beyond certainty

confronting our biggest fears

Hands and Sun by Il Grande Tattoo. Buy print

What your body craves most is safety. Not just safety in the here and now, in the present, but permanent safety. It is what our biology is wired to seek: paradise on earth, freedom from any danger, a secure abundance.

What your nervous system craves most is predictability. Many a self-help commentator has declared war on “the comfort zone”, but there’s a reason we sink back into our old patterns at every opportunity. Even if those routine dynamics aren’t actually good for us, even if they’re actively hurting our physical and mental health, they’re alluring because our brain knows what’s going to happen. Predictability means we know how to respond, and knowing how to respond means we’ll know how to survive.

What we are seeking is certainty. We are always seeking it, consciously or not. Certainty means we know how to be safe. In a funny way, our minds even seem to prefer unsafe certainty over uncertainty; when you’re awaiting disaster, there’s always that sense of “I just want to know what’s going to happen, even if it’s bad.” Certainty is a form of psychic safety, and our minds seem to prefer it even to physical safety.

As a result, the desire for certainty contorts our lives. We stay in boring, stable jobs, even as they eat away at our souls. We stay in tumultuous, unsatisfying relationships. We shy away at starting that bold new creative project, even though we so desperately want to, because it means stepping into unfamiliar terrain. We choose certainty because it feels necessary to survive, and in doing so we fail to thrive.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In my own inner work and my work with clients, I’ve learned two things about certainty: a) certainty is an illusion, and b) uncertainty doesn’t have to be scary.

certainty is an illusion

I’m pretty sure we all recognize this at some level: you never know what’s going to happen. Even if you’ve weighed all the variables, done thorough analysis, consulted with experts, mapped out every possibility… well, the map is not the territory. Reality is complex enough to defy any predictive ability. Alas.

Which means: pretending to be certain is just a way to feel safe. It’s a means to an end. When your mind/body thinks it “knows” what’s going to happen, that’s just a way for it to relax. And relaxation is good! We love relaxation. But it’s useful to have some awareness about that. We can say: “I am choosing to feel certain in order to relax” and use that to access the feelings we want. We can engage with the illusion, while recognizing it is an illusion.

We can also recognize when we’re chasing certainty, we’re chasing a ghost. So we can give that up. When you are overthinking potential bad outcomes, take a moment to notice, “hey, I seem to be seeking certainty.” And then: “well, certainty is an illusion, so what feelings am I actually trying to access?” And then give yourself permission to feel those things. We don’t have to play the game. We can skip ahead to what we’re actually after: the feeling of relaxation in our body.

However, maybe you can’t accept that certainty is fake, or maybe you want to, but your subconscious is resistant to that idea. Totally normal, because by default, uncertainty seems terrifying. But it doesn’t have to be.

uncertainty doesn’t have to be scary

One of my clients is working to release old beliefs that keep her safe but stuck. She described what was on the other side of those beliefs as a sense of “freefall”, of plummeting into a dark abyss with nothing to catch her. This is what uncertainty feels like for most of us.

But uncertainty is actually the most creative space in the universe. Uncertainty is where anything can happen, where your experience isn’t limited by what your imagination can predict. Uncertainty is where the world can surprise you, where you can surprise yourself. Uncertainty is where transformation happens, and where real art emerges. Uncertainty is the seedbed of creation.

We should love uncertainty, because it’s the only place where we can be surprised by abundance.

While you can likely recognize that at an intellectual level, it probably doesn’t yet feel true; your subconscious is still craving predictability. That is because you’ve spent your whole life learning and reinforcing that predictable = safe. What we want to do is shift that process, and start to learn that uncertain = safe. The best way to do that is through experience.

The more experiences we have where uncertainty is not just exciting, but also rewarding, nourishing, abundant… the more our relationship to it will start to change. We’ll start to crave joyful uncertainty over depleting certainty. We’ll start to relinquish those heavy old beliefs that say, no, you need to be safe, you need to stay here. We’ll start to feel free and creative and collaborative with the universe itself. Rather than just seeking a safe place to sit, we’ll start to participate in the grand dance of creation.

This is a gradual process, of course. We need to start slow, by taking baby steps into uncertainty, playing at the edges of what feels comfortable. Ask yourself: today, how can you embrace a little more uncertainty into your life? That doesn’t mean changing up your routine (though it might), it might just mean recognizing the places where you already don’t know what’s going to happen. And then notice how that feels in your body, see if you can connect with a trace, a tiny seed of excitement, and let that get a little bit bigger.

Because while our body crave the safety of certainty, our souls already recognize the truth of things, and crave the freedom that comes from embracing that truth: that uncertainty is where you have always lived, and where you have always been safe.

With love & appreciation,

Scott

P.S. if you’d like to help exploring your own relationship to uncertainty, check out my 1:1 coaching. 🍊