The Power of Not Knowing: how to doubt your goals and do them anyway

Are you someone who struggles with knowing what is you want to do, or how to do it?

Do you have lots of cool ideas, but then get stuck in doubting whether they’re the right ones, or will take you down the right path?  Do you set yourself goals, and then struggle to achieve them?  Do you find it hard to trust your intuition?

Well, here’s my take on it.  Feeling like you have to know the right thing or right way, is probably the very thing that’s stopping you from moving forwards.  And, I think there’s a solution…admit you don’t actually know, and carry on regardless.

I feel like I don’t really know most of the time.  I really have no idea if what I’m doing with my life is what I really want to be doing ultimately.  I really have no idea, if what I’m writing here is what I want to be doing, or even whether it will help you dear reader.

But the point is that it’s the not knowing that keeps me going, keeps me humble, and keeps me curious enough to keep enquiring.  It’s what keeps me checking whether I still feel passionate, still feel authentic, and still feel aligned with the things that matter to me.  It’s what allows me to fully reach my goals.

I think that embracing the feeling of not knowing can work for you too.  If you’re someone who struggles with knowing the right way, then try embracing the fact that you don’t really know.

Is there some idea of ambition that you’re doubting in your life at the moment?  What is it that you doubt?  Whether you’re capable of achieving it?  Whether it’s really the right thing to do?  Whether it’s even possible?

Then ask yourself whether you need to know the answer to any of these questions.

All you need, is enough desire to take the first little step toward finding out.  What’s the smallest step you can take toward the goal that you’re doubting?

By admitting you don’t really know, you can free yourself from needing to justify the things you’re doing.  You don’t have to pretend that you’re totally sure, even when you’re not, and you don’t need to superficially re-assure yourself when things get tough.

You can just keep moving along, not knowing, keeping curious, and staying open.

How I use the power of not knowing

I can’t tell you how liberating and freeing it is for me to keep working on this blog, not quite knowing where it’s going to end up.  I know a few things of course.  I know that I want to keep writing, exploring my own experience and trying to offer it to you in a way that I hope helps you.

I know that to do that effectively, it helps to put significant time into marketing this blog, and learning the latest perspectives on internet marketing.

I also know that this whole thing is rather scrary for me, but that it’s so important that I won’t let the fear stop me.

Beyond that I’m not really sure what’s going to happen.  I don’t know how many subscribers I’m going to get in the next 6 months…really, I have no idea.  I have no idea how much money I’m going to make from it.  And I don’t know if the current direction I’m taking is ultimately the right one for me.

It would be really easy for me to get stuck in worrying about all those things.  In fact, I do get stuck in worrying about those things!  But I’m getting better and better and just letting them go.

I’m letting go the need to know, because I really feel it doesn’t help.  It doesn’t help me get stuff done (because I spend loads of energy worrying rather than doing), and it doesn’t help me steer this thing in the direction that is right.

Why?  Because I don’t know what the right direction is!  I have lots of guesses and intuitions, but ultimately, I don’t know.  And the best way to find out?  Try it out.  Go down the path that my best guess reveals with as much commitment as I can muster.  While at the same time, staying as open as I’m able to the possibility that I may need to change course.

The best way to stay open to a change of course is to not get heavily invested in the current course.  If I hold it loosely, then when the energy of it starts to shift, I can go with it, rather than holding on tight, and forcing it to continue down the wrong path.

How you can use the power of not knowing

Think about the goal your doubting at the moment.  Here are what I think are the major steps to follow, to harness the power of not knowing.  Try it out, maybe it helps you too.

1. Visualise your goal: You have an idea of what it is right?  You have a dream of where you’d like to end up?  Well really visualise that, and write it down so it’s explicit.  It’s hard to use the power of not knowing, if you don’t know what it is you want to do!

1. Get clear on the blockages to achieving it: List all the things that are in the way of you achieving that goal or dream.  The more the better.  Write them down in a big list, or as a mind-map right underneath where you wrote down the goal.

1. Question the blockages: Take a look at the list.  How many of those can you completely plan for now?  A few maybe, but I’m betting a lot of them are things that are further down the road, and by the time you get there, the picture will have changed a lot.  Now ask yourself: do you need to plan for all of those things right now to set off down the path of realising your goal?  I’m betting not.

1. You don’t need to know all the answers: Realise that you can set off down the path, not knowing the answers to all your doubts or road blocks.  In fact, it’s better not to!  By not knowing, you let your dream or goal emerge on its own terms.  The further down the road you get, the more chance there is that your original vision will change and adapt.  As you gather more information and experience, you’ll be able to refine it.  The less tightly you hold onto that original vision, the more that refining will be able to happen.

1. Enjoy it! Doubt will probably still arise along the way.  That’s its job – no need to resist it.  But remember, as often as you can, that you can just let the doubt sit in the background, while you get real about the fact that you don’t have all the answers.  Enjoy the feeling of not having to know it all!  It’s so much more fun that way.

I think its so much more effective and satisfying to get authentic about the things you don’t know.  If you don’t know all the answers, just act from that place of not knowing all the answers.  That’s the reality of the situation anyway right?  And by doing so, you’ll probably get to that place that you don’t know you’re going to end up, a lot faster!

You won’t have to spend days or months worrying about whether to try something or not.  And you won’t have to spend an equally long time, reassuring yourself that this is still definitely the thing you want to be doing even though it might not be.

Do this for yourself, starting right now, and I guarantee that I really don’t know whether it will actually work.