What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do

Summary

In a recent episode of "You Are Not a Frog," the host discusses the discomfort of uncertainty and not knowing what to do next—emotions that many, especially in high-pressure professions like medicine, often grapple with. Emphasizing that it’s perfectly normal not to have all the answers, the episode shares practical strategies for navigating these feelings. Adopting a mindset of 'furniture shifting,' where emotions and situations are allowed to move and reshape, is encouraged. Key strategies include recognizing the limitations of our logical brain, focusing on controllable actions, and appreciating the concept of wait-and-see as a legitimate approach.

Highlights

• Many people, especially in professions like medicine, feel ashamed when they don't have all the answers. 😔
• Navigating changes in life can feel like 'shifting furniture'—uncertain but necessary for growth. 🛋️
• The logical side of our brain often tries to make sense of uncertainty, sometimes creating inaccurate narratives. 🤯
• Waiting and observing a situation can be more productive than forcing a quick solution. ⏳
• Next best actions could be as simple as resting or exercising to gain clarity. 🏃‍♂️
• We often need to rethink decisions as life evolves and not see them as permanent. 🔄
• Sitting with discomfort and not knowing is an important skill that can lead to personal growth. 🌟

Key Takeaways

• It's okay not to have all the answers. Sometimes, uncertainty is part of the journey. 🌈
• Adopt the concept of 'furniture shifting' to give yourself permission to explore emotions and options freely. 🛋️
• Recognize when your logical brain may be over-interpreting situations without all the facts. 🤔
• Focus on what you can control and don’t pressure yourself into premature solutions. 🔍
• Remember, wait-and-see can be a powerful strategy when dealing with uncertainty. ⏳
• Actions don't have to be permanent—revisiting decisions as new information comes is wise. ⚖️
• Don’t suppress emotions like anger or anxiety—they are natural and can guide you. 🌊

Overview

In this insightful episode of 'You Are Not a Frog', Rachel unveils the layers of uncertainty that many face during pivotal moments in their lives. Highlighting common feelings of shame amongst professionals like doctors, she shares that not knowing what to do is more common than one might think. The episode emphasizes being kind to oneself and accepting that uncertainty is a natural part of life.

Rachel offers a compelling metaphor of 'furniture shifting', illustrating how unsettling emotions can be reframed as an opportunity to relocate and rearrange our thoughts and feelings. This concept promotes an acceptance that uncertainties do evolve, and patience can often lead to clarity in the end. She advocates embracing uncomfortable emotions rather than suppressing them, which can lead to significant personal insight and growth.

Moreover, practical tools are shared to cope with uncertainty—recognizing the hyperactivity of our logical brain, focusing on what one can control, and appreciating the art of waiting as a legitimate strategy. Such tools not only aid in managing stress but also help in cultivating a flexible mindset during times of change. Overall, the episode is a comforting reminder that it’s okay not to have all the answers right away.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The chapter 'Introduction' discusses a retreat held last year in Devon where participants, who were contemplating significant changes in their lives, attended. A workshop focused on designing a life you love and career planning was conducted, where participants shared their struggles. One notable issue raised was the uncertainty about the next steps in life, which some were experiencing for the first time.
• 00:30 - 02:00: Embracing Uncertainty The chapter discusses the concept of uncertainty, particularly from the perspective of a doctor who feels ashamed for not having all the answers. It talks about personal experiences with uncertainty, and a recent situation where the individual faced significant life events, such as the death of a close friend, which reinforced the feeling of not knowing what to do.
• 02:00 - 03:30: The Problem with Immediate Solutions In this chapter titled 'The Problem with Immediate Solutions,' the narrator discusses a recent shift in their worldview and work. Feeling disoriented, they consulted with their insightful coach about the discomfort of not understanding their unease. The coach reassured them by saying it's okay not to know sometimes, suggesting that immediate solutions aren't always necessary.
• 03:30 - 05:00: Furniture Metaphor: Embracing Change The chapter "Furniture Metaphor: Embracing Change" delves into the discomfort and anxiety that arise from uncertainty, drawing parallels to the process of rearranging furniture. It highlights the human tendency to feel ashamed when solutions are not immediately apparent, noting that not all problems have clear or immediate answers. This self-criticism can exacerbate feelings of discomfort, suggesting a need to embrace uncertainty rather than succumb to it.
• 05:00 - 08:30: Left Brain Interpreter and Mindreading The chapter titled 'Left Brain Interpreter and Mindreading' explores the notion that believing every problem has a solution can lead to misguided efforts. The text highlights that despite solving a problem, the original issue may persist, leading to feelings of inadequacy for not being able to resolve everything. This situation is referred to as taking the 'second Arrow' in Buddhist terms, where one not only has to deal with the initial problem but also the subsequent self-criticism for the inability to solve it.
• 08:30 - 12:00: Zone of Power and Next Best Action In this chapter titled 'Zone of Power and Next Best Action', the discussion centers on how individuals often perceive issues as problems that need immediate solutions, which can lead to increased distress and anxiety. It suggests an alternative approach that involves embracing uncertainty and the discomfort of not knowing as a strategic way to engage with challenges. Instead of rushing to find solutions, the chapter advocates for cultivating a mindset that is comfortable with uncertainty, allowing for more considered and potentially more effective actions.
• 12:00 - 14:30: Temporary Solutions and Rethinking The chapter titled 'Temporary Solutions and Rethinking' explores the concept of feeling empty or low when things in life are uncertain or changing. Inspired by an episode of Rob Bell's podcast, the metaphor of 'shifting the furniture around' is used to describe the feelings of transition. This metaphor resonates with personal experiences of dealing with unusual living spaces and challenges, emphasizing the idea that even when things are unsettled or unclear, they are moving and evolving.
• 14:30 - 16:00: Common Mistakes in Handling Uncertainty The chapter "Common Mistakes in Handling Uncertainty" discusses the various challenges and errors people encounter while dealing with uncertain situations. The author uses the metaphor of arranging furniture in a room to illustrate the difficulty of making decisions. Much like trying different configurations of sofas, chairs, bookshelves, and a TV until something looks and feels right, people often try various approaches to handle uncertainty, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. The process involves constant shifting and adjustment, and the feeling of discomfort suggests a common mistake in approaching uncertainty. The key takeaway is the value in being adaptable and open to change when dealing with uncertain situations.

