Accepting ‘I don’t know’ in response to a mind filled with questions and problems was just the first step in hearing solutions to the issues I faced with my final client in my previous post. Many traditional psychotherapies now include acceptance as one of the steps in living a more psychologically flexible life. Acceptance entails two components. The first is acceptance of life as it is. The second is acceptance of what our mind understands (or not) about it. If my life requires that I work full time in order meet my financial commitments, feed all members of the family, keep us safe and secure in our home, etc. then accepting enables me to do what is needed. Don’t accept them and I occupy a fantasy world from which I am easily frustrated when the realities of life intrude. When we accept physical reality, our natural intelligence provides the ideas and thoughts needed. Get caught up in our heads, however, and the solutions to physical reality are blocked. They are still there, but our attention is elsewhere.

Now, I know that I can work, and that I can work at whatever if need be. So when I am faced with finding full time work, my mind doesn’t flip into a conniption about the possibility or impossibility of that. Instead, it automatically opens up to ideas. But what about when I come across problems in which I am not so well versed? Ones like how to respond to client problems I am unfamiliar with, or how to respond to a family member in domestic violence, or how to respond to a life threatening health condition? Problems in which I have no prior knowledge or are seemingly impossible to solve?

A busy mind is just as unhelpful in these circumstances as it is to more easily solved individual issues. It clouds access to whatever we need in the moment to move forward, whether that be into action or a shift into deeper understanding. Just as consciously acknowledging the physical requirements of life can open up the mind, so too can acceptance of ‘I don’t know’. Acceptance of ‘I don’t know’ brings the busyness of our minds to a halt and opens it up to fresh ideas.

But consider our learning around ‘I don’t know’? How many of us have been yelled at, hit, shamed, made to stand in the corner, sent to our rooms, made to stand outside a classroom, etc. because we didn’t know? In my mind, our experiences with ‘I don’t know’ is partially behind most people’s psychological habit of venturing into excessive thinking when confronted with a problem. We have learned that a statement of the truth ‘I don’t know’ is unsafe and so we psychologically go looking, usually for a solution that we think will appease the person who has asked the question.

When I stray into a busy mind, I am looking for understanding that solves everything. I do it because I have learned that when I either spoke my truth or I responded with ‘I don’t know’ someone else was very unhappy. As a child, if being truthful didn’t appease others, then I only had one other psychological place to go – out there. The experience of ‘I don’t know’ morphed into a mental habit of turn away from my own wisdom/truth and seek outside. But looking ‘out there’ for understanding and solutions accelerates thinking and takes us away from the clarity we seek. Clarity is found in a slow mind. Mental habits learned from our childhood experiences with ‘I don’t know’ hinder the clarity we seek.

Notice when your mind is busily searching for understanding everywhere but within your own wisdom/truth. Turn around, speak your truth and accept ‘I don’t know’. Go about your life and be grateful for the insights that will come if needed. Practise acceptance of ‘I don’t know’. See what happens when you reclaim the truth that ‘I don’t know’ is healthier and wiser than trying to pretend we know it all, or that we know nothing and other people know it all. Experiment with voicing ‘I don’t know’ without giving reasons. If we don’t know, we don’t know. Experiment with living life from not knowing. Reclaim the power of speaking our truth of ‘I don’t know’ when that is the case. Experience the peace, calm and insights that often follow.

Photo: Matt Walsh, Unsplash.