Trust Yourself to Handle It

There’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

How much of our lives do we spend trying to make sure nothing bad happens?

We want our jobs to be secure. We want our relationships to be stable. We want enough money in the bank that an unexpected expense doesn’t ruin the month. We want the people around us to behave the way we expect, and we want tomorrow to look enough like today that we can make plans and feel safe.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting that.

But there’s a problem.

You cannot control the world.

You can plan. You can prepare. You can work hard and make good decisions. And life can still come along and knock you flat on your ass.

So I’ve been asking myself a different question instead of the usual one.

Not how do I make sure nothing bad happens?

But:

Can I trust myself to handle what happens?

Mother Nature Doesn’t Care About Your Plans

Years ago I started thinking about humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

We like to believe we’re in control. Look at the cities, the machines, the energy we’ve harnessed, the technology we carry in our pockets. We’ve accomplished some remarkable things.

But nature has a way of reminding us how small we are.

Take a hurricane.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear explosion every twenty minutes.

Every twenty minutes.

And that’s just one storm. Now picture the hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, floods, and fires all operating around the planet at the same time.

The amount of energy involved is staggering.

We’re clever creatures, but we aren’t in charge of the planet. We can’t order a hurricane to change course because we planned a vacation. We can’t make an earthquake wait until we’ve finished building the house. We can’t make life cooperate just because we’ve been good, responsible people.

The world is bigger than you.

That doesn’t make us helpless. It just means we need to understand the difference between controlling our circumstances and preparing ourselves to respond to them.

The Illusion of Safety

I think a lot of us confuse safety with control.

We tell ourselves things like:

• If I can control my environment, I’ll be safe.
• If I can control the people around me, I’ll be safe.
• If I can predict what’s going to happen next, I’ll be safe.

But that kind of safety is fragile, because life doesn’t always cooperate.

So the question becomes what happens when things don’t go the way we planned.

• What happens when you lose a job?
• When somebody you trusted lets you down?
• When an unexpected expense hits?
• When you get injured?
• When something breaks?
• When somebody takes something you worked hard to earn?

You can do everything reasonably within your power to avoid problems and still have problems. That’s life.

And here’s what I’ve noticed: the more somebody depends on everything going according to plan, the harder it hits them when it doesn’t. They haven’t built the capacity to deal with uncertainty. They’ve built a life that depends on uncertainty staying away.

Those aren’t the same things.

The Warrior in the Garden

There’s a saying I’ve mentioned before:

I love it because of what it says about preparation.

The warrior doesn’t train because he wants to be in a fight every day. At least, that’s not my idea of a warrior. He trains because he understands that life can get difficult without asking his permission.

He builds strength. He builds skills. He builds awareness and judgment. And he deliberately puts himself in uncomfortable situations so he can learn how to handle them.

That’s what martial arts has meant to me for much of my life.

You don’t learn to handle pressure by never experiencing it. You don’t learn to stay composed against a resisting partner by practicing only when everything goes your way.

You train. You get uncomfortable. You make mistakes. You get frustrated. Sometimes you get your ass kicked.

And then you come back and train some more.

Over time, something changes. Not because you now know nothing bad can happen, but because you have evidence that you can handle more than you used to.

Confidence isn’t the absence of uncertainty. It’s the experience of having dealt with uncertainty before.

Building Capacity Instead of Chasing Certainty

Here’s something I wish I’d understood much earlier.

You don’t build resilience by constantly trying to eliminate adversity. You build it by developing the resources and skills to deal with adversity.

Those resources take different forms.

• Physical capacity: Can you move your body? Can you work when you’re tired? Can you recover from exertion? Are you taking care of your health so you’ve got something in reserve when life gets demanding?
• Mental capacity: Can you learn something unfamiliar? Can you solve a problem when the first solution doesn’t work? Can you recognize when you don’t know enough and go find somebody who does?
• Emotional capacity: Can you be disappointed without giving up? Can you feel hurt without turning that hurt into a war with everyone around you? Can you acknowledge fear without automatically obeying it?
• Financial capacity: Do you have some savings? Are you living with enough breathing room that an unexpected expense is frustrating rather than devastating? Are you making decisions that gradually increase your options?
• Social capacity: Have you built relationships with people who care about you? Do you have somebody you can call when things get hard? Have you made yourself the kind of person others can depend on, too?
• Spiritual capacity: Do you have a practice, a set of principles, or a deeper sense of purpose that keeps you grounded when circumstances change?

