We are living through a period of considerable change and uncertainty. Trade relationships are shifting. Tariffs and their consequences are difficult to predict. Markets are volatile. Decisions that once seemed relatively straightforward can now carry very different implications. People are reacting to all of this in ways that can carry a great deal of emotion, even when they rationalize their actions.
In times like these, there is often insufficient information for comfortable decision-making. Do we borrow more money when markets are unstable? Should we develop new trade relationships when the conditions governing them can change so quickly? Can we nurture a business for the next generation when they are witnessing and experiencing our concerns? Caution is understandable. When we don’t know what is coming, protecting what we have can feel like the most responsible thing to do.
Risk aversion, however, can take us beyond thoughtful caution. It can become a patterned reaction that influences how we interpret what is happening, what possibilities we consider and how readily we act. We may know that change is necessary and still find ourselves returning to familiar approaches. Perhaps we recognize an opportunity and yet experience a physical reaction to moving toward it. Or we tell ourselves that we are simply being realistic when, in fact, something less visible may also be influencing our response.
This raises an interesting question: What if some of what we experience as risk aversion is not simply a conscious assessment of the risk in front of us, but a patterned reaction to change and uncertainty?
We often justify the behaviour without recognizing the pattern
When risk aversion shows up, we tend to focus on the behaviour we can see. A decision is delayed. Meetings and policies are used to keep everyone on the same page. Opportunities are judged to be too uncertain. A new idea is modified until it becomes much like what already exists.
From the outside, these behaviours can look like complacency or resistance to change. Yet the person or organization involved may not experience it that way. They may experience themselves as being careful, responsible, prudent or realistic.
Caution may have good reasons. The question is whether our experience of caution is shaped primarily by the current situation or whether a familiar pattern also influences how we experience our circumstances. A pattern can be so familiar that we don’t recognize it. It simply feels like the way things are. “That’s just how it is!”
Our reactions have a history
The way we respond to uncertainty is not necessarily created in the moment. Memories, beliefs and previous experiences can influence what we expect and how we interpret what is happening now. An anticipated outcome can also have a powerful influence on what we choose to do before anything has actually happened.
We can imagine what will happen if we make the wrong decision, remember a previous failure or disappointment, or hold a belief about what responsible people do, what is safe, what is possible or what happens when someone gets it wrong. These influences don’t have to be consciously present for them to affect our behaviour.
Some of what constrains our behaviour may operate outside our awareness or may be difficult for us to articulate directly. We may simply experience a strong reaction and assume that the reaction accurately reflects the situation. When others challenge our decisions, we may further justify our actions. This is one reason recognizing a pattern can be so important.
A personal story of recognizing our backgrounds
I grew up on a busy dairy farm. My parents came to Canada the day after they were married in 1959 with basically nothing, yet they brought with them a belief system that valued hard work, faith, community, trust in timing and more. They lived their lives and raised their family guided by their beliefs, experiences and dreams.
I remember when they sold the farm to my brother when he was only 25 years old. Was it the right time? My parents trusted the timing, even though recognizing that it was time to make such a significant change was not easy. They were fortunate to continue to experience good health and be there to support him.
Today, my brother is in a position to sell the farm to the next generation. Another brother, who recently retired as a veterinarian, has bought a dairy farm in partnership with the next generation to support them in their goal of carrying on their family’s dairy farming legacy. Again, for both brothers, the beliefs and values of our family continue to guide them: work hard, have faith, trust in timing and be willing to move forward even when the outcome is uncertain.
I compare this to my corporate experience of working for Kraft Foods when it was bought by Heinz in 2015. With significant layoffs, many people were experiencing a great deal of uncertainty and stress. Several coworkers told me their children were very worried, so I asked my daughters what they thought. Their response surprised me: “You don’t seem concerned about it, Mommy, so why would we?”
Noticing our differences
I realize that the beliefs and experiences I adopted from my parents help me navigate the situations. But not everyone had the same childhood experiences. In my corporate role, I heard memories of parents being laid off and worries about being the sole family income. I know farm families where children were killed in farm accidents, where divorce disrupted the farm and where financial losses were too much to bear.
I am grateful for the experiences I had growing up, but I have also come to better understand how profoundly our experiences can shape the beliefs and expectations we bring to situations later in life. Today, that understanding gives me more compassion for the ways people respond to uncertainty and change. We are all making decisions from within our own experiences, beliefs and circumstances, doing the best we can with what we see and understand at any given point in time.
