Why can you handle some stressful situations but feel completely paralyzed by others? I’m sharing how I discovered the difference between known and unknown stressors during one of the hardest years of my life, and how one can interrupt momentum more than the other. I explain the differences, the impacts, and how you can recognize these types of stress in your own life.

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Recently, I posted a video On My Tutorial YouTube

channel. It was a video that was long overdue, originally planned for almost

a year ago. And in that video, I shared

that last year I had started to make some

changes and started to talk about momentum, only to

have a complete abrupt stop. And

I didn't get specific into the details in that video.

But it wasn't just my business and my professional work

that came to a halt. And since posting that

video, I have been thinking a lot about the circumstances

that made me pause and kind of change the

trajectory of last year, which ended up being one of the hardest years of my

life. But I've also been thinking about the different types of

stress and how predictability and outcomes,

knowing or not knowing outcomes can play into your stress.

And I think it's important because I have started to sort of

classify into two categories. And it's been really helpful

for me with understanding what I'm going through, but also

how I deal with it. And I wanted to talk about this today, knowing that

there might be other people that could benefit from starting to

classify their types of stress. And I personally refer to

this as sort of known and unknown. In other

words, is this a stress where you can mostly predict

what is going to happen, or is this something where the

outcome is unknown? It's up in the air, it's sort of weighing on you, and

you don't know what's going to happen day to day. And that's what I refer

to as the unknown, or it's this unpredictable stress.

And I had two very distinct phases in my life last year that

I'm going to share about today, just to give you an example.

And I'll preface by saying I am not an expert on

stress, nor do I pretend to be. So that's why this is

something I'm gonna talk about through my own lived experience, through my own

story, and then what that means for me and what I'm

doing differently when I start to notice it. And

so if we go back about a year ago, I had

just started to share about this new

momentum formula. I was running webinars, and in my personal

life, I. I was gearing up for a trip at the end of March to

go for two weeks to Japan. There was a lot going on in my life,

but I could kind of see what was coming ahead over the coming months. But

in the middle of February is when I learned that my brother was going to

have a pretty serious surgery to remove

esophageal cancer. I knew it was risky.

I also Knew he had been through really difficult things before, and he's a

champion. But as soon as that was set in the schedule

for mid March and right before the trip, everything started to feel

very, very uncertain. I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't know what

the outcome was be. And I kept telling myself, just

focus on the things you can control, because thinking about

what could go wrong is not helping you. But even when I would tell

myself that the fact that I couldn't really plan things in the future

was having a big impact on me, so my capacity was starting to. To be

impacted. And then after the surgery, things did not

go completely smoothly and there were complications. And so we

made the difficult choice to postpone. And. Well, actually, it wasn't that

difficult. We made the choice, we felt good

of. I am not flying around the world right now,

and this is not something that I can imagine getting on a

plane while my brother is in the hospital. Now, the next three,

three months were a roller coaster, and I am talking

one day, hey, the recovery is going well.

Physical therapy is going well. And then maybe a couple days later, hey, maybe the

family should get to the hospital. We're not sure how things are going. Things look

bleak. And it went like this for three months to the point where I stopped

updating people about my situation because it

was giving me whiplash. But it was also really hard to keep track.

I. Things going well? Are they not going well? I was able

to visit family often. I live five hours away. It is

not easy, but I was able to spend lots of time

traveling back and forth. But during that time,

not only was I struggling to focus on work, it

was very hard for me to commit to any plans. I could

not trust that I could keep those plans. And

luckily, I was able to tell people up front, I could

say, I can say that yes to this, but you should know

it's tentative. I might have to back out. I would tell people that my brother

was in the hospital and they were really, really understanding. There's no complaints there. But

I could tell that it was. It was hitting me differently than

a stressful situation that I can predict, which in

the summer, when the. The worst outcome that we

could have imagined happened and I lost my brother, in the

weeks following it, I noticed a shift. It was still

extremely stressful, deep in the

grieving process, but I noticed that

I could predict what was coming in the weeks ahead. And

suddenly there was this shift. And I almost started to feel guilty. As I would

share with close friends and family That I feel like I can

manage this stress better than the last three or four months.

And that's where I started to classify the stress. When you do not

know what's going to happen, you don't know when something is going to happen

and you're sort of just waiting. At any moment, things could change.

