you need uncertainty
if you actually want to grow and use your brain that is
Let’s do a little visualization exercise, shall we?
Picture this.
You, a decade from now. 10 short years.
Yep, I use ‘short’ unironically.
What’re you doing by then? Who are you with? What do your hobbies look like?
Are you married, engaged, freshly single?
Did you get that promotion, that high paying job switch, that title bump?
Do you party like it’s 1999 on the weekends, hit the gym, or cosy up by the fireplace in your three story penthouse?
What does it look like to you? Take a minute, I’ll wait.
Finished? Good.
Here’s the good news: You can get there.
Here’s the bad news: You probably won’t
this isn’t a call to action
I’m in business for myself. Have been for the last 6 months.
Have I made any money? No.
Does it matter? No.
But this isn’t about me. This is about you, and your picture perfect life.
On Substack and YouTube, there’s no shortage of motivational pieces, testorone fuelled mental masturbation, and grindset platitudes that’ll tickle your willy wonka.
And that’s all good and well.
But there’s a difference between sitting there and mentally pleasuring yourself to a future filled with abundance and everything you’ve ever wanted and actually diving into the freezing cold, dark, abyss-like cold that is doing it on your own.
I don’t need to tell you that the ‘system is broken’
Or ‘society wants you weak’
Or ‘corporate jobs are a dead end’
Or ‘why you feel stuck’
Chances are, if you’re reading this, then you’ve already consumed the absolute fuck out of all that content.
You know exactly who those guys are on Substack, so you know who I’m talking about.
A lot of it is really good. There’s a couple guys on Substack that write very profusely about the above and more, offending anyone in their way, unapologetically.
As they fucking should.
Because if what they’re talking about and how they’re writing antagonizes you to the point where you want to leave an angry comment underneath any of that kind of content.
Pause.
And process.
What actually pissed you off?
The fact that their content was offensive, or the fact that somewhere in your soul, there’s a megabyte, no, kilobyte of voice left in you, whispering:
“Shit...they’re right”
It gets under the skin because it’s not bullshit.
Don’t get me wrong, these guys are masters of their craft.
It doesn’t take long to see that they’ve honed their writing abilities.
Sharpened the axe that is their copywriting skills.
And are deploying said skills to appealing to that specific group of people who feel stagnant, unmoving.
Paralyzed in time. Moving based on muscle memory alone while their skull muscles sleep in.
And it works.
It infuriates those who take it as a critique of the choices they’ve made to stay in the ‘safe’ zone, and refuels those who chose to jump into the deep end.
Neither reaction is wrong.
But only one of those reactions is a subtle cry for help, disguised as rage.
There’s a reason you’re seeing the content you’re seeing.
And it’s not because the guys writing about society’s truthes are aggressively pushing their stuff in the algorithm.
No, no.
You landed in their orbit.
Now, why is that?
You tell me.
what uncertainty teaches you
There’s a mountain of personal hells and battles that stumble their way into your path when you make the choice to go your own way.
The immediate worry is money.
The instinctive gut punch. The violent, thudding heartbeat that is anxiety, coursing from chest to gut when you see your savings drain into the abyss, as you picture yourself out on the streets, penniless, and hungry.
It’s incessant, and it won’t leave you until the money starts to come in.
It will be the one constant in your life most likely, inviting all kinds of self doubt, stress, and headache that keeps you wide awake until 4 in the morning.
But it shouldn’t stop you from soldiering on, or stopping you from even starting.
Because it’s all in your head.
That feeling of insecurity gets mixed in with whatever fucked up instances you’ve experienced in the past.
Oozes its way into every little insecurity about yourself that you’ve ever had.
You’ll start doubting yourself, feeling the inensity of thie abstract thing called ‘failure’, and comparing yourself to the ones publicly touting their progress and successes.
But before scrambling to Reddit, Substack, and YouTube for quick fixes to your financial worries, think about it this way.
Self doubt is normal.
Fear of failure is normal.
Stress is normal.
At a certain point in time, during this uncertain time, you gotta ask why you doubt youself so much, how you’re defining this ‘failure’ word, and how a combination of those unhelpful thoughts is dragging you down.
And it’s completely up to you to look inwards and face whatever conditioning you’ve been through or whatever beliefs you held on to so tightly at this point.
That, or push them away completely. Not what I would do to be honest.
At some point, you get accustomed to this feeling too. The brain starts rewiring itself to rationalize it not as a waste of resources, but a tool to buy you the most important element that you need.
Which is time.
It’s the cost of trying to do business, and your battle against yourself will feel less intense the more you accept the chaos that is uncertainty.
That’s all it is at the beginning. Buying time is crucial, and sticking with your commitment, not the plan, is how progress is made.
Speaking of which, the so-called plan?
Yeah, there is none.
And if you stick too rigidly to your so called ‘plan’?
