October 17, 2025 • 21 mins
When life is confusing and you don’t have the answers, what is your first response?
Do you get tied into knots trying to figure it out?
Or are you comfortable with the open-ended nature of things?
Last week I unpacked the power of “I don’t know” and this week I’m continuing the conversation about how life improves when you let it be ok that you don’t know.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the word you write all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You got the words and said, don't you think it's
down to.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Let them out and write them down on cold It's
all about.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And write your story.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Write, write your story.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, And on this week's episode,
I want to continue talking about what I talked about
on last week's episode, which is this idea of being
willing to stay in the uncertainty. This is, like I
mentioned last week, extremely complicated and extremely uncomfortable, or can
(00:50):
be extremely uncomfortable to stay in the uncertainty when you
don't know the answer to the question, You don't know
how the story is going to resolve, You don't know
which way the story is going to go. Am I
going to marry this person or they going to break
up with me? Am I going to have the baby
or not have the baby? Am I going to get
this job or not? Am I going to move to
this place or this place? It can be so uncomfortable
to stay in the uncertainty and yet all of the
(01:11):
goodness of our story, all the transformation of the hero,
happens in the uncertainty. And when we jump to a
conclusion in the story, not only do we get the
answer wrong. I'm not so concerned about getting the answer wrong,
but the conclusion that we come to becomes a filter
through which we receive all future information. So if we
do get the answer to the question wrong, if we say, well,
(01:32):
the reason this happened to me is because I did
something wrong, and that's now the conclusion, then that conclusion
becomes the filter for every single other piece of information
that comes my way, instead of removing the filter and
receiving that information from openness, receiving that information without bias,
(01:53):
so that we can really put the pieces of the
story together in a way that is beautiful. One of
the things that I believe deep in every fiber of
my being. I'm going through such a weird spiritual process
in my life where i feel like I'm deconstructing for
the second time. And I've talked about this, so there
are a lot of things that I'm like, I don't
know what I believe. Honestly, I'm sitting in a big
(02:13):
vat I don't know in terms of what I believe, like,
I don't know what happens to us after we die.
I don't know if there's heaven. I don't know where
people go. I don't know where souls go. I don't
know if we're reincarnated. I don't know. I don't know,
I don't know. There's so much that I don't know.
But let me tell you something that I do know
for sure that when we can sit back and allow
our stories to be written, when we can receive the
(02:34):
story that is being written in us and through us, beautiful, incredible, amazing,
miraculous things happen. I just believe that with every fiber
of my being. I've seen it over and over and
over again. And when we jump in and try hard
and try to wrap things up and try to tie
it up too quick, then we get it wrong almost
one hundred percent of the time. And again, I'm not
(02:54):
so worried about getting it wrong. But when you get
it wrong, that wrong belief that you form, that you create,
that solidifies, becomes the filter through which you see everything
else in your life. And so maybe even now in
a story that you're in, your receiving information through a
filter that's from an old story that you wrote too quickly,
(03:18):
that's actually incorrect. And if you gave me what those
beliefs were, I could probably tell you, and vice versa,
me to you if you gave if I gave you
beliefs that I have. You know, if I said a
belief I have is I have to do it all
by myself, you'd be like, that's not true. You're surrounded
by support. Hello, open your eyes, wake up. I can't
see it. When I have a foregone conclusion, a belief
(03:40):
that I've formed, that I've decided is true, then my
brain filters out all the other information that is contradictory
to that conclusion. It's called confirmation bias, and we all
do this. It's a common trap of the human brain
that when I come to a conclusion, that conclusion becomes
(04:03):
the filter through which I receive all future information unless
I stay open. If I stay open and I don't
come to a conclusion too soon, then information can come
into me in an unbiased way. But most of the
time I think we are so tempted to conclude our
stories before they're really concluded, because it's just so uncomfortable
(04:23):
to stay in the uncertainty. So I am practicing this
I don't know in every aspect of my life. I
shared last week on the episode that one of the
main ways I'm practicing this I don't know is as
it relates to growing our family. I would love to
have another baby. Nothing would make me happier than to
grow our family. I don't know if I'm going to
be able to have another baby, and I just don't know,
And it's actually really healthy for me to sit in
(04:45):
that I don't know. I feel positive feelings toward it.
