A clear sense of who you are is a practical asset.

Your definition of yourself includes the values, roles and beliefs that tell you "this is me". It is your guide when you must make difficult choices.

Just as important is self-regulation, the capacity to direct your thoughts, emotions and body at will, and to protect your identity. Evidence has consistently indicated that self-regulation is important for the development and maintenance of both mental and physical health and well-being across life.

The real test occurs when the world becomes unclear. It is here where tolerance for ambiguity — your ability to stay calm in circumstances in which consequences are unclear — is the critical skill.

They focus on the only area in which they are in full control: their own identity, mind and reaction. They challenge worst-case thinking to maintain fear at bay.

More than anything else, they trust fundamental values, proven ability and prior success to guide future behavior. By merging a distinct sense of self with a high tolerance for not knowing, they turn uncertainty into a strength and press on.

Through constructing your psychological world, which you then externalize. And the good news is that you can train yourself to do so.

Mindfulness research shows that awareness practice can actually change your brain structure.

Harvard Business Review reports that mindfulness can literally change your brain, with research finding increased gray matter density in the hippocampus, known to be important for learning and memory, and greater activity in areas associated with self-regulation and mental flexibility.

Look at a small object, concentrating on its details. Then give yourself the task of observing something large, or even your entire surroundings.

In this way, you manipulate visual images that are external to you and start controlling the focus of your attention.

Pick three sounds in your surroundings. Choose one noticeable sound, one background noise and a third that is barely audible. Then intentionally influence your hearing so that the sound you barely hear is more distinct.

This is one of the practices I follow myself. The psychotherapist’s and the coach’s primary task is to be a container. We contain; we hold within ourselves.

However, you can also do containment on your own.

Write down on paper your attitudes and feelings regarding a problematic situation: what is happening; what questions you have; how little or how much you can or cannot influence the problem. Do the work internally, and then release it all. Write it down on paper and let it go.

You transfer your worries and confusion from your mind onto paper, the "container." That creates a mental barrier. Research on self-regulation strategies confirms that expressive writing interventions can effectively improve psychological well-being. It’s a very handy skill to use when you’re feeling overwhelmed.

One way to maintain your identity and arrive at self-regulation when facing a problem is to first exaggerate the problem to the point of the absurd — say, make a specific problem universal. Try to overestimate everything going on.

Look at all this intolerable material!

Then put this problem on a timeline. Reduce the timeline; then increase the timeline. See how at the one-year or three-year point the problem may still be evident, but probably not on a global scale.

If you work to manipulate the scale, reducing and expanding it out through time, you will have a clearer understanding of how to handle and beat the problem. This puts you back in control, and gives you the power back.

All four techniques share a foundation in relaxation and mindfulness. Harvard Business Review has confirmed that mindfulness training programs have been shown to result in a wide array of positive outcomes for business leaders, including improved concentration, emotional regulation and decision making under stressful conditions.

These methods are commonly used by cognitive behavioral therapists and other mental health professionals.

As you develop these skills, you create an inner foundation that allows you to remain steadfast in the midst of whatever is occurring around you.

The trick is to understand that when external boundaries become blurred by uncertainty, your strength is inside—your strength is you.