Most of us would prefer life to offer more certainty than it does. We want to know whether we’re making the right decision, whether our plans will work out, and whether the future we imagine will be the one we end up living.
The difficulty is that life rarely gives us answers to those questions in advance. We often find ourselves standing between the life we’re used to and what’s still to come, with enough insight to appreciate that change happens, while hoping it waits until we’re ready.
The Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke once encouraged us to “live the questions” rather than rush towards answers we might not yet be ready to understand. It’s a line that speaks to the frustration of not knowing, and the possibility that not knowing isn’t always a problem to be solved.
This is also one of the useful insights from Motivational Interviewing, a counselling approach often used to help people work through change. In this approach, feeling uncertain isn’t treated as failure or weakness; being in two minds can be the first sign that a person is thinking about the possibility of change seriously.
One mistake we often make is assuming that pressure will help. We do it to ourselves when we say, “I should have things figured out,” or, “I need to sort my life out,” and we do it to others when we rush in with advice before we’ve really understood what any kind of change would mean for them.
Most of us don’t respond well to being pushed, even when the advice is sensible: change tends to become more possible when it connects with our own reasons, values, and sense of direction.
When feeling unsure, a useful first step is to ask what the uncertainty is trying to tell you. If you’re in two minds about something, it can help to write down both sides without trying to settle the issue immediately. One side might be protecting comfort, safety, or familiarity, while the other might be pointing towards growth, self-respect, or a life that feels more attuned to who you are now.
It’s also helpful to let go of trying to resolve everything at once. Instead of asking what your life should look like five years from now, ask what one thing you could do this week that moves you in a helpful direction. That might mean having the conversation you’ve been avoiding, asking for support, getting clearer about your options, or even just easing up on forcing yourself to create change when you don’t feel ready.
A third step is to separate what you can influence from what you’re trying to control. Uncertainty often becomes harder to bear when we treat every unknown as something we should be able to solve, predict, or perfectly manage. From there, give yourself a small timeframe to work with. Rather than trying to settle the whole issue, ask what would help you get through today, this week, or the next thing.
Living with uncertainty doesn’t mean pretending we’re fine with not knowing. Instead, it means accepting that we can’t always know how things will turn out in advance, while taking one step at a time and trusting that things can work out well enough in the end.
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