Certainty may not be necessary, but trust definitely is
Just because we’re convinced something will work or should work doesn’t mean it will.
After decades exploring psychology, spirituality, creativity, and personal growth, I’m convinced that no single theory is big enough to explain how life works, who I am, or what I need to do to be happy or successful.
I've realized that Life is too vast for any one single explanation.
Every philosophy, spiritual tradition, every psychological model and every personal develop approach I’ve come across has illuminated something valuable but left something else outside the frame. Instead of finding that disappointing, I now find it reassuring.
As they say, the menu is not the meal.
I no longer have to choose only one way of seeing the world. I can wonder at the beauty of these perspectives without needing any of them to become my permanent address.
Of course it’s important to make plans and carry out our lives with goals and dreams. Yet, it’s equally important to realize that often Life has other things in store for us.
This is why trust is perhaps more important than the need for certainty. Trust that we will know what we need to know when we need to know it. Trust that we will know what our next step needs to be—without having to struggle to analyze, predict or figure anything out.
I’ve been testing this in different ways. A few weeks ago I started exploring a simple practice of asking "why" questions as though what I wanted was already true. For example, a why question might be: “why do so many creative ideas naturally come to me?”
One explanation as to why this works is that our attention naturally begins looking for evidence that supports the question we're asking. The brain is wired to find evidence of a state of being that already exists but may not yet been attuned to. I didn’t believe I could magically create a different reality through positive thinking, but I was curious about what might happen if I started from a different assumption.
That’s where letting myself trust the process revealed something very interesting: almost immediately, ideas began appearing. New book titles emerged. Connections between seemingly unrelated subjects became obvious. Questions I’d been carrying around for months started resolving themselves without effort.
This is exactly what I've encountered over and over again through art-making. I’ve learned that I don’t need an idea of how to move forward, but somewhere between choosing colors, drawing lines and shapes, and following my curiosity, the next step became obvious.
Whenever I sit down to paint or create a collage, I rarely begin with a predetermined idea. The part of me that wants to analyze, compare, predict, and control gets put aside so I can be fully present to what’s unfolding in front of me.
What fascinates me is how being willing to trust rather than insist on certainty reveals insight and clarity, precisely because I've stopped demanding that it arrive when and how I think it should.
Our culture promises that more effort, analysis, and determination will provide the answers we seek. Sometimes that’s true. Yet many of the most important outcomes in my life have occurred by a different route entirely. They’ve arrived through conversation, a walk beside the river, a moment of wonder, a line in a book, or an afternoon spent playing with art-making with no particular goal in mind.
This is why I no longer feel the need to push so hard for what I want. I’m more interested in creating the conditions in which insight can appear rather than trying to force it into existence.
For me, using simple art-making techniques is one of those conditions. It opens a door that thinking alone cannot open. It always reminds me that there’s a form of knowing that exists before conclusions, theories, or certainty.
That’s why I return to this process. Not because it always gives me answers, but because it reminds me to trust that answers will come when they're ready.
After decades exploring psychology, spirituality, creativity, and personal growth, I’m convinced that no single theory is big enough to explain how life works, who I am, or what I need to do to be happy or successful.
I've realized that Life is too vast for any one single explanation.
Every philosophy, spiritual tradition, every psychological model and every personal develop approach I’ve come across has illuminated something valuable but left something else outside the frame. Instead of finding that disappointing, I now find it reassuring.
As they say, the menu is not the meal.
I no longer have to choose only one way of seeing the world. I can wonder at the beauty of these perspectives without needing any of them to become my permanent address.
Of course it’s important to make plans and carry out our lives with goals and dreams. Yet, it’s equally important to realize that often Life has other things in store for us.
This is why trust is perhaps more important than the need for certainty. Trust that we will know what we need to know when we need to know it. Trust that we will know what our next step needs to be—without having to struggle to analyze, predict or figure anything out.
I’ve been testing this in different ways. A few weeks ago I started exploring a simple practice of asking "why" questions as though what I wanted was already true. For example, a why question might be: “why do so many creative ideas naturally come to me?”
One explanation as to why this works is that our attention naturally begins looking for evidence that supports the question we're asking. The brain is wired to find evidence of a state of being that already exists but may not yet been attuned to. I didn’t believe I could magically create a different reality through positive thinking, but I was curious about what might happen if I started from a different assumption.
That’s where letting myself trust the process revealed something very interesting: almost immediately, ideas began appearing. New book titles emerged. Connections between seemingly unrelated subjects became obvious. Questions I’d been carrying around for months started resolving themselves without effort.
This is exactly what I've encountered over and over again through art-making. I’ve learned that I don’t need an idea of how to move forward, but somewhere between choosing colors, drawing lines and shapes, and following my curiosity, the next step became obvious.
Whenever I sit down to paint or create a collage, I rarely begin with a predetermined idea. The part of me that wants to analyze, compare, predict, and control gets put aside so I can be fully present to what’s unfolding in front of me.
What fascinates me is how being willing to trust rather than insist on certainty reveals insight and clarity, precisely because I've stopped demanding that it arrive when and how I think it should.
Our culture promises that more effort, analysis, and determination will provide the answers we seek. Sometimes that’s true. Yet many of the most important outcomes in my life have occurred by a different route entirely. They’ve arrived through conversation, a walk beside the river, a moment of wonder, a line in a book, or an afternoon spent playing with art-making with no particular goal in mind.
This is why I no longer feel the need to push so hard for what I want. I’m more interested in creating the conditions in which insight can appear rather than trying to force it into existence.
For me, using simple art-making techniques is one of those conditions. It opens a door that thinking alone cannot open. It always reminds me that there’s a form of knowing that exists before conclusions, theories, or certainty.
That’s why I return to this process. Not because it always gives me answers, but because it reminds me to trust that answers will come when they're ready.