Do you believe you need certainty before you can take action? Today, I want to distinguish between certainty and clarity. The one is impossible to obtain, and the other is essential if you are truly going to thrive and stay committed to your most important goals.
Four years ago, I watched the film Stutz for the first time. It’s a documentary that Johah Hill made about his therapist, Phil Stutz. They explore Stutz’ early life experiences and unique, visual model of therapy. This past weekend I rewatched it, after having had so many conversations with clients who keep telling me that they need certainty before they can move forward.
In the work I have been doing with Michael Neill, we explore two kinds of truths. There are universal truths and there are personal truths. Universal truths are things that are simply true, no matter who you are, where you live, or what you believe. These truths are true, even if you don’t believe in them. Gravity for example. Gravity doesn’t need me to believe in it, for it to exist. Gravity simply is, regardless of whether I believe that gravity exists or not. Gravity is true for all of us on earth. We all experience gravity.
There are certain things that are universally true about humans, and what that means is that it’s true for all humans regardless of race, religion, culture, or background. Examples of things that are universally true for all humans include:
- We are meaning makers. We try to make meaning from events and experiences.
- We are social animals; pack animals, and we seek belonging.
- We are mammals, and have the ability to experience emotions.
- All humans experience the six basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust.
- We are naturally resourceful and creative.
- We are adaptable.
- We are capable of incredible acts of kindness, compassion, empathy, love, and goodwill, and we are capable of incredible acts of violence, fury, greed, destruction, and hate.
- We all experience inner dialogue with our Ego’s who tells us that we are not enough.
Personal truths are true for an individual, and are not necessarily universally true. Religion is an example of that. What’s true for one religion, isn’t necessarily true for another, and yet, I can believe in a particular religion, and that religion will then be personally true for me.
Often our personal truths are things we know to be true for us based on our own experience, and someone else might hold a completely different belief based on their completely different experience. Personal truth therefore varies, and depends on the stories we tell ourselves.
Why does this matter? Well, personal truths are uniquely personal, and can vary, but universal truths are simply true for all humans, and if we understand what is universally true for all of us, then it becomes easier to navigate life.
In Stutz, Phil Stutz shares three undeniable truths about life. These truths affect our experience of life, and when we understand these truths, we can navigate life with more ease and grace, because we no longer need to resist reality, or fight against something that is simply true about life.
The three universal truths about life are…
Pain is inevitable. All humans will experience pain in their lifetime. This is part of the contract we have with life. When you took human form, you agreed to experience pain. Brooke Castillo says it best when she says that 50% of your life will be wonderous, amazing, exciting, fun, and exhilarating, and 50% of your life will suck and will bring you pain, agony, frustration, and grief. That’s simply the nature of life. No-one gets to avoid pain – not even the wealthiest or smartest among us…
Life is uncertain. Thus, certainty can never be attained, because the nature of Life is that it’s uncertain. We are finite humans, navigating an uncertain world, where we can never predict the future with 100% accuracy. Thus, waiting for certainty, is equivalent to putting your life on hold forever – or at least until you die. Rather, we are invited to take risks and to be willing to move forward even in the face of uncertainty. That is true courage – i.e., the willingness to feel scared and uncertain, and still choose to move forward anyway.
If this truth leaves you feeling despondent, I do have some good news. Even though it might feel like you have no way to figure this out, or no way to stay safe in life, you are not meant to stay safe. You are meant to risk, learn, and grow, and you are not really doing it alone. You are doing it with the guidance of your own Inner Wisdom / Inner Knowing / Intuition.
It is in relationship with your own Inner Wisdom that you can gain clarity – which is very different from certainty. I don’t need to know how the future will turn out to have clarity on what I want, and/or who I would like to be.
There are two things that we need clarity on. The first thing we need clarity on, is what we want. For some of us, it’s hard to know what we want, because we have dismissed our own wanting and longing for so long, that it feels difficult – sometimes even scary – to access. And yet, it’s always there. If you really are struggling to figure out what you want, I would invite you to clarify what you don’t want. Sometimes, even though we don’t know what we want, we do know with more clarity what we don’t want. That’s fine too. Let what you don’t want guide you to what you actually do want.
The second thing we need clarity on, is who we want to be. And personally, I think this one is more important. Knowing what we want isn’t always as helpful as knowing who we want to be. Gaining clarity on who we want to be, will often inform what we truly want, and how we choose to go after what we want.
Only focusing on what we want, can have the result that our Ego decides what we spend our time and energy on. To truly let our Inner Wisdom guide us, we need to also ask ourselves who we want to be. That being question makes all the difference in who’s steering the ship – Ego or Wiser Self?
The final truth about life is that the work never ends. What Stutz means by this is that the purpose of life is continued growth and learning. You never stop growing, healing, or learning. You never arrive at a destination as such. You simply keep having experiences that shape you until you die.
When we truly understand these three important truths about Life, something expands. We no longer feel the need to fight against reality, and we no longer need to strive to be happy all the time either. We will never be happy all the time, and that isn’t really the purpose of life.
The purpose of life is to experience the fullness of life in all its forms, and to be present to as much of it as possible. Being fully alive requires embracing that pain will be part of your experiences – at least half of the time. This allows us to savour the wonderous and beautiful moments even more, knowing that they are a gift, and recognizing that nothing lasts forever.
Being fully alive also requires accepting that you can never be certain of anything, and you don’t need to be if you have clarity. Clarity helps you find direction in an uncertain world. It helps you stay committed to who you are, who you want to become, and what you want to create with the limited time you have on this planet. Clarity helps us feel deeply grounded to what we value most, and for each person that is different.
Being fully alive means that we stay open to learning and growing. We embrace that we are both a masterpiece and a work in progress at the same time. In other words, we are enough. We are whole. And we are also continuing to learn and grow. We have opportunities to expand beyond who we think we are now, by embracing the pain and uncertainty in life and letting it teach us more about who we are.
In THRIVE we explore what matters most to you, and what you want to be committed to as you navigate an uncertain, and sometimes painful, world. We explore what it means to be fully alive – not just for the good moments, but for the challenging and dark ones too. In fact, so often our most profound growth and learning come from the darkest and most challenging moments we face in life.
There is still time. If you have been holding back, waiting for certainty, consider this your permission slip to move forward from clarity, even in the face of uncertainty. You don’t need certainty to live a full and rich life aligned with what’s most important to you. You simply need to give yourself permission to be more of who you really are, and let go of the impossible and unreasonable requirement for certainty.
If you want to gain more clarity, reach out and let’s have a conversation about that. It might completely transform your experience of life and the direction you choose for yourself from here.