Uncertainty Isn’t the Problem
What if this isn’t falling apart…
You’re walking across a frozen lake. Everything looks solid. Quiet. Still.
You’ve taken this path before, confident strides, predictable ground.
But then…crack. Not loud. Just enough.
A hairline fracture beneath your boots. You stop. The air shifts. You suddenly feel how thin the ice is, how much weight you’re carrying.
And now every step forward feels like a negotiation with collapse.
This is uncertainty.
Not the dramatic kind, but the slow, creeping kind. The kind that whispers: You can’t keep walking like nothing’s changed.
The surface hasn’t broken yet, but you know it will.
And the question is:
Will you wait for it to give way? Or will you have the courage to move before it does?
Uncertainty doesn’t mean something’s wrong.
It means you’re not lying to yourself anymore.
That jolt you feel when things start falling apart? That’s not failure.
That’s what happens when a season ends and you’re still clinging to the corpse of it, calling it “strategy.”
Let’s call this what it is:
The in-between. The unravel. The part where you stop pretending you know.
And it’s not the first time you’ve been here.
Because everything in life, especially business, is cyclical.
Build. Peak. Plateau. Decline. Repeat.
But most people only like the first two.
The growth. The glow. The headline on LinkedIn.
We don’t post about the contraction.
The quarter that tanked.
The thing that once worked but no longer does.
The pit in your stomach at 3 am because you know you’ve outgrown the role, the company, the story you’ve been selling.
I watched a client hit $100M ARR, riding high, private equity sniffing around, and instead of innovating, he dug in. “Let’s double down on what’s working.”
That was Q1.
By Q4, 30% of their market was gone. The competitor launched a better product. Team morale tanked. He blamed the downturn.
But it wasn’t the market. It was his refusal to face the change.
You don’t grow by staying safe.
You grow by shedding. Sometimes you pivot so hard it feels like whiplash.
The Radical Act
In 2008, after nearly eight years of building a marketing agency with my wife, we lost every single client, and all our revenue vanished.
No one saw the financial crash coming, especially not me. One day, we were running a thriving agency. The next, it was dust.
I was on the phone with my dad, holding back tears, trying to sound like I had a plan. I didn’t.
He listened quietly, then said, I’m sorry this isn’t working. What can you let go of, and what can you do now?
Not how can you fix it? Not how can you get it back?
What can you let go of?
A few days later, after sitting with it, I walked into the office, looked at the entire company, and said, “We’re not a marketing agency anymore. We’re going to be every client’s outsourced marketing department, because they just laid off theirs, and someone still has to do the work.”
That shift changed everything.
We didn’t claw our way back. We morphed.
It ended up being one of our most profitable years because we stopped grieving what was and started building what we wanted to be.
That’s what shedding looks like.
It’s not graceful.
It’s not strategic decks and clean transitions.
It’s standing in the rubble, being honest about what’s dead, and moving anyway.
Stop Trying to “Solve” Uncertainty
Uncertainty is not a problem.
It’s a signal.
It means you’re in a transition.
It means your old tools aren’t sharp enough for what’s next.
It means your identity, role, approach, and image are cracking open.
You can ignore it. Or you can meet it. But don’t try to shortcut it.
Don’t slap a reorg on a deeper misalignment.
Don’t start another project just to stay busy.
Don’t jump to clarity like it’s a finish line.
Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is pause.
Let things rot.
Feel the loss.
Sit in the mess.
“People think transformation feels like fire. But first it feels like compost.”
Clarity Has a Cost
You don’t get to know and avoid the consequences of knowing.
Once you admit the relationship is over, you have to leave. Once you see the strategy’s failing, you have to change it.
Once you realize you’ve outgrown your job, your friends, your story—you can’t unknow it.
Most people don’t fear uncertainty. They fear the cost of clarity.
Because clarity means you have to act. And action has a price.
What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do
Stop performing certainty.
Everyone can feel it when you’re faking it. Be real. “I don’t know yet” is a power move when it’s true.
Let the old version die.
Stop trying to resurrect what’s already gone. You’re not here to reanimate. You’re here to evolve.
Expect contraction.
Every cycle has a pullback. Use it. Focus. Prune. Strip everything to the essential.
Take a real risk.
Not the performative kind. The kind that makes your stomach drop.
Quit negotiating with your own knowing.
If you know it’s over, act like it.
If you know it’s not working, stop pretending it is.
This isn’t the cute part of growth.
This is the fire. The breaking. The unbecoming.
And if you’re here, if you’re still reading, if the edges of this hit something true, don’t look away.
You don’t need more advice. You need more nerve.
To stay. To speak. To start again.
This shaky middle isn’t the end.
It’s the truth, asking what you’re going to do with it.
And that’s where leadership begins.
-Stay human
Bryan
P.S. If you’re in the middle of it, the pivot, the unravel, the “holy sh*t what now?” I’d love to know. What are you shedding? What are you done pretending about? You don’t have to know the answer. Just name the truth. That’s enough.
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You are reading BEing Human, a weekly newsletter about an honest exploration of trust, leadership, and mindfulness from the bestselling author of Human-to-Human and Shareology, CEO, and TEDTalker. Written by Bryan Kramer, an executive coach and advisor to Fortune executives, we dive into what it means to lead ourselves in life, business, and the moments that matter most.
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Still shedding. Definitely in the middle. Pivoting regularly. Investing in the new business and life. Needing to hold even the new pieces lightly…they may be just interim.