Recognizing a belief is not the same as recognizing its influence
There is an important distinction between knowing that a belief exists and recognizing that it is influencing us. Another distinction is between recognizing its influence and understanding that the belief itself can be questioned or shifted.
Consider this for a moment: When we believe something to be true, we may not experience it as a belief at all. We experience it as reality.
If I believe that something is too risky, for example, I may not experience myself as holding a belief about risk. I may experience the situation as simply being too risky. The possibility that an earlier experience influences me may not even occur to me. I view the assessment as a fact.
That matters because we are unlikely to consider shifting something that we don’t recognize as something that can be shifted. A belief can therefore influence not only the decision we make, but the range of possibilities we consider in making it.
What if the reaction could be different?
Recognizing a patterned reaction does not mean that the reaction is negative. It doesn’t mean that we should become less cautious or take risks simply because opportunities exist. Some risks should not be taken. The opportunity lies in creating enough space to distinguish between the risk itself and our reaction to it.
This idea is connected to Viktor Frankl’s work. Frankl wrote about our freedom to choose our attitude and response, even when circumstances cannot be changed. For me, this idea of creating space between what is happening and my response aligns well with the work of Willem Lammers and Logosynthesis®. It offers ways to identify and work with beliefs, memories and mental imagery that may be influencing my response, creating greater freedom to see other possibilities and make my own choice with greater confidence and clarity.
I can respond rather than react.
From reacting to responding
This distinction becomes particularly important during periods of volatility. We cannot remove uncertainty from the world around us. Farmers, businesses, leaders and organizations will continue to face circumstances that cannot be predicted or controlled. Waiting for certainty before acting is rarely a sustainable strategy. What we can potentially change is our relationship to what we are facing.
Recognizing a patterned reaction can create an opportunity to pause before automatically following it. We can notice what we are carrying into the situation and become curious about whether it is still influencing us in ways that are useful. We can begin to distinguish what is happening now from what we remember, believe or anticipate.
That doesn’t necessarily lead to a bolder decision. Sometimes it may lead to a more cautious one. From my own experience, I know that to be true. The difference is that the decision has more room to come from what is actually happening rather than being determined by a reaction we have not recognized.
Changing behaviour may begin somewhere less visible
There is understandably a strong focus on encouraging individuals, organizations and industries to become more proactive, innovative and willing to take calculated risks. Those changes matter. Yet cultural change may be difficult to achieve if we don’t also understand the individual and collective pressures and beliefs that sustain existing patterns of behaviour.
We often focus on changing what people do without asking what may be sustaining the way they currently respond.
A culture of caution, for example, may be reinforced by shared beliefs about responsibility, failure, authority, security or what it means to do things the right way. Over time, these beliefs can become so familiar that they no longer feel like beliefs. They become part of the environment in which decisions are made. Changing the environment may be necessary. So may recognizing the influence of what we carry into that environment.
Creating space for possibility
There are many ways of exploring the influences behind our responses to change and uncertainty. As mentioned above, Logosynthesis offers one model for this work, with the Basic Procedure providing a structured way to identify and shift the energy associated with memories, beliefs and mental imagery that may be contributing to a current reaction.
The starting point is not to decide whether a reaction is right or wrong. It is to recognize what is bothering us and become curious about what may be influencing it. We might notice that our reaction feels stronger than we expected, that our tone of voice changes, that we become caught in distressing self-talk, or that the same concern keeps returning. When we notice these patterns, the Basic Procedure can be used to identify and shift what is holding energy around the issue. Recognizing and working with them can take practice and professional guidance because these patterns can be so well established that they are invisible.
This approach can create a different kind of space: not certainty about what will happen, but greater freedom in how we meet what is happening.
That distinction matters. The purpose is not to convince ourselves that something is safe when it isn’t, or to make ourselves take a risk we don’t want to take. It is to reduce the influence of what may be shaping our response so that we have more freedom to see options, consider what matters and choose how we want to move forward.
Curious about what might be possible?
We don’t always have to know the answer before something can shift. Sometimes simply recognizing that an intense reaction is a pattern that can be shifted creates a little more space. In times of change and uncertainty, that space can be valuable. It allows us to move beyond automatically reacting to what we fear, remember or believe will happen and toward responding to what is actually in front of us.
Risk will always be part of moving forward. The question is whether our reaction to risk leaves us with fewer possibilities than we actually have.
If you are curious about how recognizing and shifting patterned reactions to risk and uncertainty might create more freedom for meaningful action, I invite you to book a complimentary call with me. We can explore what you’re experiencing and whether this approach might be useful for you.