Antidote for Uncertainty

Our external environment is so dynamic and the feeling of uncertainty can become overwhelming at times. Uncertainty can stop you from moving forward.


Certainty is a state of mind, like happiness. It is essential for leaders. When you have certainty, people backing you would buy into your vision, feel inspired and move towards the direction you show. You need certainty to create the life/business what you yearn for. How do you embrace uncertainty and convert it into excitement?

You can tackle uncertainty at multiple levels.

You need to note that certainty being a state of mind like happiness, need not depend on what is happening outside. When you play say foot-ball, you don’t expect the ball to come favorable to you always, rather you respond to it irrespective of the direction from which it comes. Uncertainty is certain when you take away your eye from the ball/goal. Instead of fearing the unknown future, you can get excitement with uncertainty. A movie is exciting when you don’t know the story/outcome. Similarly playing a game.

Knowing what is controllable and what is not, are important. One beautiful poem called ‘A Professional’s Prayer’ that I used to read, starts like this:

O God!
Give me the clarity and courage
to control what is controllable,
to change what I can change

O God!
Give me the grace and serenity
to accept what I cannot change;
but to gently continue influencing
what is controllable by others.

Another way to feel certainty is through meditation and visualization. Meditation calms your mind and gives you time to listen to the inner voice. You can feel certainty through self-affirmations and by visualizing the end-outcomes with clarity.

You can also use an NLP technique ‘Anchoring’ to put you into a state of certainty. In anchoring, you associate a past intense experience to an anchor such as a ‘Thumps up’ gesture and recall the same state of mind with that anchor.

Another way is to have a spiritual mind-set. Surrender everything to God. Trust that He will take care of everything. Treat everything you do as a means to serve God. Several top executives and business owners, whom I have closely interacted with, are deeply spiritual.

There are some tools you can use to get certainty. Getting clarity on your life purpose and goals is important for feeling certainty. Tools such Personal Scorecard and Business Scorecard can help you to get clarity on your purpose and goals; they help you to track your goals & lead measures and prompt you to take course correction. So these tools can give you predictability and certainty in your business and life.

CXO Dashboards offers you simple but powerful dashboards, with which you can tackle uncertainty. To know more about how dashboards can give you certainty in your business, you can contact me at Thomas.MG@CXOdashboards.com.