"I Don't Know" Mindset
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode 121.
Hello, my friends. I want to dive into a phrase I hear often when I'm first working with new clients, and that's the phrase, I don't know. Now, this phrase can actually be either a fact, in that you literally don't know something, or it can be a state of mind, which is more along the lines of just not being able to decide the right or best course of action.
And I want to offer this perspective. For us women in midlife, dealing with teens as they grow up, grappling with the evolution of our role as parents, and also the evolution of our lives and what's next for us, there are quite a few ways we literally don't know, and also ways that we can fall into the mindset of I don't know. Think about it.
The playing ground is constantly changing in terms of what our kids need from us. And we're also in this constant state of learning, trying to figure out the best way to support our kids. But we're also trying to figure out how to support ourselves as we deal with the stress of parenting, and questions around what our lives will look like separate from our kids.
How do we find purpose and fulfillment? Not only is our life constantly changing, but it's changing in a way that can feel completely out of our control. So consider this, that this phrase, I don't know, in our lives right now is both an absolute fact, and it's also a mindset. And those are two separate things.
So today I want to cover three different ways we can think about this challenge of not knowing. Specifically, I want to cover the questions of one, not knowing about the future and what will happen. Two, not knowing how to approach a specific challenge that's happening in our lives.
Maybe something with our kids, or making decisions about our life and what we want to do. And this third aspect of I don't know has to do with not knowing how to feel better. These are three very different aspects of not knowing, but I'm going to touch on each of them to see if we can find some common approach to gain a little confidence around these questions.
As a coach, one of the things I really focus on when working with my clients is helping them to trust themselves to make decisions about their life. This could involve decisions about how to approach the future and creating confidence around what's to come. It might also be learning how to trust yourself to make decisions about what's happening in your life right now.
Or it could be trusting that you have the strength to overcome the painful emotions in your life, and also the strength to lean into feeling better. Believe it or not, all of this comes down to finding self-trust. And if you think about it, this concept of trust, it's actually the polar opposite of the mindset of I don't know.
So one thing to keep in mind as I'm going through these categories of I don't know is that the ability to find self-trust is really the antidote to the powerlessness of the I don't know mindset. But there are so many reasons why it can be hard to find this trust. So let's dive in.
The first I don't know I want to explore is this concept of not knowing what's to come. I was actually thinking about this yesterday because there are some big changes potentially on the horizon for my family. But we don't yet have details or clarity around how it's all going to work out.
And to be honest, I saw my brain starting to spin in a bit of anxiety about it because not knowing how things are going to turn out feels unsettling. Our minds will naturally instinctively default to not wanting to feel this discomfort, so our primitive brains try to find ways to be safe. In fact, even in a very intentional state of mind, we wouldn't choose anxiety, right? But yesterday, as I opened myself up to the anxiety I was feeling and really explored what was going on with me, I asked myself why this feeling was creeping up all of a sudden.
Because quite honestly, the change that's ahead of us has been uncertain for a while. In some ways, I realized I was approaching a point where I was starting to think it would be better to have certainty. I also realized that there were a few facts about the situation that had come up recently that I was interpreting to mean that the possibility of an outcome I didn't want or that wasn't safe felt higher in likelihood than it had before, even a few months before.
I felt some anxiety around what I perceived to be an increasing risk. Taking a step back, every moment of your life has taken you to where you are now. And if you look over the course of your life, change is inevitable.
Jobs change, kids grow up, and eventually leave home. In the grand scheme of life, particularly when you're looking back and you've worked through whatever changes come your way, at the end of the day, that becomes the reality of your life. Whether you accept it or not, you start to live into your new normal.
And eventually, even big changes become something that just happened in your life. They are literally the truth of your life. You can embrace it, or you can regret and be angry and sad about the changes that happen in your life.
But you know what those changes are. There's some certainty to But when you're looking ahead, change can feel really scary and daunting. The truth is, though, there are periods of our lives where we kind of just assume that life isn't going to change very much.
Like I think about raising my kids. While I was in the thick of it when they were little, I developed some degree of comfort in knowing what was going to happen year to year. As you were raising kids, barring major life disruptions or moves, you probably didn't worry that much about the future either.
Because in your mind, you decided that the future was predictable. Whether you realize it or not, that's what your brain was doing. In fact, you could even say that your brain was stepping into an I-know mindset.
