uncertainty: a practical guide

notes on navigating the doom spiral

It’s 8:30 PM on Sunday night - the first Sunday of the year - a fitting backdrop for a conversation hovering around existential dread.

It began with a text:

This text was spurred by an email that stated a contract wasn’t going through. An email that was read upon waking up even though Amber promised herself she would not look at her phone before meditating.

A text sent in panic as if:

• This feeling would last forever

• This situation determined the future

• Everything that went away in life was in indicator of failure

The spiral of doom, while a suitable name for a rollercoaster, is not the preferable title for the 5th day of the year. Hell, any day of the year.

When you choose to chase your dreams, it’s a ride that will constantly be asking (begging) you to buy a ticket.

“Please, please, please believe you will have the time of your life.”

That time of your life is in the past, a default state that was protective but not conducive to the desires you hold. The abilities, gifts, talents, connections, magic that you are called to bring to life.

The doom spiral says, “See what you did! You took a risk and we told you it’d be safer over here.”

You look at the ebbs and flows of the ride – ones you know so well. You understand when the car will curve, when it will come cascading down. You anticipate the fear in your stomach, you know when it will finally be relieved, and finally when the car will come to a stop.

The doom spiral, like a complacent but not toxic relationship, is uncomfortable at times but predictable enough to keep coming back to.

The mediocrity trap: situations that are bad-but-not-too-bad keep you forever in their orbit.. terrible situations, once exited, often become funny stories or proud memories. mediocre situations, long languished in, simply become Lost Years¹.

The mediocrity trap isn't just a personal prison - it's a well-furnished one. Each time you try to leave, it reminds you of all the decorations you've hung on its walls. The photographs of smaller but reliable successes. The comfortable chair of "at least you know what to expect." The warm blanket of "it could be worse."

But dreams don't speak the language of comfort. They communicate in possibilities, in what-ifs that wake you at 3 AM, in ideas that interrupt your morning coffee. They're persistent visitors that refuse to respect the carefully arranged furniture of your mediocrity.

The contract falls through. The email arrives like an uninvited guest. The anxiety spirals like a familiar dance partner who always steps on your toes but knows all your moves. And in this moment, you have a choice:

To read this as the universe's confirmation of your fears
Or
To recognize it as the cost of admission to a life less ordinary

The truth about uncertainty isn't that it goes away - it's that you learn to dance with it differently. Some days you lead, some days it does. Some days you both stumble, but you keep moving.

Because the alternative - the doom spiral's promise of predictability - comes with its own price tag: the slow erosion of wonder. The gradual acceptance that "good enough" is as good as it gets. The quiet mourning of what could have been.

So maybe the question isn't "How do I avoid uncertainty?" But rather: "What am I willing to be uncertain about in service of something greater?"

Uncertainty, after all, is the space where possibility lives. It's the gap between the familiar rhythm of the doom spiral and the wild, undefined dance of Becoming. In that space - between the email that threatens to derail us and our response to it, between the comfort of what-is and the possibility of what-could-be - lies our power to choose.

And perhaps that's the real gift of uncertainty: not that it promises success, but that it offers us the chance to write our own story, again and again. Each setback, each moment of doubt, each early morning email becomes not an ending, but a beginning - another chance to choose the extraordinary over the predictable, the possible over the comfortable, the dance over the spiral.

At 8:30 PM on a Sunday night, as the first week of the year draws to a close, that's a choice worth making.

Notes

1. So you wanna de-bog yourself

2. Tunes for the dance

3. Some conclusions on uncertainty:

   1. uncertainty provides space for agency.

   2. increasing the space between stimulus and response allows us to dance with uncertainty

   3. it’s never failure – it’s just R&D, to borrow Pharrell’s words. every answer is just a feedback loop to inform our next moves.

Besos.

– Ambi + Aish

yk the friendship is real when y'all have no photos together...ty AI