#77 The ‘I Don’t Know’ Syndrome

Rachel Denning (00:01.102)
Holy guacamole my friends. I'm having an awesome day. Welcome to another episode of the extraordinary family life podcast. We did another live training this morning with our extraordinary family life monthly coaching group. Man what a group of awesome people. I love I love meeting with them connecting with them. We had a fantastic training this morning. It really about.

seeing ourselves in the middle of two decades, right? Just kind of going to do this with me mentally right now. See yourself in the middle of two decades. So the last 10 years and then the next coming to 10 years and you're standing in the middle there and you're learning from what happened looking forward now saying, okay, what am I going to what's worked? Then I'm going to carry with me what didn't work. Then I'm going to just change because the next 10 years are going to come. They're going to come and go.

And 10 years from now, we're gonna be like, okay, now what? And so we got to make them count. You guys, we can't just keep going through life, letting life happen to us. We've got to be so much more intentional about making life work for us. Because let's be honest, life is just so much more fun when you're crushing it. When you're winning, it's a blast. It feels great. Even, even when...

things aren't working out like you thought. Even when you're facing challenges and trials and some intense struggles. I'm meeting with you guys and wonderful clients every week and some of you are facing some big heavy stuff and my heart and mine and soul reaching out to you and I empathize and understand I've been through hard times and we have our own trials and challenges right? As we're growing and I'm pushing,

I'm pushing my levels all the time. I hope you guys know that about me. I would never ever challenge you or invite you to challenge yourself if I wasn't doing it myself. I'm going all the way. That's just part of my own integrity. I will never ask you to do things that I'm not pushing crazy hard for. And so I'm going after it and when you're going after it really hard, every step is a step into the unknown. It's unknown for you, it's unknown for me. I'm...

Rachel Denning (02:23.342)
If I'm pushing, if I'm pushing my limits, then each step is a step into something I don't know yet. And it's uncomfortable. And sometimes you, you misstep and sometimes you trip, fall on your face. And, but it's, it's challenging, it's growing. So even in the challenge, it's, it's more fun when you're winning and you're growing and improving and, and, and going after it. I love it. I love it.

And I back to this group, I love this group of people and you guys, we are gonna make 2020 so absolutely incredible. And if you are looking for a community and a tribe of people to like roll with you and support you and cheer you on and inspire you where you can find community and help and get the, literally get a wake up call every month, like to say, hey, how you doing?

Let's let's how's it going? Let's go. Let's get a little pattern interrupted here. Let's let's go after it. Here's a new idea. Here's a new challenge for this month. Let's hit this. And so inside, inside that coaching program, we're going to do a 28 day challenge every month with a different theme. We're going to go over the extraordinary family life formula and, and we're going to, we're going to go through the extraordinary. I was calling, I used to call it the epic life planner. We're going to call it the extraordinary life planner and plow through that, do the trainings.

this stuff is awesome. Anyways, I'm so excited about it. I'm stoked. So if you, if, if you're not in there, I think you should be in there. I really do. It, we've made it super affordable. in fact, you can get in and just try it out and the plus you have access to all the archives of the live trainings plus tons of trainings that I did as I was traveling around the world. all kinds of great stuff. Anyways, it's all in there. It's fantastic. So today my friends, I'm going to talk about,

What I call is the I don't know syndrome. Now I just made up that name. So maybe it's a thing. I don't know. I've never heard it before, but I made it up because I kept hearing it. And maybe you have to when, when you're trying to work with one of your children and you're like, Hey, what do you, what do you think you should do about that? I don't know. how could you? Maybe, maybe it's a coworker. Maybe it's somebody you're leading. It's a team member.

Rachel Denning (04:43.726)
Maybe it's somebody in your congregation or somebody trying to mentor anyone, anyone, your spouse, whatever, a sibling. And you're just saying, Hey, you know, you're trying to get them to answer a question about life, about improvement, about growth. And maybe you've done this yourself. You come up against that question and the immediate response is, I don't know. And it's not.

It's not that you sincerely don't know and you're trying to find out. It's just using that as an escape. It's it's saying, I don't know. And then walking away from it mentally or physically, it's saying it's you got I'm saying like it's using I don't know. It's using those three words as a total cop out as something that just kind of.

It almost you're trying to use it as a finality. Like, I don't know. And we're done. And that thought and those words are keeping so many of you from your potential.

And I want to throw this out there, like set up a framework. I don't know is an optional thought. It's a story you're telling yourself. It might even possibly be a lie because you might actually know. But whatever it is, it's holding you back and it's another form of victimism. Let this sink in. This is powerful, right? So think about it. Whatever it is you keep using those words for.

is not being handled well. Essentially, it's an easy out. It's an evasion. It's an avoidance. So don't allow yourself to stay with that thought and those words for very long. Let me give you some examples. So if I were to ask, what's your big goal right now? What are you going to do about it? What do you need to change?

Rachel Denning (06:57.613)
saying I don't know is code language for nothing. And when we aim at nothing, we hit nothing. In many instances, actually, I think you do know. But if you genuinely don't, like if for some of the big questions in life of like, what do you need to do to totally transform your marriage? What do you need to do to?

transform your health? What do you need to do to seriously level up your parenting? What do you need to do to be 10 times more successful in 2020?

With a lot of those questions, like you're gonna know. And here's the interesting thing. Okay, here's the real question. You might know what you need to do. In fact, this is the most common thing. You actually know what you need to do, but you're not doing it.

