Not Every Decision Will Feel Certain... Move Anyway

Matthew Gottesman (0:02)

Welcome to The Niche Is You. My name is Matt Gottesman, at Matt Gottesman on Instagram, and this is my daily podcast, where I create short, quick hitting episodes to help you uncomplicate life, creativity, and the pursuit of your highest self. There's only main character energy here. Now let's get into it.

Welcome to episode 873, Stop Expecting Every Decision to Feel Certain. Stop expecting every decision to feel certain. I know we've touched on various areas of this, about how do you deal with uncertainty. And so I want to go deeper on that, because I get asked countless times online, in the DM, in emails, in comments, you know, what do you do when you don't know what to do? And like, how do you feel comfortable moving forward? And, you know, I don't know how it's going to turn out. Like, I don't know what I really want to do right now. And there's a lot in there. There's a lot in there. So I want to address a lot of that. And also just look at certain uncertainty as, you know, listen, you want to get to a place where you like the way you make decisions and you make, to the best of your knowledge, in that moment, good choices. That's, I think, the deeper layer you have to really look at, because the thing is there's never 100% certainty. You could do a lot of really great things, and all of a sudden, you know, life happens, or humans do human things, and things just throw you off. You know, but then also, there's a lot of things that you just don't know until you actually start moving in the direction of them, right? So the focus of this episode is gonna be why adulthood often means choosing responsibly with incomplete information. That's right, you will not always have all the information.

You know, I wrote a couple of notes when I was working on this episode, and I said, I think one of the hardest things about making important decisions is that we often expect the right decision to eventually become obvious. We think if we wait long enough, research enough, pray enough, talk to enough people, analyze every possibility, eventually we'll reach this place where all of the uncertainty disappears, and we just know. You guys want to know why I pray so much, by the way? You want to know why I spend so much time, you know, tapping in in the morning, and when I don't know what to do, taking a moment for myself, and not just reacting right away, it's because of this, because things are not always very obvious. And so sometimes that happens, you know?

So the thing is, is you can make a thoughtful business decision and still not know whether it's going to work, or you can choose someone to marry without knowing everything the two of you will face. Now, yes, I do strongly believe in when you tap in your soul and you walk with God and for partnership, yes, I think that the element of knowing, oh, that's my partner for a co-assignment, yes. But you still don't know all the things that life is going to bring the two of you together. In fact, I feel like that's part of the co, the shared assignment, right? You can also make an investment without knowing what the market will do. You can follow something you believe God is leading you forward without being shown the entire road ahead. And that's been my process. And then it's been funny because at times I've literally asked God, I'm like, are you really not going to show me like that other, that whole other bit, you know? And at times I can see the vision of, well, the vision's there. At times I can see the parts, but I'm often reminded by God, like, why do you need to know everything? Why can't you just be present for what's right in front of you here now and live accordingly, live here, live now, doing these things, right? So I wrote a note here saying that at some point, adulthood asks us to become capable of making responsible decisions without requiring guarantees. My friends, welcome to life.

There aren't guarantees. That's not how a faith walk works. Now, I think that that's different from being reckless. I think, you know, you're still gathering information, maybe looking at patterns, you're still asking questions, you're still seeking wisdom, praying, yes, all of that. Eventually, you may reach a point where you don't have complete certainty, you just have enough clarity to choose. And I think that's what we're really looking at here, right? It's, we're not trying to be, to become so certain about everything. It's becoming someone who can make a thoughtful decision with what you know, accept what you cannot know, and take responsibility for what you choose. That's it. So in this episode, let's talk about why certainty and clarity are not the same thing.