Hi girl, welcome to Soul CEO; a podcast for women who know they’re destined for more. I’m Lindsey Mango and I’m going to show you that you can have it all and teach you how to get it by becoming the CEO of your soul, life, and business. Let’s get started.
Hello, hello. How are you all? Oh my gosh, it’s so funny when I moved to Kentucky – I’m originally from a suburb of Chicago – when I moved to Kentucky, I think for like, three years, I refused to say y’all. And I was like, “No, I’m from the north. I’m not doing that.” Which is so hilarious because I say y’all all the time, and I’ll never forget going home for one of my friend’s weddings and I wrote in her card, y’all, like, five times, and my mom read it and she was like, “Oh my god, you are officially from Kentucky.”
So yeah, I say y’all all the time. I see no problem with it. But anyway, I am so excited to be here. As always, thank you so much for tuning in for another episode of Soul CEO. I am pumped to talk about today’s topic because I think it’s something that so many people get stuck in and I even do, and it’s something that I have just set the bar with my clients and anyone that I coach that they’re not allowed to say this phrase.
So are you guys ready? Alright. It’s, “I don’t know.” How many of you are listening to this right now and going, “Oh my god, I say that all the time.” I have something that is about to blow your mind.
So here’s the thing. Whenever I talk to any of my clients, or whenever I coach people, it’s my job to challenge them to think to new levels, to challenge them to look at things differently. And so, what I’ve learned and something my coach as taught me and something that I’ve learned through my own transformation and through learning and studying this is that I don’t know is just a default phrase that people use to keep themselves stuck and keep themselves safe.
Yes, I said it. “I don’t know,” if you’re using that all the time, you are subconsciously, probably not aware of it, that’s why we’re talking about it today, using this to keep you stuck and safe.
And here’s why. So usually when somebody uses the phrase, “I don’t know,” it’s because they’re looking for the right answer. And a lot of times when you’re doing this work, there isn’t necessarily a right answer. In fact, you have to be open to exploring all of the answers, all of the options, and the things that you will connect with.
And so, what happens is when we say, “I don’t know,” I mean, think about it, when you use that in your life, do you ever go on to like, keep thinking about the thing that you just said you don’t know? Probably not most of the time.
It really does shut off our mind’s ability to figure out the answer, or to come up with more than one solution. And it just halts our brain right there, it says, “I don’t know and I’m not willing to look at it any further.” So I’ve literally made it a rule for my clients that they’re not allowed to say that and they know that. And it’s very funny because when we’re on calls sometimes they’ll say it, they’ll say, “I don’t know,” and then I’ll just sit there and they’re like, “I know I’m not allowed to say that so let me think about it.”
Because I know that it really is just coming from that fear of having the wrong answer, or coming up with the wrong solution. So here’s the thing. I want you to think about where in your life you use this phrase the most. Is it when you’re thinking about pursuing some sort of passion and not being sure what direction to take it? Is it when you’re approaching your marketing and you aren’t sure what to do next? Is it when you are trying to find the man of your dreams and thinking of where you might find them or how you can open yourself up to them?
All of these situations, our brains can get stuck in I don’t know land. In I don’t know land, there are no answers, there is no exploring, there is no growth there. So here’s the thing. If you weren’t trying to protect yourself from being wrong and having the desire to pick out one right answer and you could come up with 20 options for whatever thing you say, “I don’t know,” in response to, would you be able to come up with things?
Like, if I push you, if I said like, “I’m literally not letting you leave this conversation saying I don’t know, you have to come up with some ideas,” would you be able to for the things you say, “I don’t know,” to?
If the answer is yes, you see how your brain is limiting you by saying I don’t know. It’s such a powerful thing and it’s such a thing that we really as human beings like to use because it keeps us so safe, right? Like, if I don’t have to explore these options, if I don’t have to explore my thought process here, then I just get to stay stuck.
And guess what happens? Being stuck keeps you safe. It keeps you where you are, and that’s not why you guys are here. You’re here to grow, you’re here to challenge yourself. You are here to elevate yourself to another level. So of course, your mind is going to want to say, “I don’t know,” because you haven’t explored that yet. Because if you had, you’d already be there.
Here’s the other way to look at I don’t know. So if you were to do a math problem, let’s just say for example, some of you guys probably aren’t math minded people. I actually loved math. I was a math nerd, I studied accounting, for those of you who don’t know that. But I realized that like, if you had a math equation, if you had a math test, and it was like, 2x plus y equals 23, or whatever it is, right? And someone said, “You cannot leave the room until you figure this out,” you would plug numbers in and you would try different things to try and find the solution, right?