I feel hopeful still that this is in the picture
for us, and I feel open to receive it if
it comes to me. And I also just don't know,
and I'm choosing to stay open instead of what part
of me wants to do, which is to shut down
and say forget it. We should just quit trying. Let's
(05:05):
just live our lives. We've got a great family, we've
got two healthy kids. Let's just go, you know, do
fun things, go travel whatever. I think there's some wisdom
to that, and there is a point where it makes
sense to kind of set a boundary, or like the
example I gave last week about the relationship, there does
come a point in a relationship where you say, like,
I'm not going to live in the uncertainty for any longer.
You know, I need you to kind of make a
(05:26):
decision about what you want to do here. So not
advocating for not setting a boundary, I am advocating for
fully feeling and allowing that sense of uncertainty, because that
uncertainty is the essence of life.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
If you are.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Trying to bypass uncertainty, you are bypassing your entire life.
Go back and listen to the episode where I talk
about Things fall Apart with Pina Schodorin, and I read
all the quotes from that book. Uncertainty is the essence
of life. Groundlessness is the essence of life. And if
you are trying to buy pass your groundlessness, you are
(06:03):
bypassing your entire life. It makes sense that you're doing it,
and yet it is blocking all the goodness that's trying
to come into your life. It's blocking your receptivity.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Think about this.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Here's a good example. If I'm trying to always anticipate
someone else's needs and get them what they need before
they can even think about it, it's like they're gonna
be hungry. I gotta get them something. They're gonna be thirsty.
I gotta get them something. They're tired, Like, let's help them.
If I'm trying to always anticipate someone else's needs, they
don't even have a second to anticipate my needs to
come toward me. And think about this relationship, a dynamic
(06:41):
relationship that you have with life or with life force,
or with God or with love or universe or whoever
you want to describe this to yourself, like a force
out there that is bigger than you that you don't understand,
that is animating all of life, like the trees, the animals,
us that force that's out there that's bigger than you.
You're in this constant conversation with this, and if you're
(07:01):
like I got to quick, be on the ball, get
everything right, tie this all up, figure out the answers,
there's no time for that loving energy to come your way,
to come to you. If you're at dinner with a
friend and you're like asking question after question after question
after question after question, you're wanting to catch up on
that person's life, and you don't ever pause to take
(07:22):
a breath. If you don't ever pause, then your friend
ever has a chance to ask you questions, so you
might leave the dinner thinking like I had to do
all the work, I'd ask all the questions. But you
never took a breath, You never allowed yourself a moment
to sit in the silence. I worked with an author
a long time ago who was a negotiation expert, and
(07:43):
one of the things that he told me that has
stuck with me all these years is that the person
in the negotiation who can get the most comfortable with
silence and with discomfort will win the negotiation one hundred
percent of the time. He's like, if you go to
a car dealership to buy a new car, and you
are in a negotiation with the car salesman, if you
(08:05):
can sit in silence, if you can throw out a number,
let's say, and sit in silence and say nothing. Or
let's say the car salesman asks you a question and
you sit in silence and say nothing. Your ability to
sit in silence is in direct proportion to your ability
to get what you want inside of that negotiation. That
has stuck with me all these years, and I think
(08:25):
it applies here. It's like, if we can sit in
the discomfort, if we can sit in the uncertainty. The
ability that we have to do that is directly proportional
to our ability to receive what life is trying to
offer us. So I'm practicing this idea of I don't know.
I'm practicing saying I don't know about this baby. I'm
practicing saying I don't know. In this area of faith
in my life, I have deconstructed from the evangelicalism that
(08:49):
was the faith of my upbringing. There are parts of
that that I've still held on to. I've deconstructed from
post evangelicalism, which for me was like I don't know,
like kind of astrology and like a hodgepodge of multiple
different things that I used in very similar ways that
I used evangelicalism to cope with my relative feelings of uncertainty.
(09:10):
It's like I don't know what's going on. Well let
me look at the stars, like I don't know what's
going on, so let me go to church or pray,
prayer or whatever. Instead of learning to get comfortable with
this idea that life is uncertain, I don't know what's
coming next, none of us do. So take a deep
breath and sink into the uncertainty and learn to receive,
so I'm learning to go I don't know. I don't
(09:31):
know the answer to that question. I don't know what
happens when we die. I don't know where my dad is,
who passed last October. I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know, And I'm getting more and more comfortable
with that feeling of I don't know. And the other
night I was sitting at my mother in law's house.
