Sometimes I feel like I can dance through uncertainty well, and sometimes not. Sometimes I feel afraid that if this uncertainty needs to be translated, it means that I am not capable, I am unknowledgeable, and I am overestimating my capacity. Sometimes it needs me to stop and sit with it. Digest it piece by piece.
But I also understand the tension that almost inevitably comes with choosing an ambitious life.
Then I reflected on my life again and realized that I have deliberately stepped into roles that are all, individually, uncertain.
Marriage changes over time. Parenting offers no instruction manual. A PhD asks me to create knowledge that doesn't exist yet. Founding a company asks me to build something before there's evidence it will work. Even becoming the kind of person I want to be requires repeatedly acting before I know whether I'll succeed or not.
So often, I need to remind myself that uncertainty isn't a flaw in my life design—it's one of its defining features.
The question then becomes: What relationship do I want to have with uncertainty?
I don't think confidence is the opposite of uncertainty. Confidence is the willingness to act despite incomplete information.
Scientists understand this intuitively. I don't expect an experiment to guarantee the outcome. I design it well, control what I can, collect data, and update my beliefs. The experiment can fail without me concluding that I am a failed scientist.
The same mindset can apply to life.
When I face uncertainty, I realize that there are at least three possibilities when I feel that hesitation:
I am genuinely overcommitted.
I am entering a domain where I am inexperienced.
My brain is reacting normally to uncertainty rather than accurately measuring my ability.
And the bad news is that those three situations feel remarkably similar internally, and I can't distinguish them. And they call for different responses. The first asks me to reduce commitments. The second asks me to learn. The third asks me to keep going despite discomfort.
One skill worth cultivating is distinguishing among them instead of treating every hesitation as evidence that I'm not capable.
Funnily, another observation from my own journey: over the past years, I've repeatedly done things that were unfamiliar—conducting research abroad, troubleshooting experiments, presenting my work, building NovaTerra while pursuing my PhD, and integrating multiple professional identities. None of those came with certainty beforehand. In each case, my capacity wasn't fixed at the beginning; it expanded as I engaged with the challenge.
That doesn't mean I should assume I can do everything, does it? It means my capacity is not fully observable until I test it.
As my PhD consists of modeling as well. I may learn from it quite well. Our self-assessment is also a model. Sometimes we underestimate ourselves; sometimes we overestimate ourselves. The goal isn't to make a perfect prediction about your capacity. It's to update the model as new evidence comes in.
Finally, here's a thought:
You cannot eliminate uncertainty from your life without also eliminating most of the work that matters to you.
My family grows because people change. My PhD exists because the answer is unknown. My company exists because the future is uncertain. My own character develops because I'm willing to face situations I've never encountered before.
Perhaps the measure of progress is not, "I no longer feel uncertain."
Perhaps it's, "I have become someone who knows how to move well when certainty isn't available."
That doesn't require constant confidence. It requires curiosity, humility, and the willingness to keep collecting evidence about your work, your decisions, and yourself. Those qualities are often more durable than confidence alone.
