Sorry to burst your bubble.

There is no spreadsheet that can guarantee you will be fine. There is no amount of money that can guarantee you’ll always have enough. Uncertainty equals reality.

But that doesn’t mean we should live our lives petrified with fear.

Once we accept that the Magic Certainty Button doesn’t exist, we can stop looking or hoping for it. We can take all that wasted time and energy, and use it to do something more helpful—like repeating Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer over and over again.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Not into prayers or mantras? Try this:

1. Make a list of all the things that matter that you can control.

2. Look at that list and put a big, fat checkmark next to everything you’ve addressed to the best of your ability.

3. Whatever you didn’t check off, take some time to work on it.

4. Any time you start craving that Magic Certainty Button, just go back to that list, and remind yourself that you have done everything you can (or if you haven’t, then do whatever you can).

5. Let go of the rest.

If you can do that—specifically, if you can make it all the way to step 5—you’ve got a touchstone for what can help you feel just a little more comfortable in an uncertain world.

When tackling big, audacious goals, you don’t need big, audacious actions. All you need is the contagious magic of micro-actions.

Let me give you an example.

When I travel, I often don’t feel like exercising, even though I know I’ll feel way better if I
do. So, in the morning, I don’t commit to a program to lose 12 pounds in twelve days or promise myself to run for 40 minutes. I just put on my gym clothes.

That’s it.

And then, since my gym clothes are on, I almost always decide to just walk to the gym and take a look.

What happens next is what almost always happens when I step into a gym: I see the bikes and think, “I bet it will feel good to get on one of those for a few minutes.” So I do.

And other exercises naturally follow that.

After I exercise, I think, “Man, it would feel great to stretch,” so I do that, too. And then, since I’m on a roll, I decide to eat a healthy breakfast instead of sugary garbage. Later at work, I’m extra productive since my body feels great.

See what I mean about contagious?

There’s a reason 80% of New Year’s Resolutions fail. The problem isn’t the goals, it’s the way we go about trying to tackle them. We try to go big and burn out, forgetting that “slow and steady wins the race.”

The magic here is in breaking down big, hard, sometimes even scary goals into attainable pieces. Find something small and attainable you can do, start there, and let the contagious magic of micro-actions do the rest.

One of the big problems with setting goals is that we’re really bad at imagining our future selves. Remember what you imagined you’d be as an adult when you were a kid? I’m guessing there are some gaps between that dream and your current reality. 

In the same way, there will be gaps between your current reality and your future self. And that’s partially because when we talk about goals, we’re often talking about long time frames. Consider retirement, for example. That could be upwards of 20 or 30 years from now. You can’t even imagine yourself at that age, let alone plan for it. That’s your parents, not you! 

When we start talking about our distant future self, it’s easy to rationalize the decision to not do anything. Something 30 years down the road sounds an awful lot like something that can be started tomorrow. 

In fact, our future self can often feel like some other annoying person constantly stealing heaps of fun from our current self. You may feel like you’re still 30, but if you just celebrated (or mourned) turning 60, it’s time to get real. Our future self will be here faster than we think. So how do we vividly connect with our future self to make better decisions today? Listen to the latest episode of TLV and consider writing a letter to your future self here.