The Certainty of Uncertainty

Nothing in your life is 100% certain.

Not your job. Not your health. Not your relationships. Not your plans for next week.

You know this. You’ve always known this. But you spend an enormous amount of energy pretending it’s not true.

My work as a GP puts me face to face with uncertainty every single day. New diagnoses. Unexpected outcomes. Plans that don’t survive contact with reality. It’s a constant reminder that nothing is certain.

Life is uncertain. Health is uncertain. Our time on this planet is uncertain. You can’t control this. But you’re trying anyway.

Uncertainty is easily defined as a lack of certainty. It’s a state of having limited knowledge to describe your current state or future outcome. You become uncertain when you have to make decisions, especially when there’s limited clarity on what needs to be done or which decision to make.

That’s basically your entire life.

Uncertainty surrounds you every day. Some of you try to control your environment to limit your sense of uncertainty. You check and recheck things. You plan obsessively. You avoid situations where outcomes aren’t guaranteed. Some of you stay at home and never venture out, hoping that if you just minimise your exposure to the unpredictable world, you can minimise the uncertainty.

You can’t. You can only go so far because there are always things you just can’t control.

The question isn’t whether you’ll face uncertainty. You will. The question is how you’ll respond.

Some of you accept the principle that nothing is certain. You understand that there are future outcomes you can influence and those you can’t. You prepare and improve yourself to build your capability to influence what you can. You choose not to worry (or at least not to worry excessively) about the things you can’t control. This is the healthy response.

For some of you, though, uncertainty is difficult to live with. Really difficult. With this mindset, uncertainty leads to chronic stress and anxiety. You constantly worry about everything that could go wrong. You catastrophise about futures that haven’t happened yet. You’re paralysed by the fear of making the wrong decision because you can’t know for certain what the outcome will be.

I see the patient who can’t decide whether to start a new medication because they can’t be 100% certain it will work without side effects. The patient who can’t decide whether to have surgery because they can’t be 100% certain of the outcome. The patient who can’t decide whether to try physiotherapy, change their diet, start exercising, or do anything different, because they want absolute certainty before they commit to anything at all.

I tell them the same thing I’m telling you now. I can never guarantee anything 100%. There’s always risk in almost everything you choose to do; even doing nothing carries risk, and sometimes doing nothing is the riskiest choice of all.

You want certainty. You can’t have it. What you can have is the ability to make good decisions despite uncertainty.

Here’s what uncertainty does to you when you don’t handle it well.

It paralyses you. You can’t make decisions because you’re waiting for more information, more clarity, more certainty. But that certainty never comes, so you just stay stuck. Not deciding is still a decision. It’s a decision to accept your current situation rather than risk changing it.

It creates chronic anxiety. You’re constantly worried about everything that could go wrong. Your mind runs scenarios of disaster. You catastrophise. You imagine worst-case outcomes and treat them as inevitable. You live in a state of perpetual stress about futures that haven’t happened and probably never will.

It makes you rigid. You cling to routines and familiar patterns because they feel certain. You avoid new experiences, new people, and new opportunities. You miss out on growth and possibility because you can’t tolerate the uncertainty that comes with trying something different.

It exhausts you. The constant need to control what can’t be controlled, to know what can’t be known, to prepare for every possible contingency. It’s mentally and emotionally draining. You’re fighting a battle you can never win.

Here’s the truth you need to accept: uncertainty isn’t the enemy, but your response to uncertainty is.

Think about it. Every major decision you’ve ever made involved uncertainty. Choosing your career. Choosing your partner. Having children. Moving cities. Starting a business. Going back to school. Every single one required you to make a decision without knowing for certain how it would turn out.

You made those decisions anyway. And you survived. Some turned out well. Some didn’t. But you handled both the successes and the failures. You adapted. You learned. You kept going.

That’s the skill you need to develop. Not the ability to eliminate uncertainty (you can’t) — it’s the ability to act despite uncertainty.

Here’s how you do it.

First, accept that uncertainty is permanent. It’s not something you can solve or eliminate. It’s a fundamental feature of existence. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you can stop wasting energy fighting against it.

Second, distinguish between what you can influence and what you can’t. You can’t always control whether you get cancer, but you can influence your risk by not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, and exercising regularly. You can’t control whether your business succeeds, but you can influence the odds by working hard, making smart decisions, and adapting when needed.

Focus your energy on what you can influence. Accept and mitigate what you can’t.

Third, prepare for uncertainty without being paralysed by it. Have savings for emergencies. Have insurance. Have backup plans. But don’t let preparation become procrastination, and don’t let contingency planning become an excuse to never take action.

Fourth, reframe uncertainty as possibility. Uncertainty means the future isn’t predetermined, it means you have agency, and it means your choices matter. If everything were certain, you’d have no influence over your life; it’s this uncertainty that makes change possible.

Fifth, build your tolerance for discomfort. Uncertainty feels uncomfortable. That discomfort isn’t dangerous. It’s just uncomfortable. You can learn to sit with that discomfort rather than trying to eliminate it immediately. The more you practise tolerating uncertainty, the easier it becomes.

Sixth, make decisions with incomplete information, because you’ll never have all the information you want. You’ll never have perfect certainty; make the best decision you can with the information you have. Then adjust as new information comes in. Flexibility is more valuable than certainty.

Seventh, focus on process rather than outcome. You can’t control every outcome, but you can control your effort, preparation, approach, and your process. Focus on what you can control and let go of what you can’t.

You’re going to die. That’s certain. When and how is uncertain. You can spend your life trying to control the uncontrollable, to know the unknowable, to demand guarantees nobody can give. Or you can accept the uncertainty and focus on living well despite it.

You can obsessively avoid the risks and still get cancer, be struck by lightning, or get knocked down by a bus tomorrow. You can meticulously plan your retirement and die before you get there. You can control your diet perfectly and still have a heart attack. You can do everything right and still face disaster.

Or you can take calculated risks, try new things, pursue opportunities, make changes, even though you can’t be certain how they’ll turn out. The only certainty is that nothing is certain. Accept it. Work with it. Live despite it.

Your alternative is to stay stuck, paralysed by the need for guarantees you’ll never receive. To miss opportunities because you couldn’t be certain they’d succeed. To avoid change because you couldn’t be certain it would improve things. That’s not protecting yourself from uncertainty. That’s letting uncertainty control your entire life.

Make decisions despite uncertainty. Take risks despite uncertainty. Try new things despite uncertainty. Pursue goals despite uncertainty. Live despite uncertainty. Because the alternative is not living at all. It’s existing in a state of perpetual fear, waiting for a certainty that will never arrive.

You don’t need certainty. You need courage. That is the courage to act when you can’t be sure, the courage to try when you might fail, and the courage to change when you don’t know how it will turn out.

This isn’t therapy. If you’re dealing with clinical depression, severe anxiety, or trauma, please see a professional. I say this as a doctor, not as a disclaimer.

Further reading

Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency

Bottlenecks

Generation X

Association Bias

You’ve Made the Leap — Here’s What Happens Next

Circle of Influence, Competence and Concern

Further reading

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