Guidepost 5 — Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith: Letting Go of the Need for Certainty

Who doesn’t crave a bit of certainty when it comes to careers, love, purpose, and the future? I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t appreciate even a smidge of predictability. It helps us plan our day, week, month, and year. Truly, I get it. Knowing what's coming is essential for making plans and adjusting accordingly. Having said that, the constant pressure to have everything “figured out” doesn’t exactly bring peace of mind—it breeds anxiety, self-doubt, and perfectionism.

Our brains, thanks to evolution, are designed to find patterns and predict the future. We often borrow these patterns from past experiences, which is helpful at times, but not so much when we start ruminating. This mechanism, while beneficial, can spiral out of control when hijacked by uncertainty, leading to chronic worry and distress. We tend to forget that the only truly certain time we have is the present.

Let me share my rollercoaster relationship with certainty and uncertainty. My first pregnancy was a breeze. From conc