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How ‘I don’t know’ will keep you permanently stuck

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Finally Stop Nail Biting Blog/General/How ‘I don’t know’ will keep you permanently stuck

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How ‘I don’t know’ will keep you permanently stuck

“I don’t know” is just about the most disempowering thing we can ever say to ourselves, yet we say it all the time. Saying “I don’t know” when it is repeated over and over again, can become a habit and as with any habit - it becomes effortless and unconscious. We may not realise just how many times a day we say “I don’t know” to ourselves - either out loud, in our heads or in conversation with others. Just ask the people around you to flag up when you say “I don’t know” and set yourself the challenge of catching yourself when you say it.

Habits reside in the automatic, less conscious part of our brain. This part of the brain is most concerned with keeping things familiar and us alive. The primary motivation of this more primitive section of our brain is to seek pleasure, avoid pain and expend as little energy as possible. When we set out to do something that is unknown and unfamiliar, the more primitive part of our perfectly normal human brain, starts to object. This happens to all of us, to a greater or lesser degree. Any new chosen task, action, behaviour we want to take and the thinking behind wanting to do it - uses a different, more evolved and developed part of our brain. The 2 parts of our brain are now in disagreement with each other.

Exploring the unknown is perceived by our automatic brain as DANGER and creates fear. There is a biological reaction to this sense of danger, by way of a release of neurochemicals into our body. These neurochemicals are experienced in our body as vibrations / energies / feelings / emotions (choose the word that works for you). We might name what we experience as fear, apprehension, dread, anxiety or confusion for example. When our repeated response to the sentence of “I don’t know” and the feelings that sentence generates, is to stop us in our tracks; we develop a thought, feel, act pattern. Over time, our brain learns a shortcut - as soon as anything new, unknown or unfamiliar comes along - “I don’t know” pops up. This habitual thought then automatically tends to shut us down from taking any action. It becomes so much harder to take action and get momentum going when we have this default reaction. If we have a pattern of listening to “I don’t know how”, “I don’t know what”, “I don’t know when” and we BELIEVE this story - we stall and get stuck. Believing this message and buying into the fairystory that our automatic brain is telling us, stops us from taking action and keeps us stuck. As far as our automatic brain is concerned - that is job well done. We survived to live another day. Our automatic brain kept us safe, in the routine, in the familiar, in the known, in efficiency. But we got no further in exploring the unknown. Life is stuck on repeat.

Being willing to go into the unknown means being in a degree of discomfort, because of the way our brain triggers a biological reaction in our body to the unknown. To do anything unfamiliar, new, different or challenging requires us to learn how to keep going whilst allowing the discomfort to be there. The problem is that when we feel the biological reaction of fear, apprehension, dread, anxiety or confusion we can interpret that as something being ‘wrong’. The more comfortable we become, the fewer times we challenge ourself with doing things outside of our comfort zone, the harder it becomes to take the less familiar road.

Remember what it felt like to start a new job? Everything was unfamiliar and the whole day was spent sitting in the unknown. It was tiring. By the first pay day, though, it was already feeling much more familiar and becoming normalised. The reward of being paid was powerful enough motivation to ‘put up with’ the discomfort.

One of the most powerful gifts you could ever give yourself, is to never allow yourself to say “I don’t know” to yourself ever again. When you catch yourself saying this - straight away come back at your brain with “what do I know?” Make a list of what you know, about the abilities you do have and what you might need to figure out. Asking yourself this question takes you out of automatic brain and up into the planning, more evolved part of your brain - it is here you access your innate wisdom that does know. This is how to get unstuck and to make progress in your life. Asking “what do I know” is a magic tool that shifts you from the spin of being stuck to seeing a way forward. From here possibilities open up. It is from this place that it is possible to accomplish what you haven’t yet managed to do and are putting off doing - which includes ending your nail biting habit.

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Hi, I'm Ann Barton

This blog:
Busts the myths that keeps nail biters stuck.
Speaks truth about our nail biting habit.
Takes a different approach based on cognitive behaviour.

I ended my 50+ year nail biting habit, after 5 decades of miserably trying and failing. I now teach and coach clients to permanently end nail biting too.

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