00:00 

Hey there and welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 176, "Stuck in 'I Don't Know.'" Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Alright. Hello there, my cute friends. How you doing? So that just reminded me I have a seventh grade class that when I start my classes at school I will often say the same thing. I say "hello, my cute friends. How you doing today?" And they just get freaked out and they're like "that's creepy. We're not cute." I'm like, "what? Would you rather I call you 'ugly friends'?" And they're like "yes." It kind of makes me laugh. Seventh graders are a special breed. 

00:51 

Alright, my friends, here we go. We are going to talk today about being stuck in "I don't know." So one of the biggest indicators when I'm working with someone that they feel stuck is that they just keep saying "I don't know" and they feel like they really don't. And it can be very tricky because it can feel so true that we don't know something. For example, we may have never been in this situation before and so our brain tells us that we don't know what to do. We don't know how to handle it. So a coaching rule that I have when I'm working with my clients is that you can't say "I don't know." If you're one of my clients, I probably haven't given you that rule exactly. But if a client ever says "I don't know," I'll say "well but what if you did know?" I don't let them get away with "I don't know" because that keeps us stuck. 

01:47 

So now this is different than not knowing a fact, such as trivia or math or history. Those are things that we really can't know. But what I'm talking about is when people say "well, I don't know how to move forward. I don't know how to fix this. I don't know how to resolve this." This is about denying your own wisdom. We have to, in these situations, come up with an answer. What if you did know? First of all, we have to acknowledge our years of experience. All this experience has given us so much wisdom. Wisdom is a blessing of middle age. This is one of the things that makes growing up so amazing, like this middle aged part, of the wisdom that comes to us. Wisdom, in part, is the ability to use past experiences to see present things more clearly. When we deny our own wisdom, what we're doing is just being lazy. We're not wanting to look inside for the answers that we do know, for the things that we have learned and what we have to draw from from all these years. We're not accepting ourselves and what we have to offer. 

02:56 

"I don't know" is often something that we say unconsciously. So if the answer doesn't come easily or immediately to something that someone's asked, we will say, "I don't know." "I don't know if I can do that." "I don't know if I can make it." "I don't know how to do that." So it's important that we really start paying attention to when we say it and how often we say it. Why are we avoiding the extra effort that it's going to take to think and process? "IDK, I don't know," comes really quickly to us. And it's just the lazy man's way out, right? It's just what we do. "I don't know" doesn't ever serve us. It gets us stuck. It gets us spinning and never moving forward. "Gosh, I just don't know what to do with my adult children." "I don't know how to connect with my husband." "I don't know what I should do with my life." "I don't know if I should quit my job." 

03:56 

Now here's the thing: these things may all seem true. But they are poisoning our lives. They're keeping us stuck. This space of "I don't know" is just our primitive brain not wanting to venture into new territory. Remember, our primitive brain, two things that it really tries to do is to conserve energy and to avoid pain. Okay? Working through the "I don't know" is not going to conserve energy. It takes energy to work through that. And sometimes, I mean, not like it's physically painful, but the pain of having to engage is sometimes a thing for us. So I just want you to realize that of course your brain is going to want to conserve energy and avoid pain. Of course it's going to want to say, "I don't know." It's not a surprise. We shouldn't be shocked when our knee jerk reaction to something that we haven't encountered before is "I don't know." 

04:53 

But here's the thing that I want you to understand: your prefrontal cortex really idoes know. Okay, if we can tap into our 

experience, tap into our wisdom, we always can figure it out. So there's this space in our life called "the future." It is filled  with infinite possibility, but guess what? It is 100% unknown. But here's the funny thing: we think that we can be certain of things, that we know things, that we really don't. So here it is. It's in the evening. I have school in the morning, and I may be certain that I'm going to school in the morning. But guess what? Maybe I'm not. Maybe we'll wake up to 18 inches of snow and the schools will be closed. Maybe I'll wake up completely sick in the morning and I won't go. Right? We think that we're certain about things. Before COVID, I was certain that I was going on a cruise that summer. If anybody said, "what are you doing this summer?" I'm like, "I'm going on a cruise with my sisters." But guess what? I didn't. I was certain it was going to happen. I thought that I knew. If someone would have asked me if I was going, I wouldn't have said, "I don't know, we'll see." And yet really I had no idea where I was going. I had chosen to believe something that I didn't know for sure. Anything in the future we don't know for sure. We create ideas of what we think, but we don't know for sure. And there are things that are currently unknown to us because we haven't been there before. 

06:32 

So just as we create certainty about certain situations that we think are going to happen and that we plan for, we can also learn to create certainty about other things that we haven't experienced and haven't done before. Okay, but it's easy to go to the place if I don't know. So right now I'm learning how to build a business. So I do this podcast. I put out "weekend win" 

emails that you can sign up for. I'm learning how to put things on Facebook. I'm learning how to do ads. I'm learning how to do my website. A lot of things that I don't know. But if I spin in "I don't know," I keep myself from moving into the future I want, I keep myself from creating that website, from creating different marketing plans and things like that. So it's ironic that I will prevent myself from making the unknown known by saying "I don't know." Right? If I get, if I start playing this "I don't know" card, then I'm never moving forward on what I really want to accomplish. So I prevent myself from making the unknown, not knowing how to market, not knowing how to sell, not knowing how to do all these things by saying "I don't know." I can keep saying "I don't know how to do that," but it doesn't move me into figuring it out. It keeps me stuck in procrastination, in not trying, in moving, in not moving forward, right? My growth stops as soon as I say "I don't know." Okay, are you with me on this? 