Your mind was assuming that it knew what was ahead. And so generally, you can go through life in a relative state of peace, at least when comes to thinking about the future. Because when your brain assumes a certain steady state of life, and when it doesn't imagine that there are dangers ahead, then your brain actually creates a certain level of peace based on these assumptions of continuity.
But you know, life inevitably has a way of proving us wrong. I think we've all probably had times in our life where we had this comfort with our lives, and then something happened, and it ended up changing everything. And then you have to deal with it.
For all of us, the pandemic is a perfect example. In our wildest dreams, most likely none of us were sitting around worried about a pandemic. We've never experienced a lockdown.
So it was an absolutely surreal experience that this actually happened, even looking back at it. Yet it happened, and we made our way through it. Some of us, in fact, were even lucky enough to go through that period of time and actually cherish those moments when we were safe, with our kids at home with us, living a relatively simple life for some period of time.
So amazing that even in the midst of something really scary and dramatic, some of us found joy in that uncertainty. So now we're in the stage of life where it feels like the I know mindset isn't honest. It's hard to get ourselves to that place of mental certainty because what we do know is that change is coming, and we don't know what that will look like.
Whether that's a specific challenge, like something happening with your teen, or maybe it's just us thinking where a kid's going to college, or how they're going to do in college, what you're going to do when your kid goes to college, what comes after college. All of these unknowns are actually facts. You literally don't know.
You don't have a crystal ball. You can't see the future. And so when you say to yourself in this moment, I don't know how this is going to turn out, you're actually right.
But my friend, you never do. Even in those spans of time in your life when your brain has convinced itself to find predictability and not worry about a possible change, you were most likely wrong about some of that predictability. Even if you were right about a lot of things, I bet you can look back on your life and see the things you didn't know, how things might have turned out differently than you expected.
And not necessarily that things even turned out in a bad way, but just different than you expected. And so just notice that the fact that life is uncertain and that the future is unknown is nothing new. It's just that in this moment, we're so much more in an I don't know state of mind.
And most importantly, that it feels like a problem that we don't know. Instead of just acknowledging that the future is unknown, we begin to think that there's something to fear about that future, some unknown possibility that we don't want. And then we start to feel that anxiety, the fear and the dread.
Notice how even when we imagine these terrible future possibilities, we still don't know. We have no idea how things will turn out. And yet we already are assuming that some future pain is coming.
In fact, our brain can almost seem to want to be certain that there will be pain ahead in an effort to try to figure out how to avoid it. It's so fascinating how our brains work. So now let me jump into the second kind of I don't know.
And this is related to not knowing about the future. But this category is not knowing what to do right now. Consider something interesting here.
If you think about it, you are entirely in control of what you do right now. You get to decide. In fact, it's probably the main source of power that we don't give ourselves enough credit for in our lives.
And that is our power to make a decision. But look, I get it. It can feel difficult to make some decisions.
I found myself falling into it just this week. So this isn't a judgment if this is where you are now. Even though you might fully realize there is a decision you could or maybe even should make, you may not feel empowered to make it because you don't know which decision is the right one.
Of course, what's right or wrong is obviously subjective. Barring issues of morality, decisions are really only right or wrong either because you're judging someone else's decision that you think should be different or because you're judging your own decision in retrospect because of how you saw that decision turn out maybe in ways you didn't want. So now we get back to this concept of not being able to predict the future, not knowing how things are going to turn out.
When we think there's an absolute right decision and we're already predicting regret or disappointment if things don't work out the way we hope, then we're putting a lot of pressure on ourselves to be able to somehow predict the outcome of our decisions in the future. But this is also something that we can really never know. The outcome of any decision we make depends on a lot of things.
It could depend on us and the way we show up to that decision, whether we follow through with that decision. In fact, there are some decisions we make that we have to keep making to be successful. Take the decision to lose weight, for example.
On the one hand, it would seem like that decision is theoretically in your control to execute. But losing weight doesn't happen right away. In fact, it requires a constant commitment.
You have to decide again and again, day after day, even failure after failure, to show up for that commitment. It's not just a decision you get to make on a Monday morning. It's a decision you have to make every single time you sit down for a meal or walk into the kitchen.
This is something we don't always realize about decisions. In order to be successful, you need to develop the skill set of trusting yourself to not only make the decision, but to follow through on that decision. And not only to follow through, but also to be the person who makes a decision and then has her back about that decision, even when it doesn't work out the way you hope.
