You Know What You Want. You're Just Afraid of Admitting It to Yourself
Uncertainty is not real. Fear is
There’s a moment—maybe you’ve felt it too—when you sit with yourself long enough, all the noise quiets down, and something underneath starts to speak. Not loudly. Not urgently. But clearly.
That’s the part of you that already knows.
We tell ourselves we’re confused. Lost. Torn. And sometimes, maybe, we are. But more often than not, when I’ve said “I don’t know what to do,” what I’ve actually meant is: I do know. I’m just scared.
Scared of what will happen if I choose what I really want.
Scared of what people might think.
Scared that maybe I’m not good enough, not ready enough, not strong enough to follow through.
Every time in my life when I felt tangled in uncertainty—whether it was about a relationship, a job, a city, a version of myself I wanted to grow into—if I’m being brutally honest, I did know what I wanted. I just didn’t want to face what that knowing would demand of me.
Because clarity doesn’t always come with comfort. Sometimes, clarity is the scariest thing in the world.
Wanting something—really wanting it—means we have something to lose. It means we might fail. It means we can’t hide behind “I don’t know” anymore. And that’s terrifying, especially when we’ve been taught to value certainty and perfection more than truth and risk.
But here’s what I’ve realized: uncertainty is often just fear in disguise. And fear loves to keep us safe. Small. Stuck.
The tricky thing is, fear doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it whispers:
“Be reasonable.”
“Now’s not the time.”
“You can’t afford to mess this up.”
“What if people judge you?”
And the more we listen, the easier it gets to live in limbo. To wait. To talk ourselves out of the life we actually want.
But what if we stopped pretending we didn’t know?
What if we looked at that quiet inner voice and said, “I hear you. I trust you. I’m scared, but I’m listening.”
That’s the shift. Not a lightning bolt of confidence. Not a sudden erasure of fear. Just... choosing truth, even when it’s uncomfortable.
If this hits something in you right now—if you feel like you’ve been stuck in indecision or fog—maybe it’s not that you’re lost. Maybe you’re just afraid. And that’s okay.
But please don’t confuse fear for a lack of clarity.
You already know.
You’ve always known.
You’re just waiting for permission to admit it.
So here it is:
You’re allowed to want what you want.
You’re allowed to be afraid, and go anyway.
I’m reminding myself of that too.
Thank you for reading 🤍
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I am finding that the single most important and empowering thing in my life, from one day to the next, is taking the time to get clear. Once I've done that, I can decide what I want to do. And I can be confident that those decisions are in line with my values and priorities. We live so fast now, with so many things going on, so much task switching, so much distraction, so much demand and overwhelm, that we can spend days, weeks, months, years in a fog, our integrity clouded by the murk of too-muchness. Creating the space and making the time to get clear changes all of that. It allows us to identify our fears. And when we've done that we can stare them down and do what we need to do for ourselves and our lives.
Love this. Thank you.
Needed to hear this today ❤️