I stumbled across a passage recently that hit me like a cold splash of water: it is not uncertainty that paralyses us, it is our resistance to it.
Think about it. Uncertainty is everywhere. Life does not come with guarantees, and yet we spend so much of our time trying to wrestle it into something predictable. We want the perfect plan before we take the first step. We want assurance before risk. We want to know we will succeed before we even start.
But here is the kicker: that craving for certainty is exactly what keeps us stuck. The fear we feel is not from not knowing, it is from fighting the fact that we do not know.
Every tradition, from philosophy to neuroscience, has been saying the same thing: life is uncertain, and trying to control it is an illusion. When I sit with that truth, it is both terrifying and freeing. Terrifying, because it means there are no guarantees. Freeing, because it means I can stop waiting for the perfect moment, because it is never coming.
I, now realise that the only way through uncertainty is to actually lean into it. To feel the discomfort without rushing to fix it. To start the project I do not feel “ready” for. To have the conversation without rehearsing every line in my head. To press “publish” even when the voice in my head says, “Not yet”.
Each time I do, I learn something powerful: uncertainty is not the monster I thought it was. It is just the normal backdrop of life. And the more I walk into it, the less it scares me.
So maybe the goal is not to conquer fear or eliminate doubt. Maybe it is simply to build the muscle of showing up anyway. To let “I do not know” become a place of possibility instead of paralysis.
Because when you stop resisting uncertainty, you realise it is not a problem to solve, it is the condition we were built to live in.