Ways to Spot, Embrace, Manage, and Revel in Chaos for Good Well-being

It’s part of the human condition that we constantly seek clarity, answers, and knowledge for just about everything that we encounter that would otherwise influence our comfort. It’s an innate desire to make sense of what we can while also being a deep-set fear of the unknown. The teachings of any religion across time, even those we now term “mythologies,” can be seen as a way of making sense of the unknown to bring about comfort and pseudo-understanding.

However, regardless of how you see the world or how “good” you are as a person to yourself and others, chaos is always around the corner. Too much is beyond the individual’s control, and events that are forced upon us that feel undeserved or unexplained are some of the most difficult to deal with and can hinder our well-being. While you can’t just explain away chaos as it will always be present at some point, you can tackle it in healthy ways.

A quote for the color black includes the line, “black is chaos,” with the absence of color or brightness adding mystique to what it may be hiding, or indeed, not explaining why there isn’t anything bright to be seen. It can be an uncomfortable line of thought, so to ease you into this take on chaos, we’ll first delve into all of the ways that chaos is leveraged to your enjoyment and even as a form of fun to show that it can be handled well.

Chaos is everywhere, but it isn’t always bad

Chaos certainly gets a bad rap, but some creatives and entertainment-seekers revel in its presence. Take the iconic quote from Petyr Baelish in Game of Thrones, for example: “Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder.” While those around him struggle to make sense of a sudden or shocking event that affects them, he seeks to progress his own agenda while the pieces on the board are uncertain or otherwise engaged. As a viewer not knowing the story, the books and earlier seasons of Game of Thrones certainly come across as chaotic because of the unexpected turns.

Of course, pure chaos – randomization, that is – has been used as an entertainment tool for centuries. One of the most popular forms is trading cards. Going to a shop and purchasing a sealed packet of unknown cards is exciting because of the chaos factor. This why it’s reported that the global sports trading cards market is set to grow to $6.7 billion by 2026. Some entertainment brands go further to randomize the whole structure. KeyForge, for example, procedurally generates each of its set decks so that each one is randomized and completely original.

This is the most modern example of a chaotic entertainment product, but the most well-known is one of the oldest. Even in its most primitive form in the 17^th Century, roulette still relied on the completely randomized spinning of a wheel and ball to decide the outcomes of games. To this day, this central premise is unchanged, even in modern renditions like Gridiron Roulette, live Dealers Club Roulette, and Roulette Mega Moolah.

Some movies have been made and found “great success” through a more unscripted and chaotic approach from the outset. Sasha Baron Cohen is most famous for this delicate art, often targeting American sub-cultures as an undercover character. As the review of the Borat Subsequent Moviefilm says, it’s a “dose of superbly executed chaos.”

Rolling with the chaos that befalls you

We can seek out chaos in entertainment for the thrill factor and its unknown outcomes, but for the most part, we recognize it as not particularly impactful in our daily lives. It is, instead, a form of almost extreme escapism, for outside of our downtime, we seek to avoid chaos as much as possible. This even comes to trying to avoid or mitigate arguments, for they eat away at structured relationships and order.

Even so, we will all experience chaos, and it’s important to have some tools to take it on and navigate its uncertainty. The first thing to recognize outright is that, even if the most chaotic thing imaginable happens to you, you still have three choices. You get to choose if you refuse to change to what the chaos commands, if you’re to modify your behavior to better suit the situation, or if you want to go all-in and embrace the changes.

You have full control over your reaction, but admittedly, there are times when your emotions can get the better of you. To help with these kinds of extreme reactions, one must practice emotional agility. This concept is very similar to knowing your three choices when confronted with chaos. Founder of logotherapy Viktor Frankl says that between a stimulus and your response is a space, and that it’s in that space that you get to choose. Using this power to choose in this small window is our freedom, regardless of the chaos thrown our way.

While you would have seen this suggestion on countless well-being and mindfulness articles, yoga can also be an incredibly powerful tool for you to use. If you live a particularly chaotic life and it comes as a part of your career, let’s say, you need something to ground you regularly, get away from the chaos, and reset your mind. In yoga, you cast off attachment and remain even-minded in success and failure, which helps to negate the potentially negative impact of a chaotic event.

Chaos is rarely welcomed or enjoyable, but changes are taking place around us all of the time. You need to create tools that help you to react in a helpful way to chaotic events, remain grounded, and process your way through instead of falling into the black space of nothingness that is chaos.