.com. At state sales, funerals, auctions are usually good. There's a lot of good men there. Grocery stores near gyms. Darcy Cardin. I remember being like, I know this is good advice, but like, I really don't want to do that. So you didn't take her advice? I didn't Are you still friends with that woman? No. She actually was kind of toxic. Neil degrass Tyson.

I spent my whole life looking up. I was a geek kid. I had a telescope at age 12. So you didn't have sex for a long time? Sherry O'Terry. Were you a soap opera person? Young and restless. Okay.

Well, first of all, you should know it's the young and the restless. I can't even believe you're mispronouncing the title. Some of us abbreviated because we've been so many years. T.S. Madison. Are you into Polly? No. Oh, no, I don't think so. No, I could have told you no on that.

Girl, why do you not? It's a polly. Just based on what she's wearing and the way her hair is styled. She was not in a polly. Good, try polly. Anna Ferris, Dave Franco, Madeline Kline, Hannah Gadsby, Adam Scott, Wanda Sykes, and more. Listen to Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2015, Teenager Join More,

Morgan discovered strangely compelling YouTube sermons from the religious group Israel United in Christ, or IUIC. Her initial curiosity developed into devotion. She distanced herself from friends and family, embraced new identity, immersed herself in the IUIC, and believed she'd found the truth. IUIC is the best family that I've ever had. In fact, she had found what many called a cult. And on Boxing Day 2018, Joy disappeared forever.

In the new six-part investigative podcast, The Missing Sister, Charlie Brinkhurst Cuff and Freiturn, explore Joy Story, the family she left, and the religious group she found. You know when you get out of freedom, I don't want to be here. I want to get out. I want to go ahead and out. It's a story about truth, lies, a young woman yearning to belong, and a family still waiting for answers.

All episodes available now to binge. Listen to The Missing Sister on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so we are back talking about uncertainty in our 20s. And luckily for us, we are actually not the first generation to feel this way, nor will we be the last. And that's good news because it means that there are a lot of people who have come up with some really amazing approaches to this feeling

that helped get them through this period of discomfort, which will hopefully help you as well. The biggest thing we can do for our uncertainty in our 20s, and I've been hinting at this for the entire episode, is to basically assign it a purpose, because that satisfies our deeper desire for a reason, a meeting, and kind of just a sense of why. Why is this happening?

The purpose you assign to your uncertainty, it could be that you see this as a learning opportunity. It could be that you view uncertainty as a rite of passage. It could be that uncertainty is a sign that you're opening yourself, up to new things, which are scary. It could be a call to surrender and just to accept life as it is. It could be a real spiritual thing. It could be that uncertainty just makes for a really good story.

And you value a good story and you can't have one without uncertainty. Whatever it is, whatever makes uncertainty feel meaningful to you, hone in on that. Anytime you feel overwhelmed by the feeling, remind yourself, okay, but this has a purpose. This has a meaning. For me, I personally think of uncertainty as a sign that I'm about to really grow as a person and for lack of a better word, I'm about to level up. Every time I have ever felt scared, lost, uncertain, it has always been the beginning of something just over the horizon that I haven't been able to see yet. Like, it always signals to me that like something really big is about to come. That way now, now that I know that's its purpose, I actually almost get excited

when I'm feeling that way. I feel like I get kind of giddy. I'm like ready to be surprised. And I really feel like I'm in preparation mode for whatever is about to happen next. The reason this works is because when we assign a role to our uncertainty, this actually gives us a cognitive framework through which we can accept it, through which we can just let it exist and actually focus on what we need to focus on. We give the annoying voice a job. It's like when a toddler, I don't know if you've been around kids a lot, but when like a toddler or a child is being really annoying,

so you tell them they have to rearrange all the pens or they have to divide up all their dolls or pick up something like rice, I don't know, you give them a job so you can get to work. You give the annoying voice somewhere, someone else to talk to or something else to do. The second way to really confront your uncertainty is also to look for stories of people who didn't have it all figured out or whom dealt with supreme uncertainty and came out the other side rather than just looking for people who seem like a natural A to B success story. The natural success stories are all we seem to see these days. So you would think that most people who you admire have never struggled the way that you do and that you have. That's false. It's a huge lie. It's a big myth.

