Embracing Uncertainty

Lots of people who start businesses try to control outcomes:

1. A vision for your business’s success.
2. Goals to get you to a successful vision.
3. Try to get the most productive day (out of yourself or employees).
4. Try to produce certain amounts or hit certain metrics (pageviews, followers, revenue, sales).

Unfortunately, the ability to control outcomes is an illusion. This is one of the fundamental lessons I’ve learned in my six years of being in business for myself.

You don’t really know how things will turn out.

And this is OK.

In fact, it’s pretty awesome.

Yes, not knowing how things will turn out—day to day, month to month, year to year—is crazy scary. I’m not gonna front. It’s so scary you might wake up drenched in sweat.

But not knowing is what makes being an entrepreneur more amazing than working a regular desk job with a regular paycheck. We take risks, we fail, we don’t know what’s going to happen, and we not only put our toes into the waters of the unknown…we dive in, headfirst.

Yes, not knowing is scary. But if you embrace it, not knowing can be liberating, and can be an advantage.

Let’s look at how it’s an advantage, and how to stay present in the middle of the unknown.

The Advantage of Not Knowing

Quiz question: What causes us the most anxiety? Million-dollar answer: Wanting things to turn out a certain way. Wanting an outcome—wanting the person you love to love you back, wanting people at your meeting or presentation to like you, wanting a million customers, wanting to be the next Apple or Twitter or Starbucks. This is the cause of our anxiety, because when we want that outcome, we fear that it won’t come true, and we strive for it to come true, and of course, it might not.

There are a million possibilities, and wanting just one of those possibilities is a little crazy. What’s wrong with the other 999,999? Will our worlds fall apart if that one outcome doesn’t become a reality? No. We’ll be just fine no matter what.

Not knowing is the job, not a sign you got it wrong

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