Stop Worrying About Certainty
You don’t need more certainty. You need more trust in your ability to handle the ‘unknowns’ of your life.
A buzz word for me lately is ‘certainty’.
What do I mean by certainty? I mean the ability to know definitively, without a doubt know the truth/ existence/reality of something. I know there’s a more eloquent definition I could find, but this is good enough for now.
The reason it’s a buzzword for me is because I feel like this is the thing every one is looking for lately, and looking for it desperately I might add.
We want to KNOW that this particular skill will make our anxiety go away.
We want to KNOW that this decision will make things better.
We want to KNOW that this person is ‘the one’.
We want to KNOW that this product will work perfectly for what we need.
We want to KNOW that this new piece of information will make everything make sense.
We want to KNOW that if we make this decision, it will turn out exactly as we need it to.
We want to KNOW that if we do this thing this certain way, we will avoid any version of a negative outcome.
We are spinning in circles trying to soothe our anxiety before it even starts because we are horrified at the thought of getting something ‘wrong’.
As i’ve observed this tail spin in both myself, my friends and loved ones, and the people I work with, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering where this obsession with getting things right has stemmed from.
I’ve arrived to a lot of varying conclusions that I could wax poetic on, but for the sake of brevity I will tell you the one that sticks out to me most.
That is: I firmly believe we have access to way too much information.
WAY TOO MUCH.
The age of information and technology that has exploded over the last few decades has been revolutionary in truly mind boggling and overwhelming ways. To comprehend the technological revolution, my nerd mind tries to imagine explaining all of the tech we now have to someone who lived in 1900. Then I realize I don’t even know how most of this works, I just know how to use it. And that sends me on a different spiral of ‘why am I using something I don’t fully understand?’
I DIGRESS.
The age of tech has given us access to every single ounce of information that is currently available to humans. We no longer need to question things because there’s a good chance we could have an explanation in a matter of seconds. And AI has taken this to a new level.
This access to information has, in my humble opinion, created the illusion to our anxiety wired brains that we now have access to enough information to overpower our anxiety demons for once and for all. We think that with enough answers and enough explanation, we will be able to navigate the land mind laden field that is life without ever needing to step on a land mine.
However, since the inevitability of life is stepping on land mines, we’re confused to our core as to why we’re still stepping on land mines even though we now know where all of the land mines are, and our anxiety is spinning out over thinking that it had found CERTAINTY yet things are still UNCERTAIN.
We are forgetting that even with copious amounts of information, resources, insights, and expertise, there is no amount of ‘knowing’ that can predict how things will turn out. All we can do once we have information is use to the best of our abilities to live life in a way that feels authentic to the person we want to be and how we want our life to feel.
It’s humbling to realize that no amount of knowing can save us from risk, because life is inherently risky.
Every single day that you engage with the world involves risk. And that isn’t because you’re doing something wrong, that’s because we’re constantly engaged with variables that we have no control over.
The anxiety you feel about certainty is really a fear of the unknown. And the unknown, as I define it, is simply a situation or circumstance that you haven’t experienced before. We are desperately searching for certainty in order to avoid experiencing something that we haven’t dealt with before because we do not trust ourselves to know how to handle that type of a moment.
You don’t need more certainty. You need more trust in your ability to handle the ‘unknowns’ of your life.
Now, I know me asking you to trust yourself feels like i’ve asked you to tie both your arms and feet together and run a marathon. Stay with me!
If you find that you are searching for certainty before making a decision or making a change or trying something new, here are some thoughts I have for you:
You were never meant to control all elements of life. You were meant to take the time to understand yourself enough to trust in your capacity to cope with stress.
Needing to adapt as you move through a season of life doesn’t mean you’re making a string of mistakes. It means you’re learning and growing in real time and are willing to do better once you know better.
Releasing the pressure that more information means more control is how you regain control of the actual things you can influence. Instead of spending all of your energy worrying about what cannot be changed, focus on actions that you can realistically do right now.
You get your life back when you allow yourself space to get things wrong.
You’ve handled really challenging situations in the past and survived every single one of them. There is no reason to think you won’t be able to navigate new situations moving forward.
Chasing certainty gets you nowhere. You end up sprinting in place and out of breath, having made no progress. Being willing to walk into the unknown and trust yourself to face it is where everything that you want from life rests.
Be brave this week. Be bold this week. Let yourself not know. Let yourself feel confusion and sort through it. Allow room for mistakes. Make an effort to repair.
Riding through the messiness of life is a damn gift.
With nuance,
Sam