I Don’t Know, and I’m OK With It

Mountains of Arizona
Before Sunrise 60 Degrees
3:28 a.m.

Going to the grocery store at 5 a.m., like I often do, is an interesting experience.

It’s quiet, all of the employees are generally happy at that time of day, and there’s often literally no other customer in the store.

This is the time of day when loads of products are being unpacked and stacked onto the shelves.

Sometimes, the piles of goods are blocking things I might usually get. If the aisle is full of people unpacking things, maybe I just skip that for the day. Or maybe I choose something else.

The reasons people buy and don’t buy things are almost as varied as the things they buy.

But we like to think we know why they do what they do.

You can ask them why they buy or don’t buy, but they generally won’t tell you the real truth. Sometimes they’ll tell you what they think you want to hear. Or maybe they’ll tell you something that makes them feel good about themselves. Or something that reinforces the story they have about themselves.

“We deliver the fastest and most beautiful widgets this side of the Mississippi River!” says the business owner.

You might think your customers want fast and beautiful, but what if they buy from you for completely different reasons? What if each being has a slightly different reason?

Would you know?

You can study the numbers, of course, but those will tell any story you want them to tell.

Entrepreneurs like to figure things out. Even more, they like to FEEL like they have things figured out, whether or not that’s actually true.

But it gives us a feeling of “control” over life, even though, deep down, we know we’re in the middle of a reality we don’t control.

Supposedly, we’re on a spinning ball flying through space at 60K miles per hour with no one in the driver’s seat. Kind of the definition of NO CONTROL right there.

So we would much rather go BOLDLY in the direction of our “conclusions” than sit there and admit we have no idea about much of anything.

Feeling sure can sometimes be even more important than actually being right.

One day, I realized all of this self-storytelling about why X or Y happens is a real waste of energy.

So I just stopped trying to figure out why people buy anything.

I know it makes you sound smart when you confidently posit that you truly KNOW why your clients and customers are coming to you.

But I don’t think that helps anyone. Especially you!

To remain in a state of grateful UNKNOWING won’t get you any awards, because most people are too scared to say they don’t know. We’ve all been trained to feel that’s a bad thing. That it shows some form of weakness instead of strength or power.

(If you haven’t figured it out yet, NO ONE knows what they’re doing…especially the people who most loudly proclaim they know what they’re doing.)

What the willingness to “not know” will get you is:

  • Freedom from feeling like you have a secret (that you really don’t know what you’re doing) you don’t want anyone to discover.
  • A radical acceptance of WHAT IS. (Always the best place to start!)
  • A detachment from the program that there’s a “right way” and that only select people ever figure out what that is.
  • A gradual reorientation of the causal point of your reality. Instead of trying to “find” your way through, you realize you are here to CREATE your way through.