What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 last year on our you and not frog retreat in Devon we had a bunch of amazing amazing people some of whom knew that they needed to make a really big change in their life make a big shift but didn't quite know how to do it or what to do and we held a workshop about how to design a life you love what to do with your career and I asked people what was the biggest thing holding them back and somebody shared that they really didn't know what the next step was that it was the first time in their life
• 00:30 - 01:00 where they didn't know what to do and that they felt really ashamed about that they thought that as a doctor they should have all the answers particularly answers about themselves I know how this person felt cuz I've been there myself I've been there and I'm thinking of quite recently even just a few months ago where things had happened a close friend of mine died where where several things had happened quite significant things in my life my
• 01:00 - 01:30 worldview has shifted recently work has been changing what I'm doing is shifting a bit and I was feeling a bit discombobulated and I was talking to my coach uh who's a very incredibly insightful person and he said to me I was just talking about how I felt and I was annoyed that I couldn't put my finger on it and that felt really uncomfortable and he said to me Rachel you know sometimes it's okay not to know sometimes it's okay
• 01:30 - 02:00 not knowing now the problem is as doctors uncertainty is awful and we can go from anxiety about uncertainty or uncomfortableness and discombobulation which was what I was feeling to actually feeling ashamed of ourselves and beating ourselves up about the fact that we don't know the solution but some problems just don't have a solution or certainly don't have an obvious immediate solution and so we get quite upset when we can't solve these things
• 02:00 - 02:30 and we get really really stuck now the problem with believing that every problem has a solution I just need to puzzle it out is that often we just race forward and we end up solving the wrong problem and then we've managed to solve something but we're still feeling exactly the same and the original issue hasn't gone away at all and if we genuinely believe that we can solve and puzzle out everything then we end up what the Buddhists call taking the second Arrow so not just having the problem in the first place but feeling awful about ourselves for not being able
• 02:30 - 03:00 to solve it like my colleague was feeling causing even more distress and anxiety so instead of viewing every issue as a problem that can be solved or every time we're feeling uncomfortable or discombobulated thinking right there's definitely something I can do about it I think we need to get much more comfortable with uncertainty and with the not knowing and actually have not knowing as a strategy
• 03:00 - 03:30 many of you will know I'm a huge fan of Rob Bell and his podcast of robcast is well worth a listen and in a recent episode I think it's called the void he was talking about what happens when you're just feeling a bit empty and a bit low and you're not quite sure what's wrong and he describes it as Shifting the furniture around things are moving you don't quite know where they're going to end up but you know that they're moving and I love that metaphor because we've got a a slightly odd shaped sitting room and it's been really hard
• 03:30 - 04:00 to work out how we get the configuration of sofas and chairs and bookshelves and the TV and where everybody's going to sit and I've tried all sorts of different Furniture configurations and sometimes I come up with something that that looks really good and really works and sometimes I have an idea and I think that is a brilliant idea and then I do it and it just doesn't look right but all the time I'm sort of Shifting it and it's not quite right and I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable with it so this this idea that sometimes the furniture is shifting for us has been really helpful
• 04:00 - 04:30 for me because it means that I know what the problem is the problem is maybe not the problem it's how I'm thinking about the problem so this is all getting a bit meta but if I view the problem as what we're doing is Shifting the furniture we're trying different things we don't know where the furniture is going to end up but that's fine because we're not going to know until we've tried it out and we've seen what it looks like then maybe I'm going to be happier in the process maybe I'll be comfortable with the discomfort of not knowing and with
• 04:30 - 05:00 the uncertainty and I think that will help me be calmer less stressed more relaxed about things and just able to see how things unfold it would also help me embrace those difficult emotions because I don't know about you but if I'm feeling sad or upset or annoyed I tend to squash it down I think that might be a doctor thing things I've learned from when I was little that you don't really Express a lot of emotion or it's really bad to express anxiety or worry or anger about things because those those are bad emotions and and must be
