I say it all the time. The three most powerful words in the English language are, “I Don’t Know’.
When I worked at a pet store, the boss publicly humiliated me for not being able to say, “I Don’t Know’. I learned quickly that it is not only ok, it is not only a good idea, it is not only TRUE, but it is very freeing to say, “I Don’t Know”.
If you’re close to my age you might remember the television show called “You Can’t Do That on Television”. It was awesome and here’s a link to an episode:
The whole Nickelodeon slime thing came from this show.
You see, when someone said, “I Don’t Know”, they were slimed.
So even in a show that is super funny and made for kids, they shamed people for saying it.
So it is. We have all grown up thinking it is wrong, bad, stupid, dumb, inferior, sissy, or whatever to say anything related to, “I Don’t Know”.
In fact, we will go OUT OF OUR WAY to coerce someone to believe that we, in fact, know.
We want to be smart. To be cool. To be not ashamed. To be tough.
We roll a lot of our identity into knowing things.
But the truth is? We don’t know things.
Like Jon Snow, we often know nothing.
And I’ll be the first to tell you. Once you can release your attachment to being wrong, admitting you don’t know stuff feels really, really, really good.
It really is freeing to not be afraid of not knowing.
In this Episode I talk all about not knowing. What we do know. What we can know. And things we (say it isn’t so!) will NEVER know.
Humans are great, but we ain’t all that.
Audio stream from KEW podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/530563/12595698
YouTube video: