The neuroscience of prediction, your body's energy budget and the meaning we give to uncomfortable feelings.
Paul had every reason to feel optimistic.
After rebuilding his career following a period of burnout, he had established a strong professional reputation and was ready for a new challenge. When a significant opportunity arose, he pursued it with confidence.
The interview went well. The role was right, the financial opportunity attractive, and the responsibilities a natural progression of his experience.
He left feeling positive about what might come next.
The following morning, his mood had changed dramatically.
He felt an unexplained tightness in his chest and found himself repeatedly checking his phone and replaying the interview, searching for something he might have missed.
He described the experience as feeling like he had forgotten something. Even though he knew he had everything he needed, his mind was hunting for something to hold onto.
What confused him was that nothing had happened to suggest the opportunity was in jeopardy, yet his body responded as though something was wrong.
I describe Paul's experience in Chapter 10 of The Freedom Success Formula™ because it illustrates something I encounter frequently in my coaching practice.
People experience anxiety, fatigue, restlessness, or an inability to concentrate while navigating uncertainty, and then begin questioning their own ability to cope.
What happens in the brain during these experiences gives us fascinating insights into why we feel that way.
During periods of uncertainty, your brain is trying to prepare for a future it cannot predict.
Our brains are continuously anticipating what our bodies will need next.
Through a process called allostasis, the brain coordinates physiological resources in anticipation of changing demands. It draws on previous experiences and current information to prepare us for what it predicts is coming.
Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett describes this using the metaphor of a body budget.
Like a financial budget, our bodies have resources that must be managed across competing demands. Our brains help regulate everything from energy availability and cardiovascular activity to the physiological changes associated with stress and recovery.
Prediction is central to this process.
When we can anticipate what is coming, the brain has enough information to prepare an appropriate response. Uncertainty complicates that preparation, especially when the outcome carries weight.
Research published in Nature Communications in 2016 showed that people's subjective experience of uncertainty was linked to changes in both reported stress and physiological arousal. In the experiment, participants were learning to anticipate unpleasant electric shocks, and their stress responses tracked uncertainty about what would happen.
The finding is relevant because uncertainty itself can contribute to our stress response, even before an anticipated event occurs.
Within the predictive allostasis framework, uncertainty can also increase the demands of preparing for possible outcomes. This does not mean uncertainty is always the most metabolically expensive state, although it helps explain why prolonged anticipation can feel so draining.
Consider the executive waiting for a board decision, the entrepreneur awaiting confirmation of a significant contract, or someone navigating an important change in a relationship.
Life continues, responsibilities remain, and yet part of their attention keeps returning to an unresolved future.
The brain is trying to prepare for something it cannot yet know.
The feeling is real. What does it mean?
Another fascinating dimension to this is that we tend to interpret our feelings as evidence about our circumstances.
If we feel confident, we take that as evidence that things are going well. When we feel uneasy, we begin searching for what might be wrong. Intuitively, this sounds obvious, yet how we feel is also influenced by what is happening inside our bodies.
In Barrett's theory of constructed emotion, the brain makes sense of bodily sensations using predictions, previous experiences, and information about our current circumstances. A key part of this is affect, the basic emotional tone of our experience. We can feel pleasant or unpleasant, energised or depleted, before we have identified a specific emotion or its cause.
When uncertainty is accompanied by physiological strain, we may experience unpleasant affect. We feel tense, restless or inexplicably low.
Our minds then begin interpreting those feelings and giving them meaning; perhaps the opportunity is wrong, maybe something terrible is about to happen, or, as I often hear, “I just cannot cope with uncertainty”.
And this is where an already uncomfortable experience can become considerably more difficult.
We begin interpreting our response to uncertainty as evidence of a personal failing.
For Paul, the uncertainty also carried a deeper personal meaning.
His sense of value had long been connected to his ability to provide financial security for his family. The new opportunity was exciting, although its unfamiliar demands and unknown outcome challenged an important identity agreement: If I cannot guarantee provision, I am failing the people I love.
His discomfort was real and consistent with the demands that uncertainty can place on the body’s regulatory systems. However, the conclusion he initially drew from it was worth a deeper look.
The mood is data, not a verdict.
While an uncomfortable feeling deserves our attention, it does not automatically mean that something is wrong with the opportunity, the circumstances, or ourselves. When we can treat the mood as data, it empowers us to look beyond the initial assumption and consciously use tools to work with our attention and emotional response.
Giving the brain what it wants: some certainty
One technique I describe in my book involves redirecting attention to what we can reasonably know to be true right now.
When Paul and I explored this, we began identifying what was already established.
He knew he had the experience and skills to pursue the opportunity. His history showed he could navigate difficult circumstances, and he recognised the professional relationships and support available to him.
The important part is that none of this guaranteed the outcome. It did, however, give his brain some certainty in a situation where his attention had become absorbed by everything he could not yet know.
As he worked through these certainties, he noticed the tightness in his chest begin to ease. His thinking became clearer, and he could consider the opportunity without feeling so consumed by its uncertainty.
In that moment, the outcome remained uncertain, though his experience of the uncertainty had changed.
This is a practical technique from my coaching work, informed by predictive allostasis. It has not been scientifically validated as a method for restoring the body's energy budget, though I have found it an effective way to work with the attention we give to uncertainty.
You can try it yourself.
Think about something significant in your life that feels uncertain right now.
Take a piece of paper and write down everything you can reasonably know to be true today, as it relates to you and this circumstance. Consider what has already happened, what resources you have, what your past experiences tell you about your capacity to respond, and what remains within your influence.
Be specific and record evidence you can trust. The purpose is to give yourself reliable information to work with while the larger question remains unanswered.
I suspect that you may find the experience becomes easier to carry, even though you still cannot predict the outcome.
A different understanding of uncertainty
Understanding the neuroscience behind our own experiences can be deeply reassuring.
Uncertainty can be genuinely uncomfortable. Our brains and bodies respond to the demands of anticipating an unresolved future, and our personal histories influence the meaning we attach to those responses.
Once we understand this, we can examine the experience with curiosity and decide how we want to respond.
Much love,
References
1. Barrett, L. F., & Simmons, W. K. (2015). Interoceptive predictions in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16, 419–429. Read the research. Watch the TED talk
2. Schulkin, J., & Sterling, P. (2019). Allostasis: A Brain-Centered, Predictive Mode of Physiological Regulation. Trends in Neurosciences, 42(10), 740–752. Read the research
3. de Berker, A. O., et al. (2016). Computations of uncertainty mediate acute stress responses in humans. Nature Communications, 7, 10996. Read the research
4. Barrett, L. F. (2017). The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(1), 1–23. Read the research
5. Adams, T. M. (2026). The Freedom Success Formula™: The Neuroscience Blueprint for Life and Business Mastery. Chapter 10: The Uncertainty Advantage. Explore the book
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