Who if you are a listener, you know my mother
in law lives directly next to us. My brother in
law lives down the street, and so we do these
(09:53):
weekly dinners together on Friday night. Matt happened to be
out of town for this one, but the rest of
us were here, so I took the kids next door,
came over, my mother in law, my brother in law,
the kids, and I were all sitting eating dinner. And
after dinner was over, the kids went out and they
were riding their scooters and we got into this deep
conversation that, honestly, I don't even know how we got there,
but we got to the place in the conversation where
(10:13):
I was just in tears talking to my brother in
law and my mother in law about how challenging the
last couple of years have been for me and my
brother in law. I mean, I don't want to tell
too much of his story because it's his story to tell,
but I will tell you I have seen the most
dramatic transformation in him in the last year in particular,
but really two years in his life. I mean, he's
(10:35):
been through a hell in a handbasket and he has
come out the other side so much stronger. And it's
been so inspiring to watch him have this transformation and
to hear his firsthand testimony of what this has been about,
or where it's come from, or why the transformation has happened.
And part of it has been sobriety, and part of
(10:56):
it has been choosing to focus on the positive, choosing attitude,
choosing to be more grateful, meditating, like just having a
different mindset about his life. And so I'm watching him
have this transformation, and this is part of the reason
I'm telling this part of the story. I don't want
to get too deep in the weeds of the details
of his life because it doesn't feel fair to share
that story without asking him. But he's sharing stories from.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
His life, but he's.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Sharing stories from his life, and then I'm feeling like, uugh,
I'm so frustrated because it feels like I have so
many blessings in my life, and I know that to
be true, my marriage being a number one blessing. I
have such a sturdy, happy, healthy marriage, and that is
just like it colors everything else in your life. And
as someone who has suffered through a really painful marriage,
(11:50):
I can tell you that that having a sturdy marriage
is like makes everything easier. So I know that's a big,
huge blessing that I have. And then I have two happy, healthy,
lovely children. We're out at the time that I'm having
this conversation, riding their scooters and giggling and like that
background noise is just the happiest, loveliest background noise. That
is a reminder that I have so many things that
(12:11):
are swayed in my direction. And I have been going
through the loss of my father, the loss of this
dream that Matt and I had that we put our
entire life savings and then some into, and the loss
of two pregnancies back to back and really wanting to
have another baby and not feeling like I was able
to actualize that. And I think the thing that our
(12:31):
brains do when we can't actualize something that we want
is to go, how am I going to figure this out?
You know, because you don't want to sit in the
uncertainty of it. So you either want to go like,
I'm not going to do this, I cancel, like I
quit trying to have a baby, or you want to go, okay,
what's the strategy? And this is where I think a
lot of self help and manifestation stuff gets it wrong.
(12:52):
Is that instead of encouraging people to sit in the
uncertainty of I don't know that, we actually tell them
to create vision board. We tell them to get a mantra,
to use your affirmations, to meditate, to go to yoga,
to you know, none of these modalities are bad or wrong,
Like all of those would be great things to do
if you're wanting to manifest something in your life. But
(13:14):
you're wanting to manifest something in your life, the answer
is not get a strategy. The answer is not get
a five step plan. The answer is to sit in
the uncertainty and to allow the uncertainty to just state.
If you think about pregnancy as just a metaphor for this,
I want to just bring this up because you know,
if you haven't been pregnant, maybe this metaphor doesn't feel
(13:36):
as poignant to you. But having been a person who's
been pregnant a couple of times, I've been pregnant four
times to be exact, the idea that by doing nothing
other than to be crass something that is pleasurable to me,
by doing nothing other than something that I wanted to
do anyway, that this little life forms inside of my
(13:57):
body and I don't have to do anything, like nothing,
and the intelligence of life replicates these cells to become something.
Pregnancy is the ultimate manifestation, Like it is the ultimate
picture of what manifestation means. Like I do nothing and
this thing manifests itself.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
It is literally.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Something out of nothing that is so absurd that that
is even possible and so insane and should make us
think twice when we think that what we need in
order to manifest is a strategy or a mantra or
a therapy plan or whatever. Again, nothing against any of
(14:37):
those things, but you don't need any kind of strategy
or mantra in order to get pregnant. I mean, I know,
like we're having a fertility crisis on the globe right now.
