‘Want a Guarantee? Buy a Toaster’
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” (Martin Luther King Jr.)
RIP: Arthur Malacos – 19/08/1960 – 12/10/2022
I saw a line in a movie back in the eighties that has never left me. It got me thinking about life, and without wanting to sound too morbid, the only guarantee any of us are truly given is the date of our death. It’s still unknown to us, when we pass from this earthly plane. That is the one certainty we all carry. Everything between this breath and that day is ours to shape. We have a real choice to create a life worth living before that final guarantee arrives.
We are wired to want guarantees for the rest of it too. We want to know a relationship will last before we let ourselves fall. We want to know the business will work before we leave the job. We want to know the move, the treatment, the big leap will pay off before we take a single step. We crave certainty, a quiet promise that it will all turn out fine.
Here is the gentle truth I have come to love. Beyond that one certainty, life does not hand out guarantees. The only place you will reliably find one is stapled to the side of a toaster. A warranty, a money-back promise, certainty sealed in a box. Want a guarantee? Buy a toaster. Life itself offers no such thing, and waiting around for one is one of the quietest ways we miss our own lives.
The Comfort of the Known
Our minds adore the familiar. Even when the familiar is quietly making us miserable, at least it is predictable, and predictable feels safe. In my book I call this the ‘comfort zone loop,’ the place where nothing changes because changing feels too uncertain. The future looks scary, so we default back to what we know, telling ourselves we will move once we feel sure. The trouble is, sure never quite arrives.
The Bridge and the Rope
I often picture it as a bridge. On the far side is the future you quietly long for. As you start across, parts of your old identity throw a rope around you and begin hauling you back towards the start, back to what is safe, familiar and comfortable, where you have stood still for far too long. The more you push forward, the harder they pull. In that moment you have a choice. Stay where it is comfortable and nothing grows, or keep walking towards the life you want, even though you cannot yet see the path beneath your feet.
As Joe Vitale puts it, ‘On the other side of fear there is freedom.’ You rarely get to see that freedom in advance. You feel it, you sense it, you somehow know it is there, and you walk towards it anyway. That walk, taken without a guarantee, is where every real life is built.
Nothing Worthwhile Ever Came With One
Think about the best decisions of your life. Loving someone. Having a child. Starting something of your own. Leaving something that was hurting you. Not one of them came with a guarantee. You stepped forward not knowing how it would end, and you did it anyway. The guarantee was never the thing that made it worthwhile. Your willingness to begin without one was.
The same is true of everything still ahead of you. The certainty you are waiting for is not coming, and that is not bad news. It is the very thing that makes a life yours to shape rather than simply sit and watch.
You Only Need the Next Step
Martin Luther King said that ‘Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.’ You do not need the whole plan. You do not need proof that it will work. You only need enough courage for the next step, and then the one after that. The staircase reveals itself as you climb. This is the heart of what my next book is all about, and it comes down to something beautifully simple, just begin.
A Question to Sit With
So this week, carry one gentle question with you. And please hear it with no judgement, we all cling to the safe and the certain at times, it is one of the most human things there is:
‘Where in my life have I been waiting for a guarantee before I let myself begin?’
You can keep standing safely at the start of the bridge, or you can take the next step. The toaster comes with a warranty. Your one precious life comes with something far better, the freedom to begin before you are certain. So begin!
Have a great week,
Michael
📖 Where the F*ck Do Our Minds Go? → Get the book