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Be okay with not knowing
You don’t know what you don’t know. There is humility and maybe even freedom in this truth.
The antithesis, “you only know what you know”, but some people only operate in the space of everything they know with arrogance and conceit as if there is nothing more to know beyond what they know. It takes vulnerability, exposure to be okay with not knowing something, learning or taking on a beginner’s mindset. Which is not very comfortable. Operating in the discomfort, awkwardness of the unknown, curiosity, exploration.
But the real knowledge is actually knowing that you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s the first prompt of curiosity to seeking out those things you don’t know.
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Forced Presence
I remember as a child and teenager, disliking school so much, the routine, the process, the work, the repetition, the pointlessness of it, the futility – thinking or the intuition that going through this is not going to get me to the outcome I imagine for myself.
But then having to deal with it, this is the state of what it is. I mean either be miserable while going through it or try to figure out how to make it not just painless but find the frequency that makes it easy. So figuring out how to be in a flowstate. I would find it, but sometime by the middle of the school year, and school would almost be over.
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Process and Clarity
There is comfort in the process, clarity in the step by step, confidence in knowing it’s been done before, proven and tested. It’s reliable, dependable, repeatable.
But building a process lacks a defined path, not only are the answers unclear but what questions to ask are uncertain. It is hypothesizing, testing and making mistakes. It requires, openness to the unknown, humility in being wrong and conviction in the discovery.
This is the part that energizes me, captures my focus and intensity, gives me clarity and direction in what I’m doing. Trying to find the pattern within the patterns to maximize efficiency, optimization and potentiation.
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Process & Practice
The hard part is creating the process while doing the practice — feels very inefficient and clumsy but maybe need to just accept it for the first run, because you can only think through so much of the process before actually doing it and knowing what you actually need to get to the immediate actionable item – then once the process is built out, it can run more on automaticity – which is the phase I’m trying to get to – finding the immediate actionable item → to provide a space, place and time for flowstate.
So the process is building the road so you can just ride on it. It’s like snowboarding and you’re building a terrain park, building the park is the super involved part, testing and making, testing and making – before you can just ride and jump… and other people just come and can ride and jump without having done any of the building.
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Permission to make mistakes
Give yourself permission to make mistakes. Allowing yourself to make mistakes is the start of having a growth mindset. Permission to make mistakes is knowing you will make mistakes – that is not being afraid to make them. It’s learning from them when you do but not dwelling in self-judgment and criticism. Not giving up on yourself because you will make more but less of the ones you’ve already made. Interpreting mistakes as the more you make, the closer you are to where you want to be.
Having the expectation you can’t make mistakes, first of all is impossible, and second a sign of pride and ego, resulting in a fixed mindset – which produces a difficult mindset to learn, have humility, awareness and accept teaching.
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We are meant for these relationships, an internal tuning fork
There’s a reason why we fall into the same relationship patterns.
There’s a reason why we have a certain response to that person, the way they say things, how they phrase it, their energy, their attitude.
There’s a reason why we have the same reaction to similar thing but different people.
It’s a tuning fork that only we can hear, that something is out of tune in our lives.
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That Creative Tension
It needs to feel a little challenging, with the processes, I’ve tried to make it over-easy but it’s that bit of the unknown, fear that creates that creative tension to come up with something new, something unique, something personal. Surfing in between that tension.. that flowstate. Easy becomes boring, repetitive and a grind.