• 05:00 - 05:30 press down and and and not let Express because we can actually solve it we can actually do something to make us less angry or we can do something to to solve the Stress and Anxiety we can solve that problem ourselves and so I'm not really very used to sitting with those difficult emotions and certainly expressing them feels really difficult I think this idea of furniture shifting around and it being okay to feel and express those emotions while it's happening it's really helpful to me and I hope that it's going to help some of you guys as well so how do we do this how do we actually start to tolerate the
• 05:30 - 06:00 moving of the furniture I think there's a few things that that we can do that are helpful firstly is to Beware of the left brain interpreter now I love this concept I read about it very recently and this is the concept that our left brain is constantly trying to interpret stuff around us that's our very logical side of the brain I mean the right brain thinks much more creatively and in fact side note probably one of the reasons I find the metaphor of moving furniture around really speaks to this situation it's because it's a creative thing it's a right brain it's helping me connect my
• 06:00 - 06:30 emotions and my thoughts with with images so talking metaphors can be a really helpful way of exploring some of these issues that we've got anyway the left brain interpreter when it picks up that something's wrong will look around for why now sometimes there's an obvious solution like if I'm allergic to bees and there's a be buzzing around the room I'm going to have my threat detection system on that's going to be saying get away from the be there's a b you don't want it to sting you but if I'm feeling anxious like that but there's no be in the room and I can't really find a
• 06:30 - 07:00 reason then the left brain interpreter will just start making it up and it will make it up in a way that's going to keep me safe not happy though so it'll start to go well you're feeling really anxious there maybe that person's being a complete ass about something or maybe he dissed you or maybe there's something you haven't done quite right or did they look at you a little bit wrong or that person's having a difficult time are you sure that wasn't you that they're annoyed at and so we start to put stories on everything that's happened just so that we can explain it now
• 07:00 - 07:30 sometimes we're right but a lot of the times we're completely wrong and you've heard me say this before but the evidence is that we are incredibly bad at mindreading and we actually mindre the people that we know and love the worst of anybody so the closer you are to someone the worse your mind reading is so just bear that in mind and the other thing that our left brain particularly the mikoda starts doing is it's questioning and saying well what if what if what if this happens and uh projecting ourselves into the future so
• 07:30 - 08:00 recognizing we've got this left brain interpreter that that might not be right that might not be right probably actually isn't right and we're trying to put a narrative onto something that is actually unknown recognizing that we're doing that and go actually let's just stop and the truth of the situation here is that I don't know what's wrong there's stuff being shifted around and I'm not going to know about the right solution until we arrive at it that's been very helpful for me and instead of thinking what if this happens what if that happens thinking well what if it doesn't happen what if not so a little
• 08:00 - 08:30 bit of a a different spin on it so recognize that left brain interpreter and question it I think would be the first thing the second thing is when you're in a furniture moving situation is just to stick with what's in your zone of power so I talk about this all the time I make no apology for that it's a simple circle on a piece of paper what's inside the circle is in your control what's outside the circle is outside of your control so in any discombobulating situation there will be stuff that's outside your control and stuff that's inside your control do not
• 08:30 - 09:00 confuse the two and make sure that stuff that's outside your control you just accept because that's the only you can do well you could get stressed about it but that's not productive either so accept the stuff outside your zone of power and think actually what is in my zone of power here right now and it doesn't mean rushing to some solution that might not be right things that are in your zone of Power are holding on waiting having patience wait Andy is a
• 09:00 - 09:30 strategy SO waiting and not having the answer and acknowledging that is in your zone of power so in a weird way you feel more powerful when you've acknowledged that waiting and seeing because I can't do anything now is a strategy and if you're a GP or any type of healthcare professional actually you'll know that wait and see is is a treatment isn't it we don't know if someone's symptoms are going to get worse and we're going to have to really deal with them or if they're just going to get better by themselves Time Is A Healer time reveals stuff to us and we can't speed up time
• 09:30 - 10:00 obviously SO waiting and seeing is sometimes the only strategy that you have the other thing you can do by using the zone of power is just think about what your next best action is so you might not have the answer to this but you might know that the next best action is to do this so the other night I was feeling really annoyed actually about some things that were going on and I'd got myself into a bit of a state and just everything seemed to be dark and I was tired and not very well and my left brain interpr honestly he was having a
• 10:00 - 10:30 field day telling me well it's cuz of this person cuz of that and everything's going to go wrong and why don't you just stop doing this and talk to them about that and I just stopped myself I thought I'm I'm not sure my interpretation of events here is quite right what's my next best action and it turned out my next best action was going to bed this sounds really stupid but honestly this is a sort of um cycle we get ourselves in and particularly when we're tired we think the next best action is to solve it straight away way but often it's go
• 10:30 - 11:00 to bed have a rest take a day off have something to eat that often makes things much much better and you know what the next day I felt an awful lot better something happened today that made me really annoyed and um I was just in the middle of dealing with it and I thought you know what I can feel this sort of pent up energy here and something that happened earlier was that i' try to go to the gym but all the roads were shut so I'd completely miss my exercise carass I'd have to come home and I was feeling really irritated and then I
• 11:00 - 11:30 thought what is the next best action here I thought you know what I just need to do some exercise so I I did I got in the eggo and did some stretches and you know things look so different an hour later so just a quick side note about your state if you're hungry angry late or tired just do something about that but also don't let that left brain interpreter hijack what's actually going on for you work out what your next best action is in order to get your state better or in order to sort of question that in interpreter and then for me
• 11:30 - 12:00 another strategy is thinking well okay I'm moving this bit of furniture over here but that doesn't have to be permanent why don't we try this solution we're not committing to Forever and there's actually been a lot of literature about this coming out recently Adam Grant has written a book called think again and there's lots of stuff around how the sensible thing the wise things to do in many many situations is to rethink rethink as data comes up rethink our interpretations and you know we've started to do that in
• 12:00 - 12:30 medicine haven't we as new evidence comes out about things that we thought were absolutely set in stone we've rethought how we treat people we need to do that with our lives as well you know just because you've made a decision once doesn't mean you can't go back on it or change it just doing something for a little bit of time thinking well I'll try this for a bit it's not permanent it doesn't need to be forever that can be really helpful because then you're thinking right I'm doing this for now until something better opens up or a
• 12:30 - 13:00 better Avenue or it just uh I get the answer coming to me so beware your left brain interpreter recognize when it's catastrophizing and putting all sorts of interpretations on stuff that's just not there stay in your zone of power and realize that wait and see is a strategy and it's a powerful strategy work out what your next best action is going to be and it could just be as simple as going to bed or getting some exercise and realize that these things don't have to be permanent the furniture will move
• 13:00 - 13:30 it will probably move again in the future and it's not always your job to figure it out sitting with the uncertain is a skill and it's also something that will send you in really good stead now here's what we do get wrong about this sometimes we ignore things that we actually know what to do but we think we don't oh and I'm uncertain because it's just too hard like say if you're working with a colleague they're really not pulling their way and actually they're in the wrong role and you know you need to have a chat with them or go down some
• 13:30 - 14:00 Performance Management processes but it's just too difficult sometimes we say oh I don't really know what to do let's just wait and see when actually you just it needs sorting out and you haven't had the courage to do it so don't make the mistake of ignoring your urgent stuff that needs doing just because it feels too difficult the other mistake we make is actually not noticing when we're going through this as I mentioned before we often suppress our emotions and we don't like talking about it we don't like acknowledging what's actually going on because we feel it makes us seem weak
• 14:00 - 14:30 or we're somehow bad for feeling angry or upset about something so don't ignore the emotions that you're getting and the final mistake we we make is that we just want everything sorted so quickly because that's what we've been used to in our working lives when it comes to these personal issues the furniture moving around in your life in whatever way shape or form these things take time they don't get sorted immediately so if the furniture is currently shifting for you know that it's okay to feel uncomfortable that wait and see is a
• 14:30 - 15:00 strategy and that the best thing you can do is think to yourself what is my next best action whilst I wait to see what pans out [Music]