What To Do When You Don't Know What To Do

Here is an interesting quote: “Anyone who is confident in the face of great complexity is insane.” It's from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. The quote deserves attention because it offers route to making peace with uncertainty, a conundrum a huge number of people, myself included, deal with. Fresh out of university, the only thing I wanted to be was certain: sure that I would get a job amid a budding economic recession; sure that I would never live into a debilitating disease; sure that I would live a long "remarkable" life. Now, exactly two years after I published a piece dealing with the gnawing pain of uncertainty, I can say feeling uncertain in the face of living into a complex world needn't be a source of unease. Uncertainty can be a good thing.



Amy Cuddy said, "fake it until you become it", giving voice to a position held by Tite Kubo who said, "Don't pretend to be what you're not, instead pretend to what you want to be. It is not pretense. It is a journey to self-realization." It can feel insincere to put on shoes of pretense to walk into the world. Lying isn't a value to be held to admiration. But a distinction exists between presenting a case with intent to shield truth and presenting a case with intent to reveal truth. A journey to self-realization falls with the latter. It's healthy to think of "faking it" as efforts to hold on to values we consider valuable. 

"Fake it till you become it" is often abused to mean, act the part you want to be so buy clothes you cannot afford and don't be sincere about the state of your life. But really, fake it till you become it is that to journey through life is to constantly shift from who we consider to be our highest self and to consciously decide to bring ourselves back to living as this person. It is to recognize that while shunned traits like diffidence might put us at a disservice in our efforts to live our lives the real danger is denying their existence in our lives. All our traits tell us something about who we are. 

Our job begins at the point where we keep our place in the world within perspective, where we bring bits of ourselves and existence to focus. This requires moving through uncertainty into the unknown future. It isn't to set uncertainty aside or to pray it away or to pretend it isn't there. It is to recognize it is an essential detail of existence.

The good fortune is it's possible to ease the discomfort uncertainty brings. It is in how willing we are to entertain the limitlessness of possibility and engage with distilling concrete steps that would otherwise remain abstract representations of where we see our lives. It is in what Dave Evans calls getting into the exercise of "designing your life" because as discomforting as it seems, when it comes to the query of how to live our lives, "nobody knows the answer".  

Uncertainty can be a good thing in that it allows space for what can be, in addition to what already is. Being unsure as to what the future might bring can be a source of painful discomfort. The method with which we might bring ourselves ease begins with deciding to align to our highest selves. This may be far from easy. But it keeps us grounded in values we cherish so we can live into a complex future we know close to nothing about. 

Enjoy!


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Post Author: P. W. Uduk 
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2 comments:

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    Replies
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