You need to get frustrated.
You NEED to feel like you have no clue what you’re doing and not run away from those moments.
Something most of us could do a better job of is embracing the feeling of not knowing. That’s because it’s where every ounce, every drop, every atom of growth is waiting, twiddling its fingers with its thumb up its butt (somehow), waiting for you to find it.
Each time you find that you don’t know how to do something, it’s because you’ve run out of connections in the brain. When we drive somewhere by memory, it’s because we have the connections in our brain of what turns to take. When you go somewhere you’ve never been, you draw blanks. You have two choices:
A) Quit. Continue living with the blanks. When you return to this split in the road (and you will, because if it weren’t valuable to you, you wouldn’t be here, to begin with), you will Still. Only. Draw. Blanks. Until you decide to follow through and make a new map.
Time will have passed then; you may have achy joints, children, or 40 cats by then, who knows.
B) Stay in it and create new connections in the brain. If I ask you what you can change this week so you will be down 2 lbs next week and you say, “I don’t know,” you’re drawing blanks; your brain has no neural connections to solve the problem. That makes total sense because maybe you don’t know. OR – no one asked you and refused to let you poo-poo on your dreams and goals by accepting “I don’t know” as an answer.
But you stay in it and 2 minutes later, an idea (new connection) of what you could try hits you. You say, “Well, I could google healthy Starbucks drinks instead of my Venti hoochichoochiato’s 550 calories that I’ve been drinking daily since the Big Bang happened.”
I say, “Great! Lets do it here together.” I quickly erase my browser history and whisk us away on a Google adventure. We find the @macrobarista on Instagram, and you try a drink that’s only 120 calories, and OHMYYEEZUS, it’s delicious. You have a new favorite drink. You’re down by nearly a pound in 7 days just from that one change that you loved making after all.
That’s how simple this game is to win.
You come to every roadblock and accept it for what it is.
A “fill-in-the-blank” question on life’s test.
A puzzle with some pieces still in the box. All you have to do is sort through them.
There’s so much cool sh*t out there to learn, practice, and become nifty at if you can stay in the feeling of unknowing long enough to finally know.
No one will do this for you.
BUT, could this be a ton of fun if you chose to see it that way?
Stay Sexi, San Diego
-J