None of these makes you invulnerable. None guarantees you’ll be able to handle every crisis on your own.

But together they give you something valuable.

A reserve. Some margin between what life demands and what you can reasonably handle.

What the Last Few Weeks Have Taught Me

I’ve had some setbacks recently.

Nothing I’m interested in turning into public drama.

But enough to disrupt my routine, shake my emotions, and make me reconsider some things.

There were unexpected expenses. There were disappointments. There were things I couldn’t control and situations I couldn’t fix just by working harder.

And they affected me. I was upset. I was frustrated. I had days when I didn’t feel like doing much of anything.

But I’ve also been noticing something.

Twenty or thirty years ago, some of these experiences might have knocked me completely off course. I would have spent far more time angry, worried, confused, or trying to claw back control.

Today I still feel those things. I’m not pretending to be some enlightened old man floating above life’s difficulties. Hell, I’m still working on emotional resilience.

But I’ve built more capacity than I had when I was younger.

I’ve learned more about money. I’ve developed more skills. I’ve gotten better at solving problems. I’ve learned to recognize when I need space to process what I’m feeling.

And I’ve got more experience reminding me that difficult situations don’t stay exactly the same forever.

Sometimes a problem is still a problem. It still costs money. It still hurts. It still needs attention.

But it doesn’t have to become a crisis that takes over my entire life.

That’s progress. And I’m learning to appreciate it even when I don’t especially like what caused me to need it.

The Trust Equation Turns Inward

Earlier this week we explored the Trust Equation:

Trustworthiness = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) ÷ Self-Orientation

We were talking about how other people come to trust us, and how we decide whom to trust. But I’ve been thinking about what happens when I turn those questions back on myself.

• Credibility: Do I have credibility with myself? Have I spent enough time building real ability that I can trust my own judgment in the places where I’ve actually earned competence?
• Reliability: Can I rely on myself? When I make a commitment, do I follow through? And when circumstances change, do I adjust instead of pretending everything’s fine?
• Intimacy and honesty: Can I be honest with myself? Can I admit I’m scared, angry, hurt, or confused without immediately judging myself for feeling that way?
• Self-orientation: Can I get out of my own head long enough to see there’s a bigger world out there? People I care about. People dealing with things I don’t know about. People who can help me, and people I can help.

I’m not suggesting the Trust Equation was designed as a self-trust formula. I’m borrowing it as a way to examine my relationship with myself.

Because there’s something powerful about knowing this:

I don’t have to know exactly what the future holds to trust myself to meet it as best I can.

How to Be Up in Down Times

I’ve been revisiting a short book called How to Be UP in Down Times: 40 Tips, by Mark Victor Hansen, Mitzi Perdue, and Preston Weekes.

It came out in 2020, when much of the world was trying to figure out how to live with a pandemic and all the uncertainty that came with it.

One idea in it that caught my attention again was adaptability. The authors use the image of trees in hurricane winds. A rigid tree can break. A tree that bends has a better chance of surviving.

Reading that brought back an old Zen lesson I first heard decades ago: be like bamboo rather than an oak.

An oak can look tremendously strong, standing tall and rigid against the wind. Bamboo bends.

And sometimes the thing that looks less formidable is the thing that survives the storm.

I heard that lesson when I was much younger, but rereading the book brought it back with a different appreciation.

Because being a warrior isn’t always about standing firm and refusing to move. Sometimes the smartest move is to adapt.

Change your position. Change your strategy. Get help. Take a different route.

I’ve learned that in martial arts, construction, and business. If something isn’t working, your job isn’t to keep smashing your head into the wall until the wall gives up. Your job is to solve the problem.

