Passion vs Certainty

Certainty vs. passion

Certainty is often defined as an illusion, because very few things in life are certain. There is a saying that goes; only tax and death are certain. So, why are we so desperate for certainty?

Imagine boarding a plane without a certainty you will get to your destination in one piece. Would you do it?! Clearly getting to your destination is one piece is not 100% guaranteed but thousands fly each day still. If the probability and the degree of certainty for safe flight are high enough to believe you would get to your destination in one piece, then you would board the plane, like many others.This means, you act even though you are not 100% certain. Why?

Most of us are looking for certainty, at least to some degree, that our actions would yield desired results. Unless we have a ‘comfortable’ degree of certainty, we tend not to take action. This is being human and it helps protect us from hurt, or does it?
However, some people would act even though the potential of failure is higher than otherwise, yet others would never act unless their success is 100% guaranteed.

The higher the certainly you require before taking action, the bigger the fear of failure you have, and the fewer the things you would get done. So, why do we need to be certain before taking action as if failure is a bad thing? Clearly fear of failure in itself is not what pulls us back from taking action, instead we are more afraid of what the society, our friends, family, acquaintances, and even ourselves would think of us if we failed! So, it is more about our Ego and the image we (want to) project to others than anything else.

Ask yourself these question; what is it would I do differently today if I knew with 100% certainty that I would NEVER fail?! Ponder on this for a minute and you might want to take a piece of paper and write your thoughts down.

Most of the things you wrote down are what you are passionate about! However, you are not doing them because ‘you are afraid you might fail and hence bruise your EGO’, right? Passionate people are willing to risk failure in pursuit of their dreams and goals. As long as the level of our passion is lower than the level of our fear of failure, we would not take the first step towards our goals, our real goals instead of those we set influenced by our fear or avoidance of failure.

The closest thing to success is failure, and successful people I know have failed plenty of times before. Think about Mr E Musk and Mr T Edison. Their passion, definitions of failure, and knowing how to deal with setbacks were key to their success.