I didn't know the topic for this week's blog post so I crowd-sourced it. I requested the topic to come from my Twitter followers. That was 10 minutes ago and there still hasn't been any response. I just realized this week's topic IS “I don't know”.
When you take Landmark (the advanced course) you're introduced to this concept called your “ACT” which is basically a thought that constantly goes through your head, it is generally false yet creates a big piece of your identity. A decade ago when I took Landmark everyone else around me was able to get their act and I spent over a day trying to figure mine out. I felt lost because I could not figure it out. I did not know what my ACT could possibly be, but we all have one. I finally went up to the facilitator and said “I don't know my ACT” , “I don't know how to figure it out”. Their response was “is it possible that I don't know IS your act?”
The pieces clicked together. That thought, I don't know, is constantly present. To counteract it I've spent so much time and energy learning more and more to try to fill in the “I don't know” with “I know”. But I can never get to “I know” as there is always more to know. Also it is never really true there is never a time where I don't know ( I always have an opinion). I am often stopped by indecision because of all the possibilities and all the things I DO know. The level of knowing I FEEL I require (100%) is impossible for anyone.
I also didn’t know how to give up this ACT as it is just as much an act to myself as it is to the world. This week on one of my walks I got the way to reframe it. When my brain says “I don't know” I can honestly say to it, “you know everything you need to know”. In every moment my knowledge, right now, is perfect.
Sitting here thinking about this blog post, realizing I don't know what to write and then crowdsourcing the question (even without an answer) I also realized how much crowdsourcing itself IS the answer as well. All of the nearly infinite knowledge on any given topic can not be stored in one brain. Individually we can not know everything, but together we can.
Right now I feel I'm almost ready to start dating again but I do not know how to make that light and easy. I'm going to post on my personal Facebook page asking others for help. I want to hear from people who have been chronically single their whole lives and now are not. What changed for them? What shifted? So that they were able to change. I don't want to know from people who are constantly in relationships or have no problem getting in relationships, they're the flip side. I want to learn from the people who are in the same position as me but have gotten out of it. I don't have an attachment to actually getting in a relationship but I want to be open to connection with another human being and I just love that “I don't know how" plus crowdsourcing is exactly why I am doing this project AND how I will get answers to my dating dilemma.
We are smarter together. No single person can know everything and even if they could they have to work in a world where others do not know everything. Together we can know everything we need to. Together we are going to organize knowledge in a way that we can trust and use it. I am creating a world where “I don't know” can't stop me or anyone else by directly acknowledging what I truly do not know and allowing others to make up that lack.
Right now what I truly do not know, and yet someone on this project needs to know, is how to manage people. I need someone who knows how to coordinate the people that come with a movement. I am a big ideas person but management of emails and connection with more than one person at a time is not something I know how to do. Someone does. Someone is amazing at that and can do THAT for US.
Whatever I DO know, right now, is perfect I do not need to know more to act. Let’s create a world where “I don’t know” as an individual does not stop anyone because “someone knows”. Together we can know it all.