This is where we have our power, my friends. But finding that trust, maintaining that commitment, and having your back? This is easier said than done. And I'll say it's one of the biggest lessons I teach in my one-on-one coaching program.
These skill sets become even more important when you look at making decisions around situations where the outcomes are truly not in your control. One example relates to decisions around how we parent our children. As moms, we feel such a weight responsibility for our parenting decisions, as if these decisions can control or guarantee positive outcomes for our kids.
We certainly had a little more control or at least influence when our kids were little, but now that they're teens and adults, their success in life, the outcomes they experience, it's almost entirely in their hands, a result of the decisions they're making. At this stage, our influence and advice is only going to matter if our kids are willing to follow our example and take our lead. We can set boundaries and enforce consequences, but they are still independent beings making their own decisions about their life.
We literally cannot control those decisions, try as we might. But despite all of this, we put so much weight on the decisions we make as parents, as if the right decision is going to control what happens, as if these decisions are going to guarantee our kids' safety, happiness, and success. My friend, I am sad to say we can't ever do that.
I wish we could, to be honest, but we are absolutely not able to control the projection of our kids' lives, and that is incredibly scary for us as moms, particularly when we see our kids making dangerous decisions or decisions that we feel will impact their success. We've been trusted with these beautiful lives. We don't want and refuse, actually, to stand by and let them waste their opportunities, or worse, risk their lives.
But while we don't have control of our kids' decisions or outcomes, there are still decisions that we can make. And let's face it, sometimes those decisions are difficult to make, enforcing consequences that matter, picking our battles, being clear about boundaries. And frankly, it can even be difficult to commit to the decision to listen openly when our kids are telling us why they're taking a different path than what we want for them.
Sometimes when we're so focused on what we think is best, we don't have the capacity to hear what our kids really want or need. I know I've been there myself, my friend. I have to tell you from personal experience, it is not always easy to accept when your child is making choices that you see are harming them.
I think one of the most challenging aspects of parenting is holding space for your child and their pain or potential failure, and also letting them find their way through it without trying to fix it because you think you know better. If in some situations all you have to do is tell them the right path to take and they take it, hallelujah. But how many times have each of us been in that situation where we've told our teen time and time again that this is the way to avoid the pain you're experiencing, or even to avoid the possible pain of failure, and they ignore us? It's not because they're being spiteful or stupid.
In fact, they actually have a reason for making the decision they're making. But are we listening? There are so many ways we can feel stuck in the I don't know mindset about decisions in this moment. As I mentioned, there are decisions we feel uncertain about related to parenting, and then there are decisions we're hesitant to make because we're afraid the decision may not give us the result we want generally in life.
The thing is, we can never really know how things are going to turn out, not just with our kids but in our lives. We might ask ourselves, if I decide to get a job, how do I know it's going to make me happy? If I decide to divorce my husband, how do I know that I'll be better off than staying in this relationship? When you make decisions, you set in motion changes to the circumstances of your life. You can feel crippled by this fear of thinking, what if it's worse on the other side of this decision? Or what if I fail? This is at the heart of what so many of us moms struggle with at this stage of life, because we're asking some big existential questions.
What does it mean to be a good parent? What does it mean to have a good life? How will I be happy? These are not simple questions. And for the first time in a long time, because our lives are changing so much, whether we like it or not, some of these questions are inevitable. We can't hide from them just because it feels uncomfortable.
And let's face it, many of us would rather hide. In fact, sometimes it feels safer to stay in the space of uncertainty, because it feels like if you don't make a decision, that somehow you're saving yourself from the failure of making the wrong decision. But I remind you, my friend, that not making a decision is making a decision.
And the decision you make when you stay in the I-don't-know mindset is actually a decision to stay stuck in pain. So that brings me to the third I-don't-know, which is not knowing how to feel better in your life. In these first two examples of I-don't-knows, I've illustrated how the odds can feel stacked against us.
Life is uncertain, the future is unknown, and those are facts. And we've been confronted with this reality now because of the inevitable state of transition that we're in. Raising teens is hard.
And it's likely been a long time since you've had to grapple with questions about what comes next for you. So these questions about how to support our kids and how to live our lives, they aren't small, easy questions. They bring up a lot of anxiety and fear and uncertainty.
So how are you supposed to feel better when making a decision doesn't necessarily guarantee a specific outcome that you hope will happen. It actually can feel like no matter what, you're destined to be in pain. This is why for me, self-coaching and learning the process I teach in my Mom 2.0 program has been life-changing for me.