But in order to get pregnant, all you really need
is to just do something that you would have done otherwise,
even if you weren't trying to get pregnant, something that
is inherently pleasurable, something that invites you in, and you
get pregnant. That's that's how it happens. And something that
(14:59):
you have nothing to do with and that you're is
completely out of your control. And so I'm sitting at
the dinner table the other night talking to my mother
in law and my brother in law just in tears
because I'm grieving these losses of things that I wanted
to materialize, that I wanted to manifest, and I felt
like I did all the right things. I checked all
the boxes, I did all the meditations, I listened, I journaled,
(15:22):
I did the therapy, and I have always felt like
this my whole life, which again this tells you, this
is always a red flag for you if you're like,
I've always done this my whole life, and this has
always happened, that here is a belief that you formed
that has solidified, calcified so much that now every other
piece of information that you're receiving is coming through this filter.
This is just a flag. If you have a moment
(15:44):
like this where you're like, it's always been like this,
it's never going to change. It's a flag for you
that you have a belief there that has calcified, and
that you're receiving information through the lens of that belief.
So I'm sitting there telling my mother in law and
brother in law, I'm in tears. I'm like, I did everything,
I did everything that I was supposed to do, and
everything still fell apart. And my brother in law said
something to me that I think is so poignant and
(16:05):
that I'm holding on too. And as part of the
reason for recording this episode, which is he said, what
are you talking about, Like, the story is not over yet.
You're making this conclusion based on the idea that your
story is complete and that it ended in this tragedy.
But the story is not complete, the story has not
finished yet, and if you can just stay open, he
(16:26):
didn't even use those words, but I'm saying this, like,
if I can just stay open to the idea that
the story has not concluded yet, and if I can
do what my friend suggested. Remember the last episode when
I told you about my friend suggesting during the time
I was dating Matt to not make any decisions, but
just to stay open to more information coming through. If
I can stay open and available to more information coming through,
(16:51):
then the story is going to end differently than how
I thought. The story is going to end in a
different way sometime in the future. And this really stuck
out to me. I just realized how much, even though
I've been practicing this, what I've been practicing is in
the deconstruction of my faith or my understanding of how
God works, how the universe works. It's like, I don't know.
(17:13):
I don't freaking know how any of this works. I
tried the positive thinking manifestation thing. I don't think that
the way this is taught is helpful or useful for
most people. I think it's kind of like shallow and
incorrect in my opinion. I have done evangelicalism, I've done
I guess a little bit of astrology. I've done other things,
and none of it really feels like it's true or working.
(17:36):
So I'm willing to sit in the like, I don't
know if astrology is real. I don't know if you know,
like I think I believe, I do believe there is
a force out there of love that is moving through
each of us and animating us and bringing life. I
have to believe that. I wouldn't even know how to
let go of that belief. But inside of that belief,
it's like, who is God? What does God like? You know?
(17:58):
How do I interact with God?
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Like?
Speaker 3 (18:00):
What does it mean that my dreams have fallen apart?
Or that I want this thing and it's not coming
to me? All of those questions, And I've been willing
to sit in the I don't know. But I had
not gone as far as to say, oh, I was
writing the ending to the story before it was even written.
I don't think I realized I was doing that. And
when my brother in law pointed that out, I was
just like, oh, no, wonder, I'm suffering so much because
(18:22):
not only was I writing the end of the story
before the story had even finished, but because of the
way the information lands currently, the ending that I was
writing was this idea that I must have missed it
along the way. I must have done something wrong. I
must have missed a sign, I must have taken a
wrong turn. And that conclusion is just plain incorrect, Like
(18:44):
it just is plain incorrect. And when I tell you that,
a lot of healing came through for me when I realized, oh,
most of my suffering right now, I mean, I am
grieving and I'm letting go of these ideas, like the
idea of how I thought my life was going to be.
And I think that there's sadness that comes with that,
and that's natural, and yet that sadness feels lighter to
(19:05):
me than the sadness that comes from I must have
done something wrong because I'm suffering. And I wonder how
many of us are in that state where we've written
the conclusion to the story, and because we think the
story is over, we're telling ourselves I must have done
something wrong because this is how the story concluded. I
(19:25):
didn't get any of what I wanted. And what Luke
said was basically just wait, Like, can you just wait
for more information to come in? Can you wait before
you decide that this is where the story ends? Can
you allow for there to be a different conclusion somewhere
in the future, And can you not assume that this
(19:47):
is where things end for good? And when I tell you,
I mean, this is this is so healing for me.
