You Don’t Need Certainty. You Need Preparedness.
How letting go of certainty and meeting change with courage will make you more capable, not less.
Most of us crave certainty.
We want the guarantee before we leap.
The map before we leave home.
The proof before we risk our time, money, or heart.
It’s understandable. Certainty feels safe.
It gives the illusion of control. That if we line up the facts, play by the rules, and plan far enough ahead, we can outmaneuver loss, chaos, and disappointment.
But certainty is a lie we tell ourselves to avoid dealing with fear.
I learned that over thirteen years at Google, and long before that, pulling myself out of poverty. Going from living out of my car and squatting in condemned buildings to building a home, a runway, and a skill set that still serves me to this day. Nothing was ever certain, and in the moment where I found myself struggling the most, is when I forgot this simple truth.
At Google, I never thought I was untouchable. I knew the ground could shift at any time. But I spent an incredible amount of energy trying to make sure it didn’t. Building skills. Building influence. Building relationships that helped me survive a massively changing landscape over a decade in tech. But not from a place of intention, from a place of fear and “don’t fuck this up”.
In the end, it still wasn’t enough.
When I was finally laid off, I had a ideas of what to do next. But I could have been far more prepared. Too much of my time and energy had been spent on worrying instead of building for what was inevitable.
For thirteen years I carried the anxious thought: What if this all goes away?
And all it got me was a layoff, IBS, and a heavy dose of self-doubt.
The better question would have been: What do I want to do when this inevitably goes away?
One moment gave me a glimpse of that answer. A team-building exercise offered a simple prompt:
If everything in your life went according to your wildest expectations, what would your life be like in five years? Who would you need to be? What would your relationships be like? How would you feel?
I reluctantly wrote my answers, closed the notebook, and forgot about it.
In the days after I was laid off, I ritually burned my other work notebooks filled with OKRs, quarterly plans, and performance metrics. When I reached for a fresh notebook to start my next chapter, I found that old one from the workshop. There was the prompt…and my reply.
Darned if I’m not basically living that life now.
Intention setting has gravity. Even tucked away, it shapes our choices and our path.
The same is true for anxious worry about the future. That also shapes our reality. Not because the fear is prophetic, but because our energy, focus, and decisions bend toward it.
So the question becomes: what reality are you practicing?
In my 20s and 30s I lost a dear friend and then a girlfriend to suicide. In my 40s, another dear friend to cancer. Probably none of them expected to leave so soon. I never expected to lose them so soon either.
But the universe doesn’t ask for our permission.
If certainty was real, they’d still be here. If certainty was real, my Google badge would have been mine to keep. If certainty was real, no one would suffer from anxiety.
This is the truth whole religions and philosophies have wrestled with:
Impermanence.
The unresolvable tension between wanting things to last and knowing they won’t.
We feel that tension every time we look for answers in theology, astrology, personality assessments, almanacs, clairvoyants, or stock predictions. Every time we buy insurance. Every time we try to secure tomorrow before it arrives.
But there is no insurance for the human experience.
Only preparedness. And self-trust.
We can trust in entropy. We can trust in impermanence. We can trust that our carefully laid plans, hopes, and dreams will, at some point, be dashed by systems and forces larger than us… often invisible from our vantage point.
Preparedness doesn’t prevent that from happening. It’s helps us meet it head-on.
Preparedness lives in the skills we build, the relationships we tend, the adaptability we practice. It’s knowing and reminding ourselves that we’ve faced hard things before, and we can do it again.
One of the cruel tricks we play on ourselves after loss or upheaval is learning the wrong lesson.
We contract. We brace against it happening again.
We forget that we survived. That we endured.
We fear a repeat failure instead of seeing the success of hard-won resilience. I see this in my clients all the time. They make themselves small to ward off to specter of loss or change.
I see this in my clients all the time. They make themselves small to ward off to specter of loss or change.
Preparedness comes from seeing the truth. That we’ve already done the impossible…we’ve made it this far, and have it in us to do it again.
And here’s another hard truth: anxiety about the unknown is a waste of fucking time, energy and attention. It saps our capacity to be available to what is, and prevents us from seizing on opportunities when they present themselves because we’re focused on the wrong things.
It’s a habit that makes us feel like we’re doing something useful. We burn fuel imagining scenarios we’ll never live through. We brace for futures that never arrive. We gird ourselves against harms that will never come to pass, and yet we suffer them all the same. We just suffer them now, instead of later.
If we can look the uncertainty square in the face (and admit we just don’t know) we can redirect all that energy into something useful. Building skills. Strengthening mindsets. Deepening practices. Investing in community.
That’s the work that pays off no matter what happens.
When we chase certainty, we stand still, bargaining for the perfect moment that never comes. When we cultivate preparedness, we keep moving knowing the road will bend, the weather will turn, we will struggle…and we’ll find our way regardless.
Preparedness asks different questions: Not “Will this work?” but “How can I be ready to meet whatever happens?”
Certainty might keep you comfortable. Preparedness will keep you capable. Courage will keep you in motion.
So if you’re been waiting for the guarantee, ask yourself, How’s that working out for you?
And then maybe stop.
Instead, start tending to your readiness. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, materially.
When the ground shifts (and it will), you won’t be frozen, longing for a certainty that never existed.
You’ll already be in motion, and on your path.
A question to sit with:
If you accepted impermanence as fact, what would you prepare for differently?
In the end, certainty is about control.
Preparedness gives you courage, and courage is what moves you forward when nothing is guaranteed.
Preparedness isn’t glamorous.
But it’s the quiet, steady force that allows you to keep going where others would stall out. It’s the deep trust that no matter what’s taken from you, you still have yourself…and the capacity to begin again.
Be rebellious.
In solidarity ✊
Nicholas Whitaker
Conscious Leadership and Human BE-Ing Coach
nicholaswhitaker.com
Co-founder @ Changing Work
Follow me on LinkedIn and Substack Notes.
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