Nothing but death and taxes?....

It was Benjamin Franklin who said, "'In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." While Benjamin Franklin is doubtlessly one of the wisest and most intelligent leaders to have walked the earth, he had this one a but wrong, or at least, incomplete. I would say that the only thing we can be certain about is uncertainty. After all, if you can be sure of anything in life, it's that you can't be sure of anything. No matter how well we prepare, how much planning we do, and how proactive we are, there will always be parts of life out of our control. For most, the uncertainty of life is something they just deal with. They just do their best to plan ahead and be proactive and understand that sometimes, things just won't go the way you planned. For others though, the uncertainty of life can be a great source of anxiety.

For these folks, not being able to control various elements of their lives is a source of great stress and so their natural response is to do whatever they can to eliminate that stress. That can mean different things to different people. For some it means drinking or doing drugs, for others it means checking out of life completely, holding themselves up in their house and "safe zone" so they don't have to deal with real life. There's no avoiding the fact that life is, at best, only somewhat predictable. There will always be uncertainly. The only question is; how will you handle it?

I would challenge you this week to think of life's uncertainty not as something to be 'tolerated' or 'coped with' but something to appreciate. Am I suggesting that I love uncertainty or that you should? Not exactly. I'm not the biggest fan of the unknown. In fact, I would suggest that by our very nature, human beings dislike that which they don't fully understand and can't predict. However, what is also true is that as much as we hate uncertainty, too much certainty can be even harder to cope with. Imagine for a minute what life would be like if you always knew exactly how everything would turn out? No need to plan anything, no need to set goals and strive after them, you already know what you'll accomplish. No interesting coincidences or even surprise parties, because you already know how everything is going to turn out. Sound fun?

We THINK we crave certainty in life, but in fact uncertainty is actually what makes life interesting. So the key is not to try to eliminate uncertainty from life but to embrace uncertainty. To do that all you have to do is think about the times in life when you were uncertain about something... how often did it turn out in disaster? How often did it turn out fine? And how often did it actually turn out even better than you'd hoped?

The fact is that while life has it's ups and downs and surprises, for the most part, life turns out pretty much as you'd expected. So if you expect great things, great things are quite likely in your future. If you expect bad... well. So rather than anticipating uncertainty with dread, try to see it with potential, even excitement. Chances are good that it' will turn out just fine, or, even better!