How to Move Forward Without Knowing How It Will Turn Out

Most of us say we want confidence, but oftentimes what we really want is certainty. We want to know the decision will work before we make it. We want to know the conversation will go well before we have it. We want some assurance that if we put our time, money, reputation, or energy into something, we’re going to get the result we want.

The problem is that life doesn’t offer many guarantees. Business certainly doesn’t. Neither do relationships, careers, parenting, health, or pretty much anything else that matters. Yet we can burn an incredible amount of time trying to create certainty where none exists.

I was coaching a client recently who wanted to target a completely different avatar. He’d put a lot of thought into it. These weren’t necessarily people who would become his clients. His idea was to build relationships with people who could expand his network, expose him to new circles, and potentially connect him with the people he actually wanted to serve. He’d worked out the strategy, developed the messaging, and built the campaign. He was basically ready to push the button.

Then he froze.

As we talked about it, he said something that caught my attention. He’d be comfortable launching the campaign if he knew that, assuming the campaign worked, he’d ultimately get what he wanted out of it. In other words, he wanted to know where the road ended before he was willing to take the first step.

So I asked him a simple question: “Will you survive if it doesn’t work?”

He laughed, because of course he would. Nothing catastrophic was going to happen if the campaign failed. He might lose some time. His ego might get bruised. He might learn that his idea was wrong and have to try something different. None of those things were particularly appealing, but they were all survivable.

That question changed the conversation because we stopped trying to predict the outcome and started talking about his ability to handle it. Those are very different things.

I think we do this all the time. We research a little more, tweak the plan again, ask one more person what they think, or convince ourselves that we’re being thoughtful when sometimes we’re simply scared to be wrong. We tell ourselves we need more information when what we really want is protection from regret.

There’s no strategy that can give us that.

Maybe confidence isn’t believing that everything is going to work out exactly the way we want. Maybe confidence is believing that if it doesn’t, we’ll figure out what to do next. We’ll adjust. We’ll learn. We’ll recover. We’ll make another decision.

That’s a much more useful kind of confidence because it belongs to us. It doesn’t depend on the market, another person, the economy, or some outcome we can’t control.

So if you’ve been sitting on a decision because you can’t guarantee where it’ll lead, try asking yourself a different question. Stop asking, “What if this doesn’t work?” and ask, “Will I survive if it doesn’t?”

You might discover that you don’t need nearly as much certainty as you thought you did. You might only need enough trust in yourself to take the next step.

If there’s a decision, opportunity, or change you’ve been circling because you can’t guarantee the outcome, book a complimentary coaching conversation with me at JeffLuther.com. We can figure out what’s actually keeping you stuck and what you can control from here.