The Power of 'I Don't Know' – Episode #717

In this episode, Dr. Paul Jenkins uncovers the unexpected strength found in simply saying 'I don't know.' While this phrase is often seen as a weakness or a lack of confidence, Dr. Paul encourages listeners to embrace it as a starting point for humility and open-mindedness. By acknowledging our inability to predict the future, we create a mental space that allows us to respond more thoughtfully to our feelings and reduce anxiety. This space also empowers us to make choices instead of reacting based on unfounded predictions.

 

Embracing 'I don't know' also reveals our capability to handle whatever comes our way, tapping into our innate resilience. Drawing from Dr. Susan Jeffers' notion that most fears stem from the belief that we 'can't handle' something, Dr. Paul challenges this limiting belief with evidence from our past victories over adversity. Pain and challenge, he explains, do not equate to failure but are part of our human experience, pushing us to learn and grow in ways we may not initially appreciate.

 

Dr. Paul introduces the concept of metacognition, thinking about our own thinking, as a tool for positive change. Recognizing that our practiced thoughts can become habitual, he highlights the value of intentional thinking practices to reprogram our minds. The episode welcomes listeners to explore the Emotional Freedom Challenge, a free opportunity to develop and exercise this cognitive skill, creating more empowerment and emotional resilience.

 

Ultimately, accepting 'I don't know' as a path to possibility allows us to stop rehearsing undesirable futures and positions us to handle whatever reality brings. It's about trusting our capacity to grow and learn, thus choosing a powerful, purposeful stance toward life's uncertainties.

What is Live on Purpose Radio?

Live On Purpose Radio features principles of prosperity, abundance, and positive psychology to help you create and live the life you love. As you listen to Live On Purpose Radio, you’ll hear powerful stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Dr. Paul Jenkins interviews inspiring people about principles that empower them to live on purpose. Living on purpose means that you have a purpose, and that you do it intentionally. Live on Purpose Radio, LiveOnPurposeRadio.com, started in 2007 and has been helping listeners worldwide overcome the effects of noxious negativity with a regular dose of Pathological Positivity. Share Live On Purpose Radio with anyone you know who would appreciate a dose of positivity in their life. Visit DrPaulJenkins.com for more resources to Live On Purpose.

