"I Don't Know"

As members of the information age, how many of us are comfortable saying we don't have the answer? British novelist and playwright Somerset Maugham said, "It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say 'I don't know'."

During training to become a life coach, there was one thing I and my peers knew: We'd been coaches all our lives. In one way or another, people had turned to us for our insights for as long as we could recall. One of the biggest obstacles we had to overcome was giving advice. That's a no-no for a coach. We had to learn to put everything into proper question form. Why?

Because the belief of coaches is that each person holds the answer for what is appropriate for them. No one knows us better than we know ourselves. The only way we can help another person find their answer is to ask a question. Eventually, we became quite good at doing so. This actually made our coaching easier because we didn't have to have the "right" answer, just the right question. And the reality is, we don't have the right answer for another person, only ourselves.

A right question stimulates a person's thought process. It opens our mind to possibilities that are appropriate and comfortable for us. It helps us look at something from a different perspective. It internalizes a challenge and a solution. We take ownership of our lives. Admitting we don't know is liberating. We can become explorers and researchers rather than fixtures.

Years back, I read a book where the author was speaking with her friend, a 93-year old woman. She said to the woman, "I've lost my job. I'm being evicted with my two children. I don't know where I'm going to go or what I'm going to do." There was a pause; then the older woman responded with something that had a huge impact on me: "I'll have to try that sometime."

We're led to believe that we're always supposed to know answers and where we're going in life. A good phrase is, If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. We can know some things, but we can't know everything. The universe is just too vast to attempt that. We can specialize in something, trust our skills and what we learn from our experiences; but we'll be a lot more relaxed about life if we can occasionally say we don't know, then trust we'll figure it out.

If there's any area of your life that needs a solution or resolution, let go of having the right answer and look for the right question. That search can open up more possibilities than you may have ever imagined. Be the Christopher Columbus of your own life.