When you start collecting these stories, you will find that almost every single person who has made something of themselves has an uncertainty story. Dochi, for example, that's one I've recently added to my list, The Woman of the Hour. She posted a YouTube video back in 2020, only like five years ago about how she got fired from her job. And in it she's like, tomorrow I'm just going to door knock at a bunch of studios and just see if they will give me an internship.

She just won a Grammy. Five years ago, she was completely unsure of where she was going to end up. And she ended up in the right place because she lent into it. The founder of Spanx, she's another one on my list. She used to sell fax machines like door-to-door.

Now she runs a billion-dollar industry. Stephen King, he's another one. His draft for his book, Carrie, which is now a cult classic, a favorite of so many, he literally threw that manuscript in the trash after it was rejected 30 times. And that book is a cultural icon. I even think of my mom, like my mom is the one that often comes to mind for me. You know, she was kicked out of university because she got such poorly bad grades. They basically expelled her. And then she took a year off to travel. She didn't really know what she wanted to do.

She came back. She did something different. And she graduated with the top job. And now she's like this incredibly powerful, successful girl boss. All these people and you have something very important in common. In their journey to success and to wherever they ended up, there were moments when they had absolutely no idea what was next. And they just had to bet on themselves.

And they just had to trust. that they were capable. And once you start searching for these stories, you will see them everywhere. You will see them constantly until one day you'll have your own version of this story, your own version of how you overcame uncertainty, how in hindsight the path was actually so clear the entire time. Another small thing you can do, and it's going to sound so minuscule and silly, you might be tempted to skip it. Please don't. I want you to make a little bit. I want you to make a little bit of, a playlist that you feel represents yourself and play it whenever you feel uncomfortable or confused as a way to really just bring yourself back and center yourself. Even if it doesn't

necessarily help you feel less uncertain, it can just help you with the general feelings of discomfort and strangeness that you may be having. And just is like a fun thing to do, a fun thing to do to remind yourself of who you are, of who you want to be, of what your core values are all through music. These songs reflect how you see yourself back at you. And that is a very special, familiar, beautiful feeling. There's actually this brilliant 2014 paper from a researcher in Texas that talks about how music contributes to the formation of our identity

and can help us trust ourselves more because it acts as a touchstone when we feel challenged. It represents all the times we have previously overcome challenge. challenges, all the times we previously experienced joy. And the music we choose really does reflect our values and says something about how we see ourselves. And so when you're kind of externally lost and don't really know who you are and can't really find your way back, music is just like beautiful anchor. You know, I have a playlist like this. The playlist is called If Gemma was a playlist. And I was listening to it literally the other day and it has songs from

2016 all the way up to last week. And it's really a beautiful way to see how I've transformed to be able to categorically see different chapters in my life and what was happening during them, like, and the music brings back all those memories and also just to see how far I've come. And so it's something you can literally take five minutes, do for yourself right now. It's a fun exercise. I promise you, it will help you ground yourself during this like crazy chaotic period. On a much larger scale, the biggest antidote for uncertainty is really just this. Just try something. Try anything.

Choose something that interests you to get good at. And when that thing stops serving you, choose something else. We have to let go of this idea that every decision you make in life has to naturally flow into the next and the next and the next and that you have to you have to have some step-by-step plan that you can follow for your life. Your life is not a recipe. You're not making a cake. You're not cooking sour. It's a series of experiments that take you to different places that you didn't even know you were going to get to.