You don’t just look at the math problem and go, “There’s no answer for this. I’m just not doing it,” right? Maybe you’d get frustrated and you would do that, but if it’s a math problem, if it’s an actual equation, there is a solution and there is an answer. And because you believe that, because you know that, you’re willing to try and figure it out and take yourself through that process of trying different things until you get the right answer, what x and y are equal to, right?
So what I have challenged my clients and myself to do when it comes to I don’t know land is to treat things like a math equation. To say, “Okay, so if this shows up, I’m going to say there has to be an answer, there is a solution here. My job is to just find and try things to figure out what that is.”
But here’s the thing, right? What’s coming up for you now might be, “But then what if I walk down the wrong path? What if I choose the wrong answer?” But that’s what’s so powerful is your brain is just afraid of what’s going to happen if you do that.
And if you do fail and if you do get the wrong answer, now you’ve figured out that that doesn’t work, that is not the answer to the equation, which is amazing because now you’re one step closer to finding the answer to the equation.
So I want you guys to ask yourselves, where in your current life do you say I don’t know? Where do you cut off your mind’s ability to grow, to transform, to figure out the solution to things because you just want to stay stuck? And what would it look like if you didn’t give yourself that option? If you pushed yourself in every moment to say that I don’t have to find the right answer, I have to just try 20 different things.
If I’m trying to market a new thing in business, I have to try and test and work the math equation until I figure out what works for my people. And at every level, that is the process. And again, I kind of talked about this on my last podcast about how the decision you need to make in order to stretch yourself is going to feel uncomfortable because your mind would already be there making that decision and know how if you’ve already been doing it. It’s kind of the same thing with this, right?
If you knew how, then you’d already be doing it. So of course, your mind doesn’t know how yet. It doesn’t know how to get through this hurdle, doesn’t know how to figure out this “math equation” because you’re not there yet, right?
So if you’re looking for that passion in your life, it doesn’t know because you haven’t found the passion. So you have to try things. And I will tell you guys, this has really served me because I’ve been committed to finding the answer, and that led me to quitting, I would say, six or seven corporate jobs, trying network marketing twice, dating different guys, all of the things because I was committed to finding the life of my dreams and I was committed to finding all the things I really desired. And I was willing to go through the failures and to try these things to figure out the solution to get what I really wanted.
So what if you were committed to finding an answer? What if you were committed to the fact that you were willing to try everything and anything in the math equation to find out what worked for you in your life, in your business, in your relationship, whatever it is?
So I’m going to challenge you guys to something, right? I think sometimes I give you homework on this podcast. In fact, I know I have. And hopefully you guys are doing them because that’s where the real transformation takes place is when you go out in your life and you actually apply this work, not just listen.
So I want to challenge you to pay attention to how much you say I don’t know, and to how much you get stuck in that, and push yourself to set a limitation or set a rule that you’re not allowed to say it, and see what happens. Here’s the other thing that’s kind of interesting about this. If you’re not saying I don’t know or if your brain isn’t saying that at first, I’ve kind of trained myself out of that, but I push myself to try to figure out new solutions to new math problems. It means I’m pushing myself to new levels.
So if you’re not saying I don’t know, are you pushing yourself at all or are you just staying where you are comfortable? So maybe push yourself to ask yourself questions that you know you’d want to say I don’t know to, and do this work, and figure out what would I do if I believed that there were 20 different solutions and that I could try all of them and I wasn’t afraid of failing or doing something wrong? What would that look like?
So for all of you Soul CEOs out there, I have a rule for you, just like I do for my clients. No more I don’t know. Push yourself to say it, but then figure out the solution. Try different things. You have to test different solutions to figure out what works for you, what your answer is, what mindset shifts are the right fit.
This isn’t a cookie cutter method, this isn’t one size fits all when it comes to marketing, business, life, mindset, anything. You have to figure out what works and give yourself that chance. Give yourself that opportunity by eliminating the option to say I don’t know and be stuck in indecision or be stuck in what I like to call I don’t know land.
Kind of funny and silly. But anyway, so if you guys loved this or if you know somebody who does this a lot, share it with them. Hopefully they’ll get some sort of transformation, and I would be so honored and grateful if you would leave me an amazing review or feedback. I want honest feedback and tell me what you want to hear.
So I’m so excited you are here, and I hope you have a beautiful day and wonderful week, and stay off of I don’t know land. Talk to you all soon.
Thank you so much for joining me for today’s episode of Soul CEO. If you want to go even deeper into how to create a vision of the life you really want, how to become the woman in that vision and how to deal with the roadblocks we all face along the way, head over to lindseymangocoaching.com/high-vibe-formula to get your free training of my High-Vibe Formula.
