On not knowing.

So you’re a planner. You gravitate towards structure. You are organised, you make bookings, you love a good list. You are not alone. Or if you’re none of those things but still have ideas, visions, goals and expectations for yourself and your life, then you still fall into the large majority of folks living today. If we examine this in an ecological systems manner, we can see the influence of Western society and consumerism values: order brings success, controlling things or people brings success, success and money appear important, etc. “If we fail to plan, we plan to fail.” I’ve even been guilty of saying this to clients.

What if despite our best intentions and efforts to plan ahead and design (or even do our best to know) our future, it still doesn’t go according to plan. It’s not following the blueprint that you set out for it. It’s navigating off course! “Course correct!”, you scream at it, frustrated and devastated. Heartbroken even, perhaps.

There might be feelings of grief for the loss of the life you wanted or expected, and worked so damn hard to obtain. There might be feelings of disillusionment, anger or thoughts of “what’s the point even trying again anyway, it all just turns out opposite to the way I want it to!” It might feel impossible to let go of our initial plans and desires. Adjusting to these disappointments and perceived ‘failures’ seems too impossible and too painful. We want to resist it. We don’t want to give up! What would it say about me?

Many of us suffer this pain and it can feel overwhelming, even completely incomprehensible. “But why? I’m a good person… I worked hard at this… Why can’t I get what I see everyone else around me getting…[insert your own internal dialogue here"]”.

But what if we simply cannot know? Or force, or control. What if we cannot hold too tightly onto the intentions or dreams we have - not in order to manage our expectations (“have no expectations, you’ll never be disappointed”, eyeroll). But in a more liberating way. To surrender, to be free, to live spontaneously, to live with flow and acceptance and grace. To live fully in the present moment, no matter what it is offering us.

Seems counter-intuitive that a therapist invested in your change or improvements and who has likely even helped you clarify goals for yourself, would make such wild claims. Even Gabor Maté, a world renowned psychotherapist and addiction expert, shares his own realisation that surrender needs to occur spontaneously in him, allowing events to unfold without his intention. He notices that any effort he makes for deliberate action, results in opposite, egoic forces being expressed instead. So folks, to ‘not-know’, seems like one of the few universal truths and paths to happiness.

To flip the negative and often attacking self-talk on its’ head, we could challenge it by saying: that to live a life of easefulness, flow or even success is not necessarily to cling and fight to the deliberate plans measured out for oneself. But that it is actually a wonderful comment on oneself to be adaptive, accepting, organic and even self-compassionate and forgiving. That in the face of challenge, disappointment or traditional ‘non-success’, that a person can not only allow this process to occur but build and thrive from it. These are the qualities of deeper, fuller happiness and success, and a life of vitality and growth.

Brene Brown shares this discussion of ongoing balance (or battle?) between acceptance and drive/striving. Many of us find ourselves riding this seemingly never ending see-saw throughout life, bouncing from one side to the other in extreme fashion. You can watch her interview with Tim Ferris on the topic here if you’re interested. Spoiler alert: the crux of it is that we are human, we will get it wrong sometimes. We can strive for achievement, success, accomplishment AND self-accept and have compassion and kindness towards ourselves even when (and they will at some point) these things don’t come to fruition. And that’s ok.

As a fellow advocate and student of vulnerability, I find the below inspiring for me to keep trying to open up into moments of vulnerability because I want more out of life.

"Being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure." Bob Marley