What Do You Do When You Don't Know What to Do? (a real question)

Sitting in the Unknown…

Something I play with a lot with clients, is where they go (in their head) when they don’t know what to do.

It’s a simple enough question to ask,

What do you do when you don't know what to do?

And I’m usually asking when someone is in a calmer, settled state of mind, which means the answer I get is pretty wise—usually some version of,

I slow down, take a break.

Someone might tell me they escape to nature, they stop, perhaps meditate, take on a diversionary task to let their mind do the work in the background.

The Reality?

We all know this and I've tested this many times as the hypothetical question and rarely does someone say,

Oh I panic, run around like a headless chicken, get more and more wound up in my head, over-thinking until I finally KNOW I have to stop!

The Judgement?

And yet... what I also notice is that most of us are not that comfortable with the unknown.

We don’t allow it just to sit, we judge it, or judge ourselves as somehow ‘lesser’ because we don’t have an answer right away, and we start to riffle around in the mental box of tricks thinking that’s where answers come from.

Whatever happened to kindness?

The Solution…

So, let me pose the bonus questions,

Given that you know that slowing down is the best response to not knowing what to do, how often do you actually do that?

It might be interesting to notice, not so much the answer that comes to you, but the place where answers come from.

With love,

Cathy