This is Live on Purpose Radio, episode 717, the power of I don't know. Now is the only time to create and live the life you love. I'm doctor Paul Jenkins, the positivity psychologist. My job is to connect you to powerful positive psychology principles that immediately upgrade your relationships, business, and mental health. Are you ready? Let's jump in. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Live On Purpose Radio. This is doctor Paul, the shrink who expands your life with another episode of Live On Purpose Radio. We usually think of I don't know as a position of weakness or a resigned defeat. Today, let's take a little different look at that. I'm thinking that it might be one of the most powerful positions that we can take. Let's look at this from an aspect of humility and then agency followed up with practice. I've got some some thoughts about each of those. So let's jump in. We are remarkably bad at predicting the future, and yet we routinely react to our emotional state that's caused by our predictions as though our predictions were actually facts. How are you doing next week? You don't know. Oh, you've got something to do with it. Don't forget that part. But you don't know. Like, you have some cosmic connection to the grand scheme of all things, or you have a crystal ball that you can look into and see clearly what's coming. We don't know, but we have predictions. And those predictions cause our emotional reaction. Anxiety is especially connected to anticipation or expectation or prediction. What if I don't know, that simple phrase, I don't know, could create a little bit of space between what's actually happening and what we imagine is going to happen next. So let's start with humility, the fact that we don't know what's going to happen, but sometimes we go through our life pretending that we do. This is going to go badly. That's an example. I'm going to lose. They're going to reject me. They won't like me. This is going to be so hard. Things are going to get worse. Those are all predictions. And sometimes the prediction is subconscious. Now, maybe you've heard me talk about this before. Sub means below like subway, submarine. Conscious means awareness. So it's below your awareness. You're not even tuned in sometimes to the predictions that you're already making. What we notice is the feeling that comes without noticing the thought that created it. So we'll find ourselves feeling anxious. A question might help us to unlock what our brain's actually doing with us. What would I have what would I have to be thinking in order to feel this way right now? This is a liberating question. Do I actually know that things are going to get worse? No. I don't. Do I actually know that people are going to reject me or that I'm going to fail or that this is going to go badly? No. What would I have to be thinking in order to believe this or to feel this way? That opens up what I call metacognition. When we actually think about our thinking and we take a moment to notice it. Now most often, when when we really honestly ask ourselves, do I really know that that's gonna happen? The the most accurate answer is no. I don't know. I don't know is not a helpless defeated resignation. It's humility. It's an honest acknowledgment of the limits of our ability to predict. And awareness precedes choice. Once I recognize that I'm making a prediction rather than observing a fact, I have choices about what I'm gonna do with that prediction. So that leads us into the second point that I wanted to make here today, agency. Underneath every fear is some version of the same belief. I can't handle that. I was originally introduced to this idea by doctor Susan Jeffers. She wrote a book called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. And the title is every bit as big good as the book. But she pointed this out. She said that the common belief behind every fear is some version of that. I can't handle that. Well, let's challenge that. You have a 100% track record of handling everything so far. Your whole life, everything that's happened, you've handled it. Now I get some pushback on this because people are like, well, I'm not very proud of how I handled it or, I would have done it differently if I'd have known then what I know now. Did you always handle it elegantly? No. Would you handle some things differently now? Well, I hope so. But how did you learn what you know now? It's by handling what happened then. Painful does not equal bad. And sometimes we'll reflect on our life and we'll see the pain. Right? We'll see the difficulty, the frustration, the loss, the uncertainty, which is all part of a human experience. But pain is a gift. It's built in. It's in our divine design to experience pain. Well, it's not fun. It's not supposed to be because pain serves a very specific purpose for us. It helps to call our attention to something. It helps us to identify potential risk or or injury or danger. And it's always safer for our brain to predict danger than it is and be wrong about that, than it is for our brain to predict safety and be wrong about that. You see, it's safer to be prepared for the unlikely danger than it is to face a danger completely unprepared. That's a safety issue, and our brain's main job is to keep us safe. So it's not a surprise that our brain goes this direction. As we become aware so I I mentioned metacognition just a moment ago. Metacognition is thinking about thinking and taking a moment to actually analyze it a little bit. Difficult things are going to happen. Pain will happen. Tim Hansel put it this way. He said pain is inevitable. Misery is optional. And I love that distinction as well because when, not if, when pain shows up for us, when difficult things happen, when we experience disappointment, frustration, loss, uncertainty. Positivity does not promise protection from that. The more empowering position is I don't know what's coming, and I don't yet know what resources or wisdom or relationships or opportunities or strength I'll have available to me when it gets here. But human history is filled with compelling examples of people demonstrating extraordinary resilience when the circumstances required it. This is episode 717 of this podcast. I have been doing this podcast since 2007, and I have interviewed countless people now. Well, they're not countless. It's in the 600 range, I'm sure, who all have stories stories of difficulty and and pain and tragedy and how they overcame that. And we find that inspiring because I think it invites us to identify within ourselves that resilience that comes free in the box with every human. It's we are designed to handle every experience that we get, and some of them can be unthinkable. Some of them, we never would wish on our worst enemy. But at the end of the day, notice that you've already handled absolutely everything. And why would that ever change? Confidence doesn't require knowing what's coming. It can come from trusting our own capacity to handle it when it arrives. Now, there's another point that we that has to be addressed here. Because there's two kinds of learning. There's breakthrough learning and there's transformational learning. This is not about just think positive. That's what I call toxic positivity. I don't think it's helpful to dismiss the pain or to ignore the challenge. And I'm not here to tell you what to think. I don't have that kind of authority. I invite you to see that you are thinking, that your thinking influences how you feel, and that determines how you show up which creates your results. Now, once you become aware of your thinking, you have choices. Since we don't know what's coming, we can ask, well, what position toward the future serves me best? And I have a bias here. Again, I'm not telling you how to think. I'm suggesting that you have a choice. And until you see it as a choice, it's not. You're gonna roll with whatever your programming is. My personal preference is to choose a position that serves me well, to expect that I will handle everything that comes, to anticipate that there are even better things on the way for me, to choose thoughts that create peace in my heart today and hope for the future. That's my personal preference. But this isn't easy because default is down, and I'm talking about laws of the universe. Gravity is one. Entropy is another. Gravity pulls us downward. You never hear of someone following up. Entropy moves systems toward disorder, a more disorganized state. If you wanna test this one, go take a carton of eggs out of your fridge and toss it into the air. See what happens. It doesn't become more organized, I promise. Elevation requires effort and energy and intention. Our practiced thoughts also become very familiar to us and habitual. It becomes our mental normal. So whatever we're used to thinking seems like the way things are. Well, it doesn't mean that we're right, it just means that we're used to thinking that. So intentional thinking requires practice. We don't reprogram our minds with one inspiring thought. It's cool to have those breakthrough learning moments, you know, when you have the experience, when the lights go on, when you recognize a principle of truth. We reprogram our minds through intentional, repeated practice. I mentioned, to some of our behind the scenes viewers of Live On Purpose Radio today that, we're doing a dry run here of what that practice might look like. I've got what's called the emotional freedom challenge. Now I don't know when you're listening to this episode. I'm recording it on 08/11/2026. And starting on August 17, that's next Monday, if you're listening live or in the first few days of the release of this episode, you can still jump on the Emotional Freedom Challenge. This is completely free. I will be live streaming every day for an hour to share practices and principles and models that will help you to crack the code into emotional freedom. We all get hijacked occasionally and we look back and say, why did I do that? I wish I would have done that differently. Well, that's because we get hijacked by emotion. The good news is this is trainable. This is something that your awareness can put you in position of agency, and then you can add the practice. So we're doing it every day for a week, for five days, the emotional freedom challenge to give you a little sample of what that rhythm might look like. And if you're catching this after the emotional freedom challenge, just come over to our new platform called Positives, and you can get there through liveonpurposeradio.com/positives, plural, an s at the end. But if you're in time to catch the emotional freedom challenge, come do that first. We'll still introduce you to positives as part of that challenge. Live on purposeradio.com/efc for emotional freedom challenge. That's my invitation to you. Now as we close-up today, I don't know what's coming. Neither do you. And maybe that's really good news. If we don't know, we don't have to keep rehearsing a future that we don't want. We can notice that we're imagining that. We can notice what we're thinking and then choose our position on purpose and trust ourselves to handle reality when it gets here. Being willing to put in the practice that's required to actually reprogram our brain. Is that good news? Did you get what you came for? I certainly hope that you did. Now we've heard it. It's time to apply it. Let's go live on purpose. Did you get what you came for? Give your yourself the gift of taking real action on what you realized today. Please share this episode with someone you know would value it, and leave us a rating too. It's time now to live on purpose.