Gift of Uncertainty

The Gift of Uncertainty

Overview

This page includes a short video and an audio overview, plus the full article below.

Jump to a section:

1. Watch the Video – A quick orientation to the core ideas in this post.
2. Listen to the Audio – A brief recap with practical reflections.
3. Read the Full Article – Jumps to the complete written post.
   
   

Watch: The Gift of Uncertainty (Video)

Short video overview of the main ideas.

Duration: ~6 minutes

Listen: Choosing Change in Uncertain Times (Audio)

A concise conversation that recaps the themes and invites reflection.

Duration: ~11 minutes

Read: Full Article

How nice would it be to have full control of life? To wake up every day knowing exactly what’s coming. Every decision precise. Every outcome expected. No surprises. No wrong turns. Just smooth sailing from one goal to the next.

It sounds peaceful. Maybe even safe. But if you’ve lived long enough, you know life doesn’t work that way. No matter how much we plan or prepare, things unfold in ways we didn’t expect.

Some people still believe they can control most of their life. For most of us, that sense of control is an illusion. We aren’t steering the ship as much as we think. We’re moving with the currents. Sometimes calm. Sometimes stormy. Sometimes out of our depth.

And that isn’t all bad.
Life is uncertain. Life is unpredictable.
If we’re honest, that’s what gives it color and meaning.

Think about it. If you already knew every turn ahead, what would be left to learn? Where would growth come from?

Think back to a time when things didn’t go your way. Maybe a breakup that felt like the end of the world. Maybe the job you didn’t get. Maybe the rejection that shattered your plans.

In the moment, it hurt. Disappointment. Anger. Sadness. Sometimes all at once. You might have tried to reason your way through it. You might have tried to push it aside. But with time, you can often see what was really happening.

The breakup might have made room for a deeper love. The lost job might have opened a door to work that fits who you are. The rejection might have saved you from a path that wasn’t yours.

Life has a strange way of redirecting us when we grip too hard. When we hold on tight, it slips through our fingers. When we loosen our hold, things begin to flow again.

Not every setback leads to something better right away. Sometimes it takes months, even years, to understand why things happened the way they did. Sometimes we never fully understand. We learn to carry those moments with some grace, trusting they shaped us in ways we couldn’t see at the time.

If you’re in one of those seasons now, where everything feels uncertain or unfair, you’re not alone. You might feel like your life is unraveling, or that you’ve lost your sense of direction. But what if this isn’t the end of something? What if it’s the start of a chapter you didn’t know was waiting for you?

And if it feels like you’ve been stuck there for a while, like the spiral keeps pulling you down, you might find comfort in my blog post, Growth Happens in the Trenches. It’s a reminder that even in the hardest places, growth is still happening, quietly and slowly, beneath the surface.

If Life Were Fully Controlled

Now imagine a life where everything went exactly according to plan. No surprises. No uncertainty. Every choice led to the exact outcome you expected. Every day unfolded just as you pictured it.

At first, that might sound peaceful. Predictable. Safe. No more anxiety about what’s coming next. No more sleepless nights wondering if you made the right decision. Everything under control.

But stay in that world for a moment. What happens when there’s nothing left to figure out? When every question already has an answer, and every path is straight and smooth?

Would we still laugh the same way when something unexpected goes right? Would we still feel the same rush of relief when we make it through something hard? Would there still be wonder, or surprise, or joy, if we already knew what was coming?

A perfectly controlled life might sound ideal, but it’s also lifeless. It leaves no room for growth, no space for curiosity, no reason to adapt. We’d be like machines following a script, not humans living a story.

Think about what you might say if you reached the end of that life. You’re sitting in your favorite chair at 85 years old. Someone asks, “What advice would you give?” What stories would you tell? What lessons would you share?

If everything always went your way, there wouldn’t be much to say. No moments of uncertainty that taught resilience. No detours that turned into blessings. No mistakes that became turning points.

A life built on control might feel comfortable, but comfort has limits. It can’t teach you patience, or courage, or empathy. Those things only come from living through what you can’t control and finding your footing anyway.

So maybe the goal isn’t to eliminate uncertainty, but to learn how to live well with it. To welcome the mystery that makes life interesting. To understand that meaning often comes from the moments that didn’t go as planned.

Thank goodness we don’t get to control everything. Because what makes life unpredictable is also what makes it beautiful.

Between Order and Chaos

We live on the edge between order and chaos. It’s a constant rhythm, moments of calm followed by moments that test us. We crave stability, yet life keeps moving, reshaping itself just when we start to feel settled.

Too much order, and life begins to lose its spark. Too much chaos, and we lose our footing. But somewhere in between is a space that feels uncertain, alive, and full of possibility.

That’s where growth happens. In the tension between what we know and what we don’t. Between the safety of order and the challenge of change. It’s not about choosing one over the other, but learning to move with both. To stay steady when things fall apart, and flexible when they come back together.

Psychological Flexibility

We can’t control these shifts, but we can learn how to move with them. That skill, the ability to stay open, grounded, and adaptable when life doesn’t go as planned, is what scientists call psychological flexibility.

It’s what allows us to face discomfort without shutting down. To make room for hard emotions instead of avoiding them. To stay present and committed to what matters, even when life feels uncertain.

This isn’t about being positive all the time. It’s about staying connected to ourselves, to others, and to what we care about when things get messy. Because uncertainty will always be part of life. The difference lies in how we meet it.

Choosing Change, Living with Uncertainty

Uncertainty is uncomfortable. It always will be. We like to know what’s coming next, to make sense of things, to feel safe in the familiar. But if we only chase certainty, we end up missing the moments that make life meaningful.

When we practice flexibility, when we learn to stay open instead of rigid, we start to see uncertainty differently. It’s no longer something to fear or fix. It becomes something to work with.

A large study led by economist Steven Levitt explored how people feel after making big life decisions. More than 20,000 people who were stuck between choices, like quitting a job, ending a relationship, or starting something new, flipped a digital coin to help them decide. Six months later, those who made a change, regardless of what the coin said, consistently reported being happier than those who stayed the same.

The results didn’t prove that change causes happiness, but they revealed something important: when faced with uncertainty, the people who leaned into change tended to feel more satisfied with their lives later on. It suggests that maybe our hesitation isn’t about the risk itself, but about our discomfort with the unknown.

As Annie Duke put it best when she reframed a traditional English proverb in her book Quit:

“The devil you don’t know is scarier than the devil you do know.”

We spend so much time trying to manage life, but life isn’t something to manage. It’s something to live. And living means stepping into the unknown, trusting that even when we can’t see the full path, we can still take the next step.

Our brains operate through trillions of connections and interactions every single day. That level of complexity reminds us that we were never meant to control everything. We were built to adapt, to learn, to grow.

So of course life is uncertain. Of course things won’t always make sense. But that’s the beauty of it.

Because when we stop fighting uncertainty, we start to notice what’s right in front of us, the moments, people, and possibilities that make life worth living.

Uncertainty isn’t something to escape.
It’s what keeps life alive.