Which is an arbitrary, self-imposed series of timelines, deadlines, and other key performance indicators that you pulled out of your ass, or concocted based on some other schmuck’s experience.
The market you’re in will tear that plan to shreds.
And that tiny slice of hope, that is your need to control outcomes that you cling on to so much?
Forget it. You have no control over outcomes.
All you control are the inputs of your efforts.
Those revenue generating activities that you tackle every single day. That’s all you can control, and sharpen as you get comfortable with your new reality in the world of uncertainty.
Once your perception of having a plan and sticking to self-restricting, bullet points of where you want to be in month 1, 3, 6, and 12 has been shattered, you might start to realize something.
And that realization will be that you can do and try whatever the fuck you want, as long as it makes sense to your revenue generating activities.
Don’t get this mixed up with pivoting into something completely different. I’m not advocating for dropping one business model and going into another.
The time you’ve spent already throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks?
Yeah, that can be repurposed.
The uncertainty of your situation will either push you to do what it takes to get good enough to make money, or have you throwing in the towel and going back to corporate, with your tail between your legs.
But you don’t want that, do you?
Why would you? Aren’t you curious to see what happens if you give yourself more time?
If product A isn’t selling, repurpose what you’ve learned about bringing a product to market for product B. Only after you’ve exhausted all other options of course, be it your marketing, your targeting, your funnels, your sales script.
Whatever it is.
If your service isn’t working, then it’s more or less the same as above, or maybe you’re better off gunning for a different clientele.
Whatever it is.
Not making money isn’t a sign that you’re shit and working for yourself isn’t for you.
It’s the market telling you that you can do better, that more refinement is required, that more tinkering needs to be done.
Iteration.
Because while the market or product might not be working, you’ve spent precious time building up your knowledge and skillset. That’s invaluable, and can be applied elsewhere.
But how will you know when that’s going to happen, or what I even mean by any of this?
You won’t. Experience is the mother of all lessons.
Books and tutorials can only get you so far.
They’ll teach you how to do whatever skill it is one way. They won’t tell you the solutions when what they teach doesn’t line up with your results.
That’s your job to figure out.
Which is good, because if you’re not spending above your means and have a good amount of savings, then you have time to figure it out.
Your rewired brain will learn this naturally as long as you keep the negativity and self sabotaging thoughts at bay. Allowing the brain juices to think up creative solutions is where the real growing begins.
And makes you invaluable, even if you’re not making money for a while.
The point is you’ve tried, and you better believe that employers will look on that more positively than a fresh graduate who doesn’t know their ass from their elbow.
Uncertainty is your sandbox to push yourself and find the limits of your thinking.
And that’s a good thing.
the price you pay
Other than money, there’s the internal cost.
Mental gymnastics, emotional turbulence, soul-crushing fear.
I’m not one to make things read like a ‘feel good’ story. If the idea of having anythnig you want in life vibes with you, then power to you.
Just understand that the price you pay is stratospherically painful at the beginning.
Navigating in the dark, not having anyone to relate to, constantly questioning yourself.
Every single day.
The bandwidth your brain will use to process all this bad juju will leave you feeling exhausted and reaching for whatever substance you can to numb the pain.
In other words, it fucking sucks. Like, depressingly so.
There’s no guarantee it’ll work out, and that’s where every little DEFCON 1 alert in your brain will default back to.
It’s the hurt that keeps on hurting. That’s why it pays off to go internal, really dig deep and untangle the mess that is whatever you’ve learned about life up until that point.
Because your whole life has been one big safe, social hand out. Pre-school, middle school, junior high, high school, university, full-time job.
All defined, all known variables, all pre-planned.
No uncertainty. No fear.
There’s nobody that can prepare you or hold your hand through it. You can seek advice from coaches, courses, or groups.
But the execution? That’s on you.
You still need to get up, muster up everything you have to get shit on during the day, only to wake up and do it all again the next day.
And you know what? If you’re anything like me, you start to find it a little bit fun.
Making sense of complete and absolute chaos. Creating something from nothing.
It takes time, and the cost feels atrociously unbearable. It doesn’t get easier, you just become more resilient.
Your brain starts recognizing the patterns that set you off, and it starts to identify the negative thought patterns and contending with them before they bulldoze you into fetal position submission.
Again, you can’t study up on that. You have to feel that shit.
And sit in it.
Sit in the stress, fear, paranoia, and potential sleep deprivation for as long as you can bear it.
Some days are calmer, others feel like someone is slammig a sledgehammer right into your ribcage, while starving vultures peck your skull to get to the brain.
Getting mentally and emotionally beaten up is part of the process.
Thing is, most of this shit is in your head anyway. You’re better off experiencing it, and getting back on your feet everytime it feels like you’ve been knocked on your ass.
As long as you understand that the short term price of pain is worth the long term cost of sovereinty and optionality in life, you’re probably doing things right.
But who am I to tell you what it’s like anyway.