And so then the coaching question would be to you, why aren't you doing it? You know what you need to do to level up your marriage or your health or your spirituality or your emotional mastery or your leadership. You know what you need to do. Why aren't you doing it?

And that's where you might throw out an I don't know.

Rachel Denning (08:27.373)
But if we sit with it for a minute, do you know really?

Rachel Denning (08:36.045)
Do you know? And if, I mean, let me just say this. If you genuinely don't know, if you're up against something and you genuinely don't know, that's okay. You just now have an urgent mission to find out.

I do it now and do not allow yourself to go much longer without knowing. So there's, there's, there's actually no, there's no problem not knowing my friends. That's, that's fine. That's great. If you genuinely don't know, that's okay. Find out. The problem is when we say, I don't know, and we just leave it at that.

The reaction that I want to have, if I ever get to a pointed important question and I genuinely don't know, the reaction that I personally want to have is, holy cow, I don't know. I got to stop everything I'm doing and find out. Like, why don't I know this? Right? Okay, my mission has changed. I'm going after it. Like, I have, I got to go right now. I got some urgency. I've got to find out.

Because if I say to myself, well, I don't know, and then I walk away from it and like, what's for dinner? And are we gonna catch a show tonight? And let's work on this other thing. Then I don't know, again, is code language for nothing? I'm not gonna do anything. And if I don't do anything, then I get nothing.

Wow, right? And I don't know is never an unchanging fact, right? It's never just a solid fact like I don't know and I'll never know. That's just, that's, that's not true. We might tell ourselves that story sometimes. The truth is that you can know if you will.

Rachel Denning (10:28.205)
But some of you don't want to know. Isn't that true? Calling you out with love, my friends. Some of you don't want to know. You don't want to know what you need to change. You don't want to know what you really need to do. And maybe it's because it's intimidating or overwhelming. Maybe it's you got some fear and worry.

Maybe you're afraid of the process, what it's going to cost you. Maybe you're afraid of the outcome, the unknown. Like what, what's this going to do if I actually go after this, what's it going to do? What's it going to do to me? What's it going to do to my marriage? What's going to do my family? And, and those are legitimate concerns, but if we get down to the facts and we know, right. And we want to know, and then we know, well, then we have,

We have a moral obligation to take action, to do it.

But the challenge is this condition of the I don't know syndrome. I'm just calling it that that I don't know syndrome is often caused by fear. Like I said or casualness sometimes caused by indifference or indecision maybe a lack of vision or even mental laziness. But I want to invite you and challenge you to not.

use I don't know as an escape or as an excuse or as a cop out and never as a final statement of, you know, hey, what should we do with them? I don't know, done, end of story. For some of you, that's like saying, amen, I'm done with that thought and sentence, let's move on. But it's not it at all. That's not it at all. And to be a high performer,

Rachel Denning (12:33.805)
achiever, we cannot allow ourselves to, wow, this is a bold statement. We cannot allow ourselves to stay with I don't know. Again, it's okay to not know. You might say, I genuinely don't know, let me find out. Let me think about it. And you actually do think about it and you actually do find out. So it's okay not to know things. There's tons of things I don't know.

But I don't, if it's important to me, I don't allow myself to not know for long. And I'm trying really hard to catch myself, you guys, of saying I don't know when with a little thought and a little honesty and a little courage, I actually do know.

I actually do know. And so I can own that. And when we take ownership of the responsibility of knowing and doing something about it, the most amazing things start to happen. And if we stop and say, hey, why is this happening? I don't know. Well, okay, give it some thought and do this with your kids too. man, teenagers love, well, and adults too, but teens are like,

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. That's their favorite answer. I don't know, I don't know. Cause it feels like if I say I don't know, then I'm just, I'm off the hook. Well, no, you're not. You are not off the hook friend. You still got the hook. Like, well, okay, you better find out. And we're going to sit here and look at each other awkwardly until you all of a sudden do know. Like, let's get this done. And so I want to challenge you to the same thing. Like take full ownership of knowing. Full ownership.

Like, like make this super important to you to find out the answers and then take action and find the solution to the problem. If something's not right in your life, why? If you don't know, find out, make it your business to know. And as we do that, awesome things will happen because it gives us ownership. It gives us knowledge. It gives us power. It gives us clarity. We get the facts.

Rachel Denning (14:47.181)
And when we have the facts in front of us, then we can act on them. We can do something to change it up and make things happen. So find out my friends, make things happen and go get it done. Remember, we're training for greatness. Training for greatness. Love you guys, reach upward.

Rachel Denning (15:10.573)
Hey everybody, thanks so much for listening to this episode. I hope you got a lot of value out of it and found some things that you can apply to your life right away. Hey, I'm being totally sincere when I say I live to help you live your extraordinary life. So I hope you'll reach out to me if you have any questions or let me know how I can help you in any important area of your life. And in fact, you know, this podcast is brought to you by the School of Awesome Sauce monthly coaching program. Take advantage of that, get in there. It's the

best way to get a breakthrough to the next level so you can level up your health, your spirituality, your emotions, your mind, your relationships, your finances, business, every part of your life. Just get in there where you have a coach and a mentor, you have a supportive community to make things happen. So jump in there, take advantage of this, try it out, get in there with us and level up your life. See you on the inside. Reach upward.