The Power to Say I Don’t Know

I don’t know.

That’s not so hard to say, is it? Unless you’re me, because then it’s incredibly hard to say.

Nobody knows everything — but being able to say this out loud is something that, because of my ego, I struggle to do almost everyday.

Knowing makes me feel confident. It’s easy to feel confident when you already know what you’re doing. I’ve been chasing that feeling, day after day, while trying to convince my friends and co-workers that I Know What I’m Doing.

But oftentimes I fail. I find out that I have missed some detail, been confused, or I was just absolutely, completely, totally wrong.

Naturally it makes me crazy when someone else is pretending to know something when they don’t and I’m on the receiving end of it. It’s either very obvious, showing that you think I’m stupid, or it’s not obvious, showing that you don’t respect the time and energy believing you might cost me.

Maybe it’s because of this that I admire people who can plainly admit when they don’t know something.

But not when they use an ‘I don’t know’ to avoid facing a difficult question or challenge. That’s about as useless as pretending to know what you’re doing, because either way, the result is the same: the problem doesn’t get solved.

So what comes after ‘I don’t know’ is what’s important.

“I don’t know.”

Resignation?

“But…

“I will find out.

“I will ask someone who does.

“I will get back to you.

“I will try.

“I am willing to learn.”

Or resolve?

Lately I’ve been trying to find balance in my not knowing.

At work, I am quieter. I pay more attention. I look and listen more carefully. I ask questions when I don’t understand.

Instead of trying to convince myself or my coworkers of how much I know, I try to see what I can learn from them.

Therein is a great power. I couldn’t learn much from my coworkers before. Whenever I observed them at work, I was busy comparing myself to them: finding reasons to put them down and put myself up. I needed something to help me feel good about myself.

Now I try to observe without judging. How do they do what they do? How can I use it to make myself better?

And instead of going after feeling good about myself by trying to show everyone how smart I am, I try to think of how I can be more helpful by taking the initiative with small, basic tasks.

Saying ‘I don’t know’ doesn’t sound like a very hard thing to do when you’re just thinking about it abstractly, but not knowing is a scary place that can shrink your self-confidence and grow your anxiety.

And admitting your lack of knowledge or having it revealed can be terribly embarrassing. I experience this most often at my job. I only started four months ago, and though I have some experience, I am not used to the way they do things here. I want to convince my coworkers that I know what I’m doing so badly.

Yet what ends up happening is that not only do I make the kind of mistakes that are expected when starting a new job, but I also go and make more mistakes because I’m trying to impress them with how intelligent and professional I am, which ends up suggesting the opposite.

I still trip over my ego sometimes. But it’s easier to direct my attention away from needing to feel like I already know everything and refocus that energy on learning.

There’s a story about a student who asks a master to be his teacher. They sit down to tea. The teacher pours the student’s cup. The student watches in horror as the teacher fills the cup until it’s overflowing.

And like the student in that story, I come into my job, and many other situations in life where I can learn something new, with a cup already full of assumptions and ego. Now I’m trying to empty my cup, of how I think things are and how I think things should be. Instead of having a mind that is closed and rigid, I am striving to be receptive to all the knowledge that is out there, waiting for me to make room for it.