This is where all of the healing comes in. This
is where the transformation happens. When you can stay in
the middle of your story without writing foregone conclusions. The
lightness I feel. There's still grief, there's still loss, But
(20:08):
don't add on top of the loss, this judgment of
yourself that you've somehow done something wrong. Instead, see if
you can sit in the uncertainty. See if you can
sit in the discomfort for a little while longer, See
if you can wait for more information to come in,
Because maybe when more information comes in, it's going to
tell a different story. It's going to make everything make sense.
It's going to make the puzzle pieces of your life
(20:30):
fit together in a way that they didn't fit together before.
So don't jump to the end and write the conclusion.
Don't fill in the blanks in ways that they have
not filled themselves in. Allow there to be blanks, Allow
there to be uncertainty. And I wonder if maybe doing
that will lift some of the weight of the anxiety,
(20:51):
the frustration, the tension, the resistance. And yeah, there's still grief. There,
there's still loss, there's still uncertain life is uncertain, so
there's still some uncertainty. But it might feel a little
bit lighter than I did. I hope you find this
as helpful as I did. I am sending you a
big hug and lots of love from a distance, and
I will see you back here next week on The
(21:12):
Writer Story podcast
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the word you write all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You got the words and said, don't you think it's
down to.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Let them out and write them down on cold It's
all about.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And write your story.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Write, write your story.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, And on this week's episode,
I want to continue talking about what I talked about
on last week's episode, which is this idea of being
willing to stay in the uncertainty. This is, like I
mentioned last week, extremely complicated and extremely uncomfortable, or can
(00:50):
be extremely uncomfortable to stay in the uncertainty when you
don't know the answer to the question, You don't know
how the story is going to resolve, You don't know
which way the story is going to go. Am I
going to marry this person or they going to break
up with me? Am I going to have the baby
or not have the baby? Am I going to get
this job or not? Am I going to move to
this place or this place? It can be so uncomfortable
to stay in the uncertainty and yet all of the
(01:11):
goodness of our story, all the transformation of the hero,
happens in the uncertainty. And when we jump to a
conclusion in the story, not only do we get the
answer wrong. I'm not so concerned about getting the answer wrong,
but the conclusion that we come to becomes a filter
through which we receive all future information. So if we
do get the answer to the question wrong, if we say, well,
(01:32):
the reason this happened to me is because I did
something wrong, and that's now the conclusion, then that conclusion
becomes the filter for every single other piece of information
that comes my way, instead of removing the filter and
receiving that information from openness, receiving that information without bias,
(01:53):
so that we can really put the pieces of the
story together in a way that is beautiful. One of
the things that I believe deep in every fiber of
my being. I'm going through such a weird spiritual process
in my life where i feel like I'm deconstructing for
the second time. And I've talked about this, so there
are a lot of things that I'm like, I don't
know what I believe. Honestly, I'm sitting in a big
(02:13):
vat I don't know in terms of what I believe, like,
I don't know what happens to us after we die.
I don't know if there's heaven. I don't know where
people go. I don't know where souls go. I don't
know if we're reincarnated. I don't know. I don't know,
I don't know. There's so much that I don't know.
But let me tell you something that I do know
for sure that when we can sit back and allow
our stories to be written, when we can receive the
(02:34):
story that is being written in us and through us, beautiful, incredible, amazing,
miraculous things happen. I just believe that with every fiber
of my being. I've seen it over and over and
over again. And when we jump in and try hard
and try to wrap things up and try to tie
it up too quick, then we get it wrong almost
one hundred percent of the time. And again, I'm not
(02:54):
so worried about getting it wrong. But when you get
it wrong, that wrong belief that you form, that you create,
that solidifies, becomes the filter through which you see everything
else in your life. And so maybe even now in
a story that you're in, your receiving information through a
filter that's from an old story that you wrote too quickly,
(03:18):
that's actually incorrect. And if you gave me what those
beliefs were, I could probably tell you, and vice versa,
me to you if you gave if I gave you
beliefs that I have. You know, if I said a
belief I have is I have to do it all
by myself, you'd be like, that's not true. You're surrounded
by support. Hello, open your eyes, wake up. I can't
see it. When I have a foregone conclusion, a belief
(03:40):
that I've formed, that I've decided is true, then my
brain filters out all the other information that is contradictory
to that conclusion. It's called confirmation bias, and we all
do this. It's a common trap of the human brain
that when I come to a conclusion, that conclusion becomes
(04:03):
the filter through which I receive all future information unless
I stay open. If I stay open and I don't
come to a conclusion too soon, then information can come
into me in an unbiased way. But most of the
time I think we are so tempted to conclude our
stories before they're really concluded, because it's just so uncomfortable
(04:23):
to stay in the uncertainty. So I am practicing this
I don't know in every aspect of my life. I
shared last week on the episode that one of the
main ways I'm practicing this I don't know is as
it relates to growing our family. I would love to
have another baby. Nothing would make me happier than to
grow our family. I don't know if I'm going to
be able to have another baby, and I just don't know,
And it's actually really healthy for me to sit in
(04:45):
that I don't know. I feel positive feelings toward it.