Because for my whole life, I felt like my emotional experience was dependent on life going my way. And as long as we think our emotions are not something we can create, we're powerless over our emotional experience. Dependent on life going okay so we can be okay.
So this is at the heart of what I teach in my coaching program. It's not just empowering you to make a decision. Because God knows you've been making decisions all of your life.
You know how to make a decision. The key to finding peace is creating confidence to know that no matter what happens, you trust yourself to make the decision, have your back about it, and know that you can handle whatever comes. We're so used to beating ourselves up, telling ourselves we didn't do it right, that we're not capable.
Having your back doesn't come naturally to most of us. And because we have so much experience with shame and guilt, it seems that if decisions we make don't work out, that shame and guilt are inevitable. One of the most empowering things you can realize for yourself is the only reason you feel shame and guilt is because you have a thought in your mind like, I made the wrong decision and therefore I created this terrible outcome.
That somehow if you made a better decision, you could have avoided the pain of where you are. Let's look at a quick example of a teen struggling in school. Say they get a bad quiz grade and you talk to them about getting a tutor, but then they say they don't want one.
So you do nothing and they go into the next test and they get another low grade. So what we often do as moms is we feel guilty and we think to ourselves we should have made them get a tutor. But the fact is we didn't.
In this example, most likely we didn't because our child said to us, I don't want a tutor. So we backed off. Should we have forced him to get a tutor? Let me ask, how invested would this kid be in that tutoring session if we forced them to go into the tutoring session? How do you know that it would have worked out any differently? This is just a simple example of how we don't have our back about decisions we make because we think somehow we should have known, we should have been able to control the outcome, or really we're thinking that somehow things absolutely would have turned out differently if only we had made a better decision.
The truth is we have absolutely no idea. It's almost like subconsciously we think we're these all-powerful beings that have control over how other people act and how they show up in their lives, but it's a lie. And thinking that some simple choice we could have made would absolutely have changed the trajectory of our kid's future, not only is it a lie, but it is excruciatingly painful.
Imagine in the same example, now this kid has a bad grade on two tests, and then he comes to you and says, Mom, I think you're right, I need a tutor. Now he's invested. Or maybe it takes him a little longer to find his way.
Sometimes our kids need to learn the hard way. But I wonder, if you think about your life, if you can look back to a situation that at first was something you didn't want, but that in retrospect turned out to be the miracle of your life. My son's principal stood up in a ceremony earlier this week and was talking to the kids about college outcomes, and he told them that he was rejected from his top two college choices, so he ended up at his third choice.
Not only did he say he had the time of his life in college, but he also met his wife there. You can never really know how things will turn out. But what if in looking back at your life and holding on to the regret that changing a past decision meant that you had to give up on all of the beautiful things that you've had because you made a different decision.
The only thing that's happening with regret and shame and guilt is that you're holding on to this lie that you could have avoided the pain. But in the meantime, you're not fully experiencing all of the perfection of life exactly as it is. You can focus on guilt and regret, or you can focus on the perfection.
Both are available to you always. We've all made decisions that we maybe thought were the right ones at the time that turned out badly. We've all behaved in ways that we regret because of our state of mind at the time.
Every single one of us can identify points in our life that we wish were different. And when you really lean into it, open yourself up to the truth of it, you can also see how even through the pain, there was growth and even love. There was pain and joy.
The human experience, my friends. We're so afraid of living that human experience. Consider that life might be 50% pain and 50% joy.
But when you're petrified of the pain, you actually make it bigger. You actually create an emotional experience where you're living in 80 or 90% pain rather than just allowing the simple 50%. It is absolutely true that you don't know.
You don't know the future and how your decisions will turn out. You don't know how other people will respond to your decisions. You don't know what different possibilities or consequences will result that are completely out of your control.
You don't know any of that. But you do have the ability to create an I know mindset by focusing on what is in fact in your control. You can trust yourself to be someone who is willing to embrace both the joy and the pain of your life.
You can know how to let go of shame and regret by making a commitment to have your back about the decisions you make with the information you had at the time. You know how to make a decision, my friend. But do you know how to make a decision and trust yourself to follow through, to have your back, and to be in control of your next best decision? Do you know how to trust yourself to handle the seasons of your life? This is the gift you can give yourself with my program, Mom 2.0. You can know how to trust yourself to move forward.
Until next time, my friend.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, Mom 2.0, at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