That unknown outcome, that complete unpredictability,

it just affects you on different levels. Both of these things

will impact your capacity. You can be emotionally drained,

you can be mentally drained, and you have to scale

and adjust for that. But when you layer on this

unknown, this unpredictability, and just not knowing what's going to happen

or when something's going to happen, that interrupts your momentum on a different

level because suddenly you can't make

plans for the future that you can necessarily trust to keep.

Now, I share an example with a loved one being sick

and not knowing the outcome versus dealing with the loss of a loved one. But

this can also happen to you personally, where maybe you are

sick or you are unwell and you don't know why or what's

happening. That's that unknown compared to the

stress of maybe dealing with a diagnosis and a treatment plan. Both

are stressful, but one is a little more predictable and

so you can manage it differently. Now, the other examples that

are a little bit less health related might be buying or selling a

house. You don't know when you're going to sell it or when you're going to

find the house for you. You don't know if it's going to go through. You

can be making calls at all hours trying to figure that out, which is a

different kind of stress than when you're moving, which I don't think anyone

loves moving, but that's a different kind of stress. You can plan for those things

and there's all sorts of examples in your personal life.

Even applying for school, applying for a job versus starting a new job.

Now, all of those examples are on an individual level of

unknown outcomes, unpredictable versus more

predictable. You're always gonna have surprises. But I would be remiss if

I did not mention that right now as I record this. It's winter of

2026, and things are kind of unpredictable

on a collective level. I live in Canada,

but all over the world we're seeing changes

with politics, with the economy, with international

relations, but also AI, things are changing so fast and

we do not know what they're gonn know the timelines of things.

It is harder for individuals, but also groups and

businesses to make decisions that you can trust or that you can count

on. And I think it's really useful if you are

feeling stressed or you're feeling like your capacity is diminished

to ask yourself what kind of stress it is.

And is this. Are you dealing with some unknowns? Are you dealing with this

unpredictability? You're not able to make plans the same way

versus okay, I can deal with this.

And you're probably going to have to make concessions either

way that you are going through a phase where things are going to look different.

But the biggest difference for me is my nervous

system. I can be diminished in my capacity.

I maybe can slow down and just do fewer things, just focus on the things

that matter the most. But when things are

unknown, when there could be a phone call away from finding something out,

when things are hanging over your head, it's in those moments where

I notice physically my nervous system is on

high alert, that at any moment I feel like smaller

things, I cannot handle them. And so I have noticed

that in those times I have to pay closer

attention to my nervous system and I have to respond to it

quickly. And this means leaning in towards things

that help. This could be things like breath work, like meditation,

like more rest than normal, but also staying away from things that also

jack up my nervous system. Being mindful of how much

news I'm consuming or where I'm spending my time. Is this something

that is hurting or helping with my nervous system? And also

just asking for support, Recognizing when you need that support, I think

is really helpful as well. And when

I was thinking about these, I also feel

like self compassion, kindness towards yourself,

that's. I think it's an essential requirement all the time. But especially during times of

stress, either type of stress. But really zeroing in

and noticing in the present moment, how are you feeling, how

are you physically and do you need to do things that address your

stress? And that's made a very big difference for me. And now I

can actually start to recognize when I'm going into one of these more

unknown periods because I notice the shift in

my nervous system. I notice the shift in my energy. I feel a little bit

more frantic, I feel a little bit more on edge. And that's where I

say, okay, what's happening here? You're in this unknown, you don't know

what's going to happen. And I know that

it helps me to say just focus on the things you can control.

But I also recognize that when something's weighing on you or when something's

hanging over your head and there's uncertainty. Even when you

remind yourself to focus on what you can control, it can still have

impacts on you. And that's where I think it's about knowing what works. For you

to be able to respond to that, yes, you might have to

go slower. Yes, you might have to change the pace or the schedule of what's

going on. But I am a big fan of a good

cycling metaphor. And a cycling

metaphor when it comes to these stressors is I think about those times

when I am cycling on a new terrain, maybe a road I've

never driven on before and it desperately needs to be paved

and I do not know how long this stretch is going to last or when

wind is pushing against me. In those times,

I adjust the gear, I keep pedaling, and I remind

myself this will not last forever. Eventually this will end and

you'll get on the other side of it. Now there are times where I have

to just stop, get off the bike and take a break.

But I know that when I'm ready, I can get back on and I can

keep going.