I feel hopeful still that this is in the picture
for us, and I feel open to receive it if
it comes to me. And I also just don't know,
and I'm choosing to stay open instead of what part
of me wants to do, which is to shut down
and say forget it. We should just quit trying. Let's
(05:05):
just live our lives. We've got a great family, we've
got two healthy kids. Let's just go, you know, do
fun things, go travel whatever. I think there's some wisdom
to that, and there is a point where it makes
sense to kind of set a boundary, or like the
example I gave last week about the relationship, there does
come a point in a relationship where you say, like,
I'm not going to live in the uncertainty for any longer.
You know, I need you to kind of make a
(05:26):
decision about what you want to do here. So not
advocating for not setting a boundary, I am advocating for
fully feeling and allowing that sense of uncertainty, because that
uncertainty is the essence of life.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
If you are.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Trying to bypass uncertainty, you are bypassing your entire life.
Go back and listen to the episode where I talk
about Things fall Apart with Pina Schodorin, and I read
all the quotes from that book. Uncertainty is the essence
of life. Groundlessness is the essence of life. And if
you are trying to buy pass your groundlessness, you are
(06:03):
bypassing your entire life. It makes sense that you're doing it,
and yet it is blocking all the goodness that's trying
to come into your life. It's blocking your receptivity.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Think about this.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Here's a good example. If I'm trying to always anticipate
someone else's needs and get them what they need before
they can even think about it, it's like they're gonna
be hungry. I gotta get them something. They're gonna be thirsty.
I gotta get them something. They're tired, Like, let's help them.
If I'm trying to always anticipate someone else's needs, they
don't even have a second to anticipate my needs to
come toward me. And think about this relationship, a dynamic
(06:41):
relationship that you have with life or with life force,
or with God or with love or universe or whoever
you want to describe this to yourself, like a force
out there that is bigger than you that you don't understand,
that is animating all of life, like the trees, the animals,
us that force that's out there that's bigger than you.
You're in this constant conversation with this, and if you're
(07:01):
like I got to quick, be on the ball, get
everything right, tie this all up, figure out the answers,
there's no time for that loving energy to come your way,
to come to you. If you're at dinner with a
friend and you're like asking question after question after question
after question after question, you're wanting to catch up on
that person's life, and you don't ever pause to take
(07:22):
a breath. If you don't ever pause, then your friend
ever has a chance to ask you questions, so you
might leave the dinner thinking like I had to do
all the work, I'd ask all the questions. But you
never took a breath, You never allowed yourself a moment
to sit in the silence. I worked with an author
a long time ago who was a negotiation expert, and
(07:43):
one of the things that he told me that has
stuck with me all these years is that the person
in the negotiation who can get the most comfortable with
silence and with discomfort will win the negotiation one hundred
percent of the time. He's like, if you go to
a car dealership to buy a new car, and you
are in a negotiation with the car salesman, if you
(08:05):
can sit in silence, if you can throw out a number,
let's say, and sit in silence and say nothing. Or
let's say the car salesman asks you a question and
you sit in silence and say nothing. Your ability to
sit in silence is in direct proportion to your ability
to get what you want inside of that negotiation. That
has stuck with me all these years, and I think
(08:25):
it applies here. It's like, if we can sit in
the discomfort, if we can sit in the uncertainty. The
ability that we have to do that is directly proportional
to our ability to receive what life is trying to
offer us. So I'm practicing this idea of I don't know.
