The Power of Certainty

Find out how your sense of certainty governs your quality of life.

Key Takeaways:

• Certainty is one of the six human needs.
• It is a core need for everyone.
• Prioritizing certainty can protect you, but it can also cause you to not aim high enough.
• There are positive and negative ways of meeting your need for certainty.

Certainty is one of the six human needs determined to help us to grow and find happiness. Generating a feeling of certainty that you can complete your goals and attain a life you love is crucial to making it a reality.

Certainty is one of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It is a desire for safety, stability, and predictability. Maslow maintained that human needs are a pyramid that slowly fills as we grow and evolve. Basic needs for food, sleep, and stability are the pyramid’s base and must be served before you can attend to your other needs.

The six human needs are:

• Certainty
• Variety
• Significance
• Love and connection
• Growth
• Contribution

People choose all sorts of ways — both healthy and unhealthy — to meet their needs. Their actions can seem deliberate but be a subconscious attempt to fulfill a need. Unfortunately, people still feel unfulfilled when they meet their core needs in negative ways. Only when you fill your needs holistically do you find your true potential.

Certainty is a powerful driver that can help keep you safe and grounded, but it can also work against you and keep you stagnating for years. This article explores why certainty is required for growth, how to strengthen it, and what to do when it gets out of hand.

Growth and the need for certainty

Certainty is essential to human growth. It has a profound effect on behavior. The more confident we feel, regardless of correct beliefs, the likelier we are to take action. Feeling certain we can do something makes it much more probable.

It’s just as important to understand that there are times when certainty isn’t possible. Many victories in life depend on our ability to adjust to that knowledge.

For instance, financial investors understand that the market is fluid. There is no way to be 100% certain of its behavior, but the risk is part of the reward. CEOs aren’t certain of their monthly income but consistently put new irons in the fire to keep options flowing.

How we fulfill our need for certainty

People strive for certainty in many ways, and growth happens when you learn from those experiences. To fulfill a need for certainty, someone may do a lot of cleaning and organizing and love sticking to healthy daily routines.

Another common way to find certainty is by labeling things positively or negatively. Humans label things to help them understand their environment, but it also limits the range of experiences we can encounter.

The most positive growth happens when you seek certainty by doing things like earning a degree, fulfilling spiritual desires, and setting up effective processes and strategies at work.

Many actions will fulfill your need for certainty but are unhealthy, non-holistic, and harmful, such as:

• Overeating
• Substance use
• Being overly controlling or micromanaging

When you meet your needs in an unhealthy manner, you don’t feel completely satisfied and typically find yourself repeating the same harmful behaviors in search of fulfillment.

Strengthening your sense of certainty

Meeting your need for certainty in unproductive ways often translates to a lack of achievement. While much of our attitude toward certainty comes from previous experiences, there are still many ways we can strengthen it.

Examine your beliefs

Evaluate your current system of beliefs to determine if they still serve you. Many of our beliefs have no factual basis — once challenged, they wither and die.

Some may believe the current economy keeps them from getting promotions and pay raises, but they never stop to determine if this belief is true.

Change your frames of reference

Certainty is built on your past experiences and the frame of reference you build as a result. Seeing many self-employed people fail in your life leads to believing that self-employment leads to poverty. The truth is that there are many profitable ways to work for yourself, and seeking out those cases will change your frame of reference.

Breed curiosity

Being stuck in a rut doesn’t mean you have any degree of certainty. Seek out the answers to questions and be curious about what concerns you. Ask yourself where you need more facts and information in your life and dive in to find them.

Certainty helps create and expand — doubt cripples. Staying curious about your environment and what’s happening in your life helps build certainty with the answers you uncover.

When certainty limits success

Feeling stable in life can feel great. That’s why we choose jobs in a particular field or pay grade. It’s why we make the choices we do for our children and why we stay with the social activities that are most comfortable.

Our search for certainty can also limit life. We often stifle creativity and ignore new opportunities for the sake of stability and predictability. We forgo living a full life and countless successes to feel safe far too often, knowing all the while that nothing is truly certain.

Fortunately, there are ways to release the need for certainty when it becomes too strong, and it begins with finding the courage to face the unknown in your life. Face life with a sense of gratitude to find new opportunities you may not have seen before, and pay more attention to how you make decisions to ensure you aren’t choosing certainty over success.

All humans require a degree of certainty in their lives, some more than others. Finding holistic and healthy ways to feel safe can help you fulfill your need for certainty in a way that breeds growth and happiness.

Feed your need for certainty holistically and watch your work life prosper

Everyone needs to be able to fulfill their basic needs. The key is to find the healthiest and most beneficial methods possible so that you find benefit in all areas of your life, including your work. Neel Sus loves to help people live more holistically and find their true power in personal transformation. Visit Neel’s Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to learn more about how he can help you today.