And when you give yourself permission to just try, you really break this cycle of needing to know. You break the cycle of needing to have all the answers. And you move as well from that rumination spiral of, am I doing the right thing? Is this the best choice to just knowing that if you're taking action and if you're doing something, you are making the right choice. Even in perfect action, even the wrong choice is still a better choice than not doing anything at all. And it also gives you data.

It gives you experience. It gives you stories. A question to really ask yourself as well if you're kind of thinking, okay, that's great, but which direction should I choose, especially if you're someone who. who has a lot of hobbies and interests and passions and ambitions. The question to ask yourself is just, what would make me most disappointed if I didn't do this? What would I be most regretful around not doing in 20 years' time?

This mentally makes you kind of compute how much you have to lose by not acting rather than getting you stuck in this spiral of how much you have to lose by acting. It reminds me of this quote, you could take a million detours to your destination and still get there faster than someone who never got in the car. And that's the idea I really want to leave you with today. Uncertainty in our 20s is inevitable, but it's actually a really profound sign that you're expanding and you are growing and you are reaching new spaces you haven't yet experienced. That's a good thing. I congratulations. If you're feeling uncertain, that is such a beautiful.

sign and I wish I could give you all the applause for just trying and pushing yourself into new places and spaces. I know it feels uncomfortable, but I promise you that this discomfort has a purpose that you cannot yet see, lean into it, assign it a purpose while you're waiting and just act, do anything, even if it's small things. I think that that's a great solution for avoiding a worse discomfort of looking back your life and realizing that you never did anything because you were scared of the unknown when the unknown is something that we always have to exist side by side with. And the only way to escape the unknown is to create a known, is to create a reality that you do really enjoy and that works for you. And the other way you can do that is through action. So that's a rather

simple message, but also deeply complex message if you think about it to end the episode with. I just hope that it brings you a sense of comfort that you're not the only one going through it. totally know it's going to work out for you. It's totally going to work out for you. I know that. I can give you that promise right now. So thank you so much for listening. If you have made it this far, let's leave a little emoji in the comments below that represents how you're feeling about your life, how uncertainty feels in your body right now. Just so I know if you've made it this far, if you're one of the loyal listeners, make sure that you are following along or subscribed wherever you are listening on YouTube, on Spotify, Apple, whatever one,

and give us a five-star review. If you feel called to do so, it really does help the show grow and reach new audiences, a new, fantastic, wonderful, 20-somethings and older. Also, make sure you're following us on Instagram at That Psychology Podcast. If you want to be part of future episodes, if you want to DM me, episode suggestions, if you have questions, dilemmas, you may even be able to be featured in an episode just like this one. So follow me over there.

And until next time, Stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself, especially in the face of uncertainty. We will talk very, very soon. Why do some women yearn for Shakira's black hair to make a comeback? And whatever happened to the power couple of my dreams, Mariah Carey and Luis Miguel, I'm Maria Garcia. You may remember me from my podcast, Anything for Selena, or My Divo. And now I'm back to unpack more stories from the present and the past.

Listen to Mui Excited with Maria Garcia on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bill, why is my eye twitching? Does this mean I'm in perimenopause? Where's my phone? Juliana, maybe we can ask an actual human. Yes, because I have questions, and I bet you do too. Like, is it normal to sleep in separate bedrooms? We do that, and I still need to know why my poop's been green.

We've got actual people answering these exact questions. Listen to Bill and Juliana. The podcast. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Munga Chitigula, and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive. This time I talked to scientists, biopunks, curmudgins, blues owners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us.

And I get into a bit of trouble along the way. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive How to Live Forever on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town.

It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages? Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities. Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed a word she said. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Michael Rappaport, and my podcast, the I Am Rapaport Stereo podcast, is unlike anyone you've ever heard.

If you're looking for strong opinions about sports, entertainment, politics, pop culture, and whatever else catches my attention, then subscribe now. This kid, Jafar Jackson, should absolutely positively get nominated for his. This portrayal is Michael Jackson. Listen to IMRAP report on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.