I was reading a blog post from Michael Hall (no relation!) about trusting not-knowing, and he used a Zen quote 'Only not know'. Check out his blog post here:
Trust not knowing.
What's really interesting about this is that we feel really uncomfortable not knowing. Every person I have ever coached, in business or personally, has said one of the things they wanted was CLARITY. Clarity is about knowing something. It's hard to not know, isn't it? Why is that?
Think about your entire schooling. What were you tested on? Your knowledge! You passed or failed depending on whether or not you knew something. So to not know something equates to failing in some way.
One of the things I teach in understanding trust is our expectations. Our expectations as formed in a number of different ways, one of which is our own direct experiences of things. You have experienced success and failure based on what you know, therefore you have developed an expectation about what happens to you when you know something, and what happens to you when you don't know something. So not knowing something is really hard, right?
What happens with our expectations is that they drive our behaviour. When we expect something, we behave in ways that are consistent with that expectation, and we bring it about, we make it happen. So if we expect that we will fail if we do not know, then that's exactly what happens! I don't know about you, but I've spent a lot of money and a lot of time getting people to advise me in my business so that I KNEW exactly what I needed to know to make my business successful. And with all due respect to those people, I can tell you now that a whole lot of things that they did not anticipate happened and got in the way of the plans. And a whole lot of things that they 'knew' would happen, didn't!
What I've learned to expect, in my business, and in my personal life, is that life happens. It is impossible to know everything that is to happen, every opportunity that is going to land in your lap, every person that you are going to meet. You cannot know that. That's what makes life's journey so interesting!
So, you can be comfortable 'not knowing', and simply expecting that what is meant to happen will happen. That you will meet the right people, and the right events will happen for you if you simply move in the direction of your dreams and your purpose.
Trust that. Trust not knowing.