I'm practicing saying I don't know about this baby. I'm
practicing saying I don't know. In this area of faith
in my life, I have deconstructed from the evangelicalism that
(08:49):
was the faith of my upbringing. There are parts of
that that I've still held on to. I've deconstructed from
post evangelicalism, which for me was like I don't know,
like kind of astrology and like a hodgepodge of multiple
different things that I used in very similar ways that
I used evangelicalism to cope with my relative feelings of uncertainty.
(09:10):
It's like I don't know what's going on. Well let
me look at the stars, like I don't know what's
going on, so let me go to church or pray,
prayer or whatever. Instead of learning to get comfortable with
this idea that life is uncertain, I don't know what's
coming next, none of us do. So take a deep
breath and sink into the uncertainty and learn to receive,
so I'm learning to go I don't know. I don't
(09:31):
know the answer to that question. I don't know what
happens when we die. I don't know where my dad is,
who passed last October. I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know, And I'm getting more and more comfortable
with that feeling of I don't know. And the other
night I was sitting at my mother in law's house.
Who if you are a listener, you know my mother
in law lives directly next to us. My brother in
law lives down the street, and so we do these
(09:53):
weekly dinners together on Friday night. Matt happened to be
out of town for this one, but the rest of
us were here, so I took the kids next door,
came over, my mother in law, my brother in law,
the kids, and I were all sitting eating dinner. And
after dinner was over, the kids went out and they
were riding their scooters and we got into this deep
conversation that, honestly, I don't even know how we got there,
but we got to the place in the conversation where
(10:13):
I was just in tears talking to my brother in
law and my mother in law about how challenging the
last couple of years have been for me and my
brother in law. I mean, I don't want to tell
too much of his story because it's his story to tell,
but I will tell you I have seen the most
dramatic transformation in him in the last year in particular,
but really two years in his life. I mean, he's
(10:35):
been through a hell in a handbasket and he has
come out the other side so much stronger. And it's
been so inspiring to watch him have this transformation and
to hear his firsthand testimony of what this has been about,
or where it's come from, or why the transformation has happened.
And part of it has been sobriety, and part of
(10:56):
it has been choosing to focus on the positive, choosing attitude,
choosing to be more grateful, meditating, like just having a
different mindset about his life. And so I'm watching him
have this transformation, and this is part of the reason
I'm telling this part of the story. I don't want
to get too deep in the weeds of the details
of his life because it doesn't feel fair to share
that story without asking him. But he's sharing stories from.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
His life, but he's.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Sharing stories from his life, and then I'm feeling like, uugh,
I'm so frustrated because it feels like I have so
many blessings in my life, and I know that to
be true, my marriage being a number one blessing. I
have such a sturdy, happy, healthy marriage, and that is
just like it colors everything else in your life. And
as someone who has suffered through a really painful marriage,
(11:50):
I can tell you that that having a sturdy marriage
is like makes everything easier. So I know that's a big,
huge blessing that I have. And then I have two happy, healthy,
lovely children. We're out at the time that I'm having
this conversation, riding their scooters and giggling and like that
background noise is just the happiest, loveliest background noise. That
is a reminder that I have so many things that
(12:11):
are swayed in my direction. And I have been going
through the loss of my father, the loss of this
dream that Matt and I had that we put our
entire life savings and then some into, and the loss
of two pregnancies back to back and really wanting to
have another baby and not feeling like I was able
to actualize that. And I think the thing that our
(12:31):
brains do when we can't actualize something that we want
is to go, how am I going to figure this out?
You know, because you don't want to sit in the
uncertainty of it. So you either want to go like,
I'm not going to do this, I cancel, like I
quit trying to have a baby, or you want to go, okay,
what's the strategy? And this is where I think a
lot of self help and manifestation stuff gets it wrong.
(12:52):
Is that instead of encouraging people to sit in the
uncertainty of I don't know that, we actually tell them
to create vision board. We tell them to get a mantra,
to use your affirmations, to meditate, to go to yoga,
to you know, none of these modalities are bad or wrong,
Like all of those would be great things to do
if you're wanting to manifest something in your life. But
(13:14):
you're wanting to manifest something in your life, the answer
is not get a strategy. The answer is not get
a five step plan. The answer is to sit in
the uncertainty and to allow the uncertainty to just state.