08:18 

So why do we resist the unknown? Again, it's going to go right back to our primitive brain. Our primitive brain is set up to want things to be familiar and efficient, and the unknown is anything but familiar and efficient. It's actually cumbersome. It's a lot of work. So our brain resists all this work by just defaulting to "I don't know." It wants to stay in the safety and security of what it thinks it knows for sure. But my brain wants to tell me that the unknown is scary, when really it's not. 

08:55 

Okay, a year ago, I was just I was doing my own coaching around the world of dating because I used to think that dating and being in a relationship would be scary. But guess what? I'm finding that it's really not. It's actually kind of fun and I actually really enjoy it. But my brain used to say, "I don't know how to find a decent man. I don't know how to get on dating websites. I don't know how to..." blah, blah, blah, right? And then I decided to use my brain and my wisdom to figure it out. I decided that I really did want to have a relationship and that I wanted to grow in that area. Okay? So when I explored my "I don't know," this is what I found: I really did know. But what I found was that behind my "I don't know," was a lot of fear. Fear of being seen, fear of being uncomfortable, fear of having to put myself out there, fear of rejection. It's not that I didn't know how to do it; it's because I was afraid. "I don't know" was just a quick and an easy solution. But if we're afraid to go into the unknown, we will just keep living the same life over and over. There will be no growth. There will be no progress. 

10:14 

So if you're here listening to this podcast, it's most likely because you have committed to putting yourself out there, of pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, being willing to experience the discomfort and the difficult emotions that go along with going into the unknown, which is a great thing. But here's the next piece that I want you to consider: how do you know your level of commitment to this growth? I want you to start listening to your brain and seeing how often you say "I don't know" keeps you in the safe space. It's going to keep you from growing. Why haven't you applied for that job? I don't know. Why haven't you started listening to your brain? started that book you dream about? I don't know. Why haven't you started that exercise program you've been talking about? I don't know. Why haven't you lost the weight you want to? I don't know. Whatever your thing is, "I don't know" is stopping your progress. 

11:12 

This is where we have to start telling ourselves the truth. "I don't know" is not the truth. It's the lazy person's lie. It's a habit of stagnation. When you learn to tell yourself the truth, at least then you can make a deliberate decision. When I stopped  lying to myself and saying I didn't know how to get back into dating after years of marriage and divorce, that was a lie. I was just scared, right? But if I tell myself the truth, then I can make a deliberate decision. Maybe you're afraid of failure or afraid of rejection. Maybe you're not confident in your ability to follow through or to come up with a plan. Find the reason behind your "idk", your "I don't know," and then you will find your work. You will find the thing that, when figured out, will propel you forward into what you want. As soon as you answer the question, honestly, you will start to make progress. But as long as you keep continue to lie to yourself with "I don't know," you will never get unstuck. You will just spin and spin and spin. The only way to spin out of that cycle and to move on to something is to start being honest with yourself. Instead of "I don't know," ask yourself what's behind that. If you're willing to go into the unknown, into the "I don't know" and figure it out, then you will feel all sorts of uncomfortable. 

12:51 

And that, my friend, is when you know that you're on the right path, because discomfort is the currency of growth, the currency of progression. The comfort zone never grew anyone into a great person. Nobody's ever gotten great living in the comfort zone. It has only kept them playing small, way below their possibility. Anytime we want to start something new, it will be uncomfortable, but the more we do it, the more comfortable it becomes. The unknown then becomes the known and knowing something is really a decision. It's not a fact. We decide not to accept "I don't know" as an option. We choose to question and figure it out. 

13:44 

Alright. "I don't know" is a habit that many of us are not even aware of that we have an incredibly destructive habit because it stagnates our growth. Why are you overweight? I don't know. Why are you overeating? I don't know. Why aren't you exercising? I don't know. Why are you still in a job you hate? I don't know. Why aren't you in a better relationship with your husband? I don't know. Why are things so strange with your adult children? I don't know. Why haven't I cleaned out the closet? I don't know. They're endless, right? We passively deferred to "I don't know" without even thinking about it. And if we thought about it, we would know. So what if we just didn't allow ourselves to say "I don't know?" When my clients say "I don't know," I always follow up with, "but what if you did know?" Or I'll ask, "what would you tell your friend in the same situation?" And I have to tell you, it is always amazing what they come up with. When I push against the "I don't know," it's amazing what they do know. Our lazy, primitive brain just doesn't want to work on a solution for us. It wants to take it easy. If it comes up with a solution, then guess what? Then it has to get to work. 

