Is the Iron guarantee of success, your fuel to achieve?

Certainty is knowing that you’re not just possibly or probably going to get what you need, but are positive to get wealth, comfort & love.

How much does knowing for sure you’re going to obtain your desires, further enhance how much you enjoy them?

Certainty is needed in many careers, but not all. Understanding how much you have this motivation will lead you to paths where your instincts drive you to higher performance than your competition. Choose work that naturally feels fulfilling, and you will no longer need to burn willpower to rise to the top, which prevents burnout.

The understanding you’re going to gain today about certainty will also open your eyes to additional places in your current job that can tap into your drive, using it to fuel you in your current job, right now.

And if you discover that you don’t connect with certainty, Knowing this will let you avoid years of pursuing work, that would both be harder for you than it would for others, and wouldn’t even feel like success to you when you make it to the top.

To find out how much you are motivated by certainty, let’s look at two legends you know well, who built achievements built from certainty, leading them to lives of success & fulfillment.

Billy Beane - Moneyball

For certainty, it’s only fitting that our first story is about a real life person. Billy Bean was the general manager of the Oakland As. And the one thing he was laser focused on giving them, was certainty.

And through it, victory.

He was a man uncomfortable with uncertainty. Despite being the general manager he refused to watch his team play their games. To him, it was full of things he couldn't control. Too late for him to change.

He was singularly focused on his inputs and the outcomes.

While the team of veteran managers he worked with were enamored with the celebrity, history and glamour of professional baseball, all Billy cared about was the what worked, and what didn’t.

When Billy had a meeting with the Cleveland Indians, he met Peter Brand, who was applying his certainty based field of economics to baseball. It was exactly the approach Billy wanted. He valued it more than the Indians did and hired Peter to join him.

At the time the prevailing practice was to recruit players by looking for nebulous things. Qualities of basically mythical status that were believed to correlate with success, though no one knew why. No certainty in the results.

But Billy went against everyone's advice, and even demands. Believing he knew better than hundreds of years of combined experience, and continued to care about the visible, measurable, certain facts.

This heightened drive for certainty gave Billy an edge over every other general manager in the league. Leading him to do things with his meager budget that the richest teams with triple his budget struggled to keep up with. Billy’s drive for certainty rose the Oakland As to unbelieved heights and made him a Major League Baseball legend.

Certainty is one of the most popular of the 6 Fundamental Needs, but the hardest to show examples in stories.

Movies are about flashy extremes. Daring saves and risking it all on a moment. This makes certainty one of the most powerful things in humanity that’s invisible to our entertainment world.

Certainty is on a quieter, less flashy level, but weaves through every part of life, with great influence on it.

As a kid, what made Christmas so unbearably exiting was knowing it was going to happen. Looking forward to it for weeks. Now as an adult, certainty still rewards me, in dependable relationships and a peaceful home where I know I’ll be able relax and work on my dreams.

Certainty is probably my #2 value. In my late 20s when I was living in Japan, I had a gap between jobs where for a week I couldn’t afford food. I can remember standing at the convenience store, looking at the shelves with my last 200 yen, calculating whether the butter or yogurt would buy the most calories for the week. Ever since then, knowing positively that I have food with me, gives me more joy than it should to any reasonable person.

If you’re also a certainty type person, first of all Id love to hear what your favorite movies or shows are. It was hard to find a single example! Anyway you’ll get more joy and work fuel out of rewards with certainty than others would.

Alright, on to the next hero:

Samwise Gamgee - Lord of the Rings

Sam Gamgee is a hero, make no mistake. But what made him a legend, was something more.

Sam single handedly fought Shelob, the giant spider, saving Frodo’s life. At the very end, Sam carried Frodo like a sack of potatoes up the volcano of Mount Doom. And on top of all that he was an unbending source of dependability for everyone in the fellowship.

Sam’s dependability is why everyone loves him. There was no dramatic turn where he grew into a reliable teammate. No knifes edge where he almost abandons them and we then have big sign of relief when he doesn't. Sam always was dependable, from the start. Sam always fought. Sam always had their back. Even when he wasn’t supposed to.

But while there’s a lot to be learned from his consistent strength, there is even more to learn from what Sam’s victory was. What he did it all for. The things that Sam did it for, what drove him to have such unbendable will, was certainty.

The simple, everyday certain joys of the Shire.

For others, victory against Sauron meant new status, or growth of their kingdom, but for Sam all he got, all the wanted was:

A return to his farm.

Food & drink he’d loved his whole life.

His friends, Merry. Pippin. Frodo. And Rosie.

He did everything to return to the certain comforts of home he’d always had.

While this quiet motivation for certainty is nearly invisible in our stories, it is a steel hard force that gave Sam a form of strength beyond all others, and makes Mr. Gamgee one of most the relatable & powerful figures of legend.

Remembering those stories, How much do you feel the love for good things that are guaranteed?

To be on a life path with no doubt of obtaining friends & family, the money you need, and a good home

While certainty is an endangered species in Hollywood, it is a critical player in the working world. Many careers are built entirely around making or selling certainty, from home insurance, to wedding planners.

McDonalds skyrocketed to fortune not by selling the best burger, but by selling the guarantee of getting exactly what you expected anywhere you go in the country.

But lets look at what exists already at your current job. Some commonly overlooked places in most careers where there is an opportunity to take advantage of your drive for certainty.

A few examples will help you start noticing more opportunities everywhere.

QA testing

Are there places at your work where occasionally, the things you produce gets returned to your team for fixing?

Look into the numbers, and often it is less labor to double check some or all of your team’s work before it leaves your door, than to correct it later, after someone else discovers it downstream.

For countless teams that are too small to have a dedicated testing unit, taking this step yourself can both raise productivity & eliminate the time delay caused by the back and forth.

On top of financial impact, there’s career benefits for growing the reputation of being the one that always gets it right.

Customer support & feedback

Do you have access to customers or internal employees that use your product, but no one is talking to?

If you take the time to talk to them about their experience, you’ll gain the information needed to guarantee your product is satisfying them. And therefore all your customers, instead of only finding out after cancelled contracts and client turnover.

This route is often higher revenue, and you’ll also enjoy the low drama certainty of getting the job done right.

Planning - Anticipating Future Outcomes

Finally, another source of certainty that your team might just be too small to have a formal unit for: is planning.

On the micro level where you sit, could planning the next month reduce surprise labor shortage? Or missed opportunities?

You can bring a boost to your team’s sales output, and the personal pride of knowing nothing slipped by your watch.

Now after your deep dive with Certainty, how much do you feel it drives you?

Do you see any additional places at your current work that can use this drive?

And Thinking about it now, do they motivate you more?

If you are driven by certainty, the more you pay attention to this, the stronger this feeling will increase that edge that it gives you. You can also gain more of this edge from any other of 6 needs that you resonate with. Personally I connect strongly with 3.

So find out how much you connect with the rest of the 6 Fundamental needs, and use all of your strengths unique to you. Pick the next value in the list, or jump straight to Variety, the mirror opposite of Certainty.

Certainty and Variety are the most common opposite pair that people are strong in BOTH of them.