There are three words that I have relied on for a really long time, they have done a lot of heavy lifting for me:
I don’t know.
Those words have gotten me out of taking responsibility for my life, kept me from having to make choices, and have been extremely reliable in helping me avoid any situation in which I may feel uncomfortable.
I’ve used this three word masterpiece for almost ten years to avoid making a choice in career, goals, and direction.
"I don’t know what I want to do.” “I don’t know what I want.”
Boom. Nothing I can possibly do now, right? If I don’t know, then who does?
For most of my life I was told what I was going to do. That’s what growing up is like for a lot of people. However, when it came to being an adult I was still looking for someone to give me those answers whether I knew it or not. They never came.
The possibility of choice became overwhelming to me. I couldn’t make a choice on what my next move in life would be because I had never really had to make that kind of a choice before. And, without really knowing it, I was not good at it.
Which leads to an excellent observation: making choices and decision making is a skill. One that I have not worked on very much in my life time.
I cannot tell you if the root cause of this habit comes from an inability to make decisions, trying to keep from working, or an unwillingness to commit, but what I can tell you is that I can certainly work on all three. And that is exactly what I am doing right now.
After discovering my verbal escape route, I am putting in a place three concepts to help me not only move away from this habit of avoidance.
Be Specific
The more specific I am with the expectations I have of myself, the work that I want to complete or the actions that I am going to take the better off I am going to be. Along with I don’t know I have used generalities and talking around topics to keep myself from being tied down to anything at all.
Make a choice
A lot of the time I say I don’t know because it’s something I may have never done before. I’ve never written on a consistent basis. I’ve never really had a blog or newsletter for any period of time longer than a few weeks. Honestly, it’s ok to not know, however, that does not make it ok to just quit.
So, I’m not quitting. I’m taking that I don’t know and I’m filling in the blanks with the best thing that I can think of at the time. One thing that I have noticed is that I don’t get much better at anything or gain anything simply by having knowledge of a skill or process. It isn’t until I put that knowledge into play that I can learn something and get better, meet people that I want to do that thing with, and even help people along the way.
Another large take away from this realization is that I cannot have everything figured out before I start. As much as I might want it to, nothing ever goes completely according to plan. I have the plan so that we can have some idea of a direction and then once I get started on the path I do the best I can to stay as close as possible to the path. And it is highly likely that it’s going to look quite different
Commit
Just as the last paragraph says, there is no way to know everything that is going to come up or exactly how things are going to turn out. There is no such thing as a perfect plan. There is no way to avoid failure, a bit of suffering, and things getting a hard. As long as you are pursuing something truly worth pursuing. So, at some point I had to just pick something and stick with it to really go after my goals. I might not be sure how I’m going to get there, and I will get there a lot faster if I am moving in a direction as opposed to sitting on my butt and making excuses.
This is going to take some time to change. Even while writing this there were plenty of times that I wanted to just walk away and tell myself it doesn’t matter (another one of my personal favorites) because quite frankly, I don’t know what I’m doing. And maybe, just maybe, moving forward I could look at that as something to be excited about. A reason to jump in head first and see what I can get to come out the other side.
Because on the other side there can be learning, growth, connection, and possibility of something even better to come.