Sometimes that means pushing harder. Sometimes it means stepping sideways. Sometimes it means recognizing the situation is bigger than you and adjusting accordingly.

Adaptability isn’t weakness. It’s another kind of strength.

And resilience isn’t just enduring whatever happens. It’s learning, adjusting, recovering, and staying in the game.

Don’t Confuse the 20-Percenter With Somebody Who Never Struggles

I talk about the 80/20 rule a lot, and one distinction matters here.

When I talk about being a 20-percenter, I’m not describing somebody with a perfect life who never feels fear and somehow avoids every setback.

I’m talking about the commitment to keep developing.

To take responsibility for the things you can influence. To build capabilities rather than constantly waiting for circumstances to improve. To learn from difficulty instead of using difficulty as a permanent excuse for why you can’t move forward.

That’s not a claim that every hardship is the result of a person’s choices. Sometimes people get dealt a genuinely shitty hand. Sometimes resources are limited. Sometimes you need help. Sometimes you’re doing everything you reasonably can and life is still hard.

But even then, there’s value in asking one question:

What can I do from where I’m standing?

Not what would I do with more money, more time, a better boss, a different childhood, or a world that worked the way I think it should.

What can I do today?

• What capacity can I build?
• What reserve can I protect?
• What small step can I take that gives me more options the next time life surprises me?

That’s personal leadership. Not pretending you control the world. Taking responsibility for developing the person who has to live in it.

The Difference Between Being Prepared and Being Afraid

There’s a paradox in all of this.

If you spend your whole life preparing for everything that could possibly go wrong, you can end up living in fear.

Always waiting for the next disaster. Always worried about the next expense.

Always trying to anticipate the next betrayal.

And if you’re not careful, preparation becomes another form of trying to control the uncontrollable.

I don’t want to live that way.

I want the reserves I’ve built to help me enjoy life. I want to ride my motorcycle. I want to train. I want to spend time with people I love. I want to build my business, learn new things, and explore new places.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding from what might happen.

That’s the whole point of building capacity in the first place. Not to build a fortress so nothing can ever reach you, but to build enough confidence, flexibility, and support that you can keep living even though you know things will sometimes go wrong.

The goal isn’t a life without uncertainty. It’s a life where uncertainty doesn’t make every decision for you.

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Think about the last unexpected problem that disrupted your life.

Maybe it was financial, physical, a difficult conversation, a disappointment, or something that caught you completely off guard.

Now ask yourself:

What did that situation demand from me that I wasn’t prepared to give?

Was it one of these?

• Money or a financial buffer?
• Patience?
• Physical endurance?
• Emotional steadiness?
• Problem-solving ability?
• The willingness to ask for help?

Don’t use the answer to beat yourself up.

Use it as information.

Pick one area where you could build a little more capacity.

Then take one step toward it:

• Save a little money.
• Practice a skill.
• Have the conversation you’ve been avoiding.
• Get some exercise.
• Reach out to somebody you trust.
• Give yourself the time you need to process before deciding what’s next.

You don’t need to prepare for every possible disaster.

You need to keep becoming somebody who can handle more of what life brings.

And when the next unexpected thing happens, maybe you’ll be able to look at it and say:

I don’t know exactly how this is going to work out. But I’ll figure out my next step. I’ll get help if I need it. And I’ll handle what I can.

That’s the kind of trust in myself I’m still learning to build.

Train deliberately.

Live deliberately.

📚 From the Leader’s Library

​The Trusted Advisor — David H. Maister, Charles H. Green & Robert M. Galford​

Why?

Because trust is the foundation of every meaningful relationship, whether at work, at home, or on the mat.

This book introduces the Trust Equation, a practical framework for understanding what makes someone trustworthy.

More importantly, it challenges you to examine your own credibility, reliability, and ability to put others’ interests alongside your own.

Learn to build relationships where people feel safe enough to be honest, take risks, and grow.

P.S. Know a martial arts gym owner who’s stressed about money or student numbers?

Do them a favor: send them to The Leader's Dōjō, my website where I help owners get more students and keep them longer with simple systems.

One forward from you could change their gym: The Leader's Dōjō​

Chuck