You Can Know What You Don’t Know - Grasshopper

The headline seems rather “riddle-ee” or like a conundrum, but not knowing is much deeper than that.

Not knowing is your passport to appreciating and opening you to what you don’t know. Knowing stops you at the border; not knowing gets you past your customs.

 

Not knowing engages your curiosity; certainty stops it dead in its tracks.

 

Here’s a little experiment to open you up to not knowing. Take a mundane, mindless activity and pay careful attention while you execute it. For example, the next time you approach a doorknob, wonder how it works before you take any action. In other words, don’t know about the doorknob, as was once the case way back when. Explore it from all different angles.

 

Here’s what you’ll notice: you’ll watch your curiosity kick in. Not knowing gives your curiosity a kick in the pants. In case you haven’t noticed, curiosity provides juice to your life. Certainty keeps your curiosity on the shelf along with the nourishment and joy it brings.

 

You’ll learn a lot more about life and people when you approach them from the angle of not knowing. Curiosity removes any smugness that is a staple of certainty and acts as a barrier to communication.

 

Start allowing yourself the freedom to not know what you know. And don’t be too surprised to see yourself grow, and as a bonus, be more in the know.

 

All the best,

 

John