Seeing past 'I Don't Know!' to 'What If You Did Know?'
written by:
Yong Yoek Ling, Director & Co Founder of Bold At Work
What is the first thing that comes to your mind, when you see the title:
“When You Realise You’ll Never Get Your Dream Job ”
This Harvard Business Review author talks about the phenomenon of coming to terms with the fact you are NOT going to realise your dream, and dealing with the associated sense of loss, as a natural part of the process of maturing. For him, it was knowing that he was never going to become Bruce Springsteen, or any other kind of musical performer. Learning to “accept things as they are” is part of the path towards finding meaning and purpose in life, he says.
But how about those who have not yet found, or, never find, what their “Bruce Springsteen” is?
Today, a fresh cohort of junior college students received their A’ level results. After year after year of progressing from one level on to another, this is a significant point when paths diverge and choice seems to come with some real stake: choose one path and I close another. What if I make the wrong choice? Or what if I don’t even know what I want?
A sense making process of narratives overheard through the life goals exploration process
Recently we engaged in a conversation on life goals with a group of freshly-minted JC1 students. Not unlike a good proportion of the young people we have talked to, we realised that a most common refrain when it came to life goals, was “I don’t know.”
In a pseudo-competitive game in which students aimed to piece together their “ideal” lives in a 12-min supercharged version of our lives, we noted an emotional atmosphere of “que sera sera” when the clock wound down. It was like a laid-back form of optimism, where they seemed content with whichever life goals they landed with.
Bold At Work’s JuraSEEK Life Goals exploration tool
At first we were gratified, thinking this could mean good adaptability on the part of the players! Then we worried if the game play might not have been realistic enough to evoke a real sense of urgency. And finally we were bemused, when we heard a student share, that it is actually more stressful to know what is the life you want; because then you will be disappointed if you don’t get it. Maybe... it is better not to know.
Could “not knowing” be a form of preemptive defensive mechanism at play?
A couple of years ago, as part of the National Youth Conversations, we spoke to hundreds of young people on the topic of Redefining Success. The final segment was designed as an experiential journey from “Exploring Possibilities” to “Confronting Fear” to “Making Choices” to “Embracing Our Gifts”.
Through the many conversations, what had emerged was a picture of our very own young person’s version of a Hero’s Journey.
Source: Amplifying The Voices Of Our Youth, Youth Conversations 2019, by National Youth Council
What seems to be a zone of comfort could also be a place of false certainty. As long as we have yet to confront ourselves with the question of what is worth taking a risk for, we perhaps have no opportunity to truly test who we are.
The journey from “not knowing” to “knowing” can be scary. Sometimes, it may mean testing if I am strong enough to wade against the flow of parental and societal expectations. Other times, it may mean putting myself out there when I do not know if I am good enough. Always, it means holding on to hope when I do not know if it will come to fulfillment.
No wonder then, when we asked our JC1 participants for reflections, one quipped “I used to think life was easy, now I think life is hard!
Seeing Past ‘ I Don’t know’
I recall how, years ago, starting out as a volunteer mentor to girls in residential rehabilitation homes, my heart sank as my questions, anything from “What are your hobbies?” to “Do you prefer A or B?”, were met with shrugs accompanied with the dreaded “I don’t know”. I was well and truly stuck.
Until one day, a more senior volunteer gave me a tip, “Ask them, what if you did know?” She said that “I don’t know” was more often than not, a way of avoidance. The little surprise comeback helped to create a new way of re-entering the conversation.
This vignette came to mind as I recalled the importance of seeing past the “I don’t know” to ask what is in the way of knowing. More often than not, what is needed is an invitation to explore what is possible, and the courage to commit to a next step- with no promise of whether it will pay off.
As the many young people in your lives embark on this uncertain journey from “not knowing” to the edge of discovery, perhaps be the inquisitive sounding board that allows them to play out the many possibilities in their mind.
For what if we did acknowledge what we do want? We would then be called upon to step forward in pursuit of what could be.
When we came up with the tagline “be bold, be you”, we hadn't quite thought this far. But as it turns out, we do need a dash of boldness to be who we will become!