New book encourages readers to embrace uncertainty in order to improve decision-making, mental health, and more

By Greater Good Science Center | March 18, 2024 |

Life is uncer­tain. We nev­er know what will hap­pen, and many things are unknow­able. This can make us feel stressed or wor­ried, since the unknown is asso­ci­at­ed with dan­ger. But as jour­nal­ist Mag­gie Jack­son argues in her new book, Uncer­tain: The Wis­dom and Won­der of Being Unsure, there are many ben­e­fits to allow­ing our­selves to…

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Q&A with Dr. Wendy Suzuki on the parasympathetic nervous system and harnessing anxiety for good

By Greater Good Science Center | February 7, 2022

Anx­i­ety can feel like a heavy weight that we didn’t ask to car­ry. Who wouldn’t love to get rid of it? But neu­ro­sci­en­tist Wendy Suzu­ki wants to chal­lenge the way we look at our anx­i­ety. In fact, her new book is called Good Anx­i­ety: Har­ness­ing the Pow­er of the Most Mis­un­der­stood Emo­tion. If you’re skep­ti­cal, so…

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On uncertainty, stress, emotion regulation, and carpe diem

By Greater Good Science Center | September 9, 2021

Ever since it began, the pan­dem­ic has been a crash course in uncer­tain­ty. Safe behav­iors, school open­ings, vac­ci­na­tion time­lines, the job mar­ket, new variants—these have all seemed to change on a week­ly basis, threat­en­ing our sense of secu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty. Uncer­tain­ty is stress­ful and per­haps even harm­ful to our health, research sug­gests, and it can…

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