Can You Be Committed Without Being Certain?

Do you need to know that you can live vegan forever before you take one action today?

Last week, we talked about practical uncertainty in a vegan practice: restaurant plans, backup meals, and the possibility of ending up with romaine lettuce and French fries for dinner.

This week, we go one level deeper.

What happens when you ask your future self to guarantee that you will follow through perfectly for the rest of your life?

Michele often hears people say, “I’m not like you. I don’t stick with things. I don’t have discipline.”

But that’s usually not even true.

Often, the problem isn’t a lack of commitment or discipline. It’s the belief that we need certainty about the future before we’re allowed to take the next step.

In this episode, we explore what happens when we let go of that demand for certainty and approach change as an experiment.

In This Episode

• Why commitment is a direction—not a prediction or guarantee
• How uncertainty can make behavior change more curious, experimental, and even more fun
• The three certainty traps from Simone Stolzoff’s book How to Not Know: comfort, hubris, and control
• Why “I could never” is a remarkably confident prediction about a future that has not happened
• A little Stoic encouragement from Seneca and Marcus Aurelius
• Why “Can I do this forever?” is an unfair test for someone deciding what to eat on Tuesday
• How coaching helps us work with the person we actually are instead of waiting to become an imaginary, perfectly disciplined person

Your September Experiment

Instead of asking yourself to know exactly how the future will unfold, try an experiment.

Complete these three sentences:

For September, I am committed to __________.

Right now I do not need to know __________.

This week, I am going to learn or practice __________.

Keep the commitment meaningful, but make the experiment small enough to give you real information.

At the end, you don’t need to give yourself a grade. Instead, ask:

• What worked?
• What didn’t?
• What would I like to try next?

Not knowing is not a problem. It means the answer is still open—and an open answer gives you room to learn, change, and surprise yourself.

You can be serious about your values and curious about your methods.

You can be committed without being certain.

Book Mentioned

How to Not Know: The Value of Uncertainty in a World That Demands Answers by Simone Stolzoff