15:03 

So it was easy for me not to date, not having to weed through the options, not having to do the social media stuff, no finangling my schedule, no heartbreak. But guess what? There was also no growth in that space. And I will tell you in the past year, since I have started dating and putting myself out there and gotten into a couple of longer term relationships, this last year of dating for me has come with some incredible growth, growth in areas that I never even imagined that we're going to happen. I'm so proud of the growth that I've had this last year and what I've become and how I've moved into a deeper, more engaging version of myself. I love it. I feel like I'm a way better version of myself than I was a year ago. But that's come because I stopped saying "I don't know how to do the dating thing." And I said, "well, I'm going to figure it out," right? I have had growth in ways that never even occurred that I would have happen. And I love who I've become in this progress process. And I'll tell you, yes, I have had so many sleepless nights, both on the giddy, super excited end, and also on the sad, heartbroken end. But moving out of my own "I don't know how to find men and how to date" into "I'm going to figure this out" has created an amazing space of growth for me. 

16:41 

So maybe you're in a committed but stagnant relationship. Moving out of your own "I don't know how to fix it" and into "I'm going to figure out how to fix it" will create an amazing space of growth for you. This is an area where coaching can help. I can help you manage that and move into it, right? So the next time you catch yourself saying "I don't know," respond to yourself by saying, "well, actually, I do know. I can figure it out," or tell yourself, "if I did know the answer, what would it be? If I did know what to do, what would I do?" One of the best ways to know something is to try a bunch of things that maybe won't work. Then you can say, "well, this doesn't work. This doesn't work. This doesn't work," right? "So here's what I know for sure doesn't work." And eventually you'll find what does work. Alright? 

17:40 

When I first got on the dating websites, lots of things that didn't work. Lots of questions that didn't work. Lots of engaging with people online that didn't work. And then finally I found a way to ask questions, a way to engage with people that I was  just meeting online, that started weeding out my people really quick. I started asking kinds of questions that really appealed to me, that had me showing up as the kind of person that I really am. And then the people that were like, "whoa, I don't like that. That's requiring too much vulnerability for me." Guess what? They just started disappearing off my list, which is great. Because guess what? Then the people that stuck around, the people that I asked those questions to who jumped in and gave me answers that spoke to my soul and that were like, this is what I like. Then I started finding the people that were my people, right? The kind of people that I would want to hang out with. So eventually you'll find what does work. We just have to stop allowing ourselves to live in this space of indecision. 

18:51 

When someone asks, "are you going to come?" Decide. Don't say "I don't know." How often do we just say, "oh, I don't know." Decide. Make a decision. Decide right then. Yes or no. Don't live in "I don't know." Don't live in confusion. Don't allow it to spin into overwhelm. Don't stay in frustration. Decide and then get to work to figure it out. Don't allow yourself to stay in "I don't know" because then you block all of your progress. You stay stuck. The easiest way to start getting unstuck is to stop living in "I don't know." So break the "I don't know" habit. Stop lying to yourself. Instead, trust your wisdom. Trust your experience. Trust yourself. You have everything you need to move forward. Every answer is inside of you. I promise that you do know. I promise you do. And being able to draw on that wisdom is one of the incredible benefits of growing up into middle age. It's what makes growing up amazing. And guess what? That's what I've got for you today. 

20:17 

Alright, if you want some personal help from me, I know it's easy to get stuck in this "IDK" space, right? It's easy to go there. But if you need some help getting out, coaching just might be the thing that's going to help you do it. Some one-on-one coaching investment in time, investment in energy, investment in money. Absolutely. But I'll tell you what, you invest now. Okay? And you move into the next 20, 30, maybe 40 years of a stronger, better, healthier life, better relationships. Wouldn't it be amazing to get this under control now? So what I teach at school are remedial readers. And these little kids, I mean, most of them are seventh and eighth graders. All of them are seventh and eighth graders. And most of them are reading third, fourth grade reading level. And they hate reading. And I just tell them all the time, I'm like, "listen, you bust your butt this year, you get up to grade level, you get your skill level up there, and then you have a whole life that you no longer have to worry about hating reading and about not being good at it. But if you don't get this under control now, you're going to spend your whole life miserable because so many things that you're going to do are going to require reading." 

21:35 

It's the same concept here. If you are struggling, girlfriend, take care of it now. Learn the skills now, move yourself into a better space now so that you don't have to spend the next 20, 30, 40 years struggling with the same thing over and over and over, feeling disconnected from your children, disconnected from your spouse, disconnected from yourself, not creating what you want. This is the time, move into it now, liberate yourself for the rest of your life. Get in a better space. I promise you coaching will help. To do that, you can go to tanyahale.com, you can book a free 30 minute consult, and we will talk about your situation, we'll talk about how coaching can help you move forward and help you create more of what you want to create, help you move out of this space of "I don't know," and into a space of "I'm figuring it out." Okay, that being said, and if you love this podcast, please share it with a friend. I love it so much and I love to be able to share this information with you. And if this can help other people, it's an easy, easy way to create something amazing and something different for somebody else in their lives. Okay, have a terrific week, my friends, and I will talk to you next time. Ciao. 

23:03 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.