If you think about pregnancy as just a metaphor for this,
I want to just bring this up because you know,
if you haven't been pregnant, maybe this metaphor doesn't feel
(13:36):
as poignant to you. But having been a person who's
been pregnant a couple of times, I've been pregnant four
times to be exact, the idea that by doing nothing
other than to be crass something that is pleasurable to me,
by doing nothing other than something that I wanted to
do anyway, that this little life forms inside of my
(13:57):
body and I don't have to do anything, like nothing,
and the intelligence of life replicates these cells to become something.
Pregnancy is the ultimate manifestation, Like it is the ultimate
picture of what manifestation means. Like I do nothing and
this thing manifests itself.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
It is literally.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Something out of nothing that is so absurd that that
is even possible and so insane and should make us
think twice when we think that what we need in
order to manifest is a strategy or a mantra or
a therapy plan or whatever. Again, nothing against any of
(14:37):
those things, but you don't need any kind of strategy
or mantra in order to get pregnant. I mean, I know,
like we're having a fertility crisis on the globe right now.
But in order to get pregnant, all you really need
is to just do something that you would have done otherwise,
even if you weren't trying to get pregnant, something that
is inherently pleasurable, something that invites you in, and you
get pregnant. That's that's how it happens. And something that
(14:59):
you have nothing to do with and that you're is
completely out of your control. And so I'm sitting at
the dinner table the other night talking to my mother
in law and my brother in law just in tears
because I'm grieving these losses of things that I wanted
to materialize, that I wanted to manifest, and I felt
like I did all the right things. I checked all
the boxes, I did all the meditations, I listened, I journaled,
(15:22):
I did the therapy, and I have always felt like
this my whole life, which again this tells you, this
is always a red flag for you if you're like,
I've always done this my whole life, and this has
always happened, that here is a belief that you formed
that has solidified, calcified so much that now every other
piece of information that you're receiving is coming through this filter.
This is just a flag. If you have a moment
(15:44):
like this where you're like, it's always been like this,
it's never going to change. It's a flag for you
that you have a belief there that has calcified, and
that you're receiving information through the lens of that belief.
So I'm sitting there telling my mother in law and
brother in law, I'm in tears. I'm like, I did everything,
I did everything that I was supposed to do, and
everything still fell apart. And my brother in law said
something to me that I think is so poignant and
(16:05):
that I'm holding on too. And as part of the
reason for recording this episode, which is he said, what
are you talking about, Like, the story is not over yet.
You're making this conclusion based on the idea that your
story is complete and that it ended in this tragedy.
But the story is not complete, the story has not
finished yet, and if you can just stay open, he
(16:26):
didn't even use those words, but I'm saying this, like,
if I can just stay open to the idea that
the story has not concluded yet, and if I can
do what my friend suggested. Remember the last episode when
I told you about my friend suggesting during the time
I was dating Matt to not make any decisions, but
just to stay open to more information coming through. If
I can stay open and available to more information coming through,
(16:51):
then the story is going to end differently than how
I thought. The story is going to end in a
different way sometime in the future. And this really stuck
out to me. I just realized how much, even though
I've been practicing this, what I've been practicing is in
the deconstruction of my faith or my understanding of how
God works, how the universe works. It's like, I don't know.
(17:13):
I don't freaking know how any of this works. I
tried the positive thinking manifestation thing. I don't think that
the way this is taught is helpful or useful for
most people. I think it's kind of like shallow and
incorrect in my opinion. I have done evangelicalism, I've done
I guess a little bit of astrology. I've done other things,
and none of it really feels like it's true or working.
(17:36):
So I'm willing to sit in the like, I don't
know if astrology is real. I don't know if you know,
like I think I believe, I do believe there is
a force out there of love that is moving through
each of us and animating us and bringing life. I
have to believe that. I wouldn't even know how to
let go of that belief. But inside of that belief,
it's like, who is God? What does God like? You know?
(17:58):
How do I interact with God?
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Like?
Speaker 3 (18:00):
What does it mean that my dreams have fallen apart?
Or that I want this thing and it's not coming
to me? All of those questions, And I've been willing
to sit in the I don't know. But I had
not gone as far as to say, oh, I was
writing the ending to the story before it was even written.
I don't think I realized I was doing that. And
when my brother in law pointed that out, I was
just like, oh, no, wonder, I'm suffering so much because
(18:22):
not only was I writing the end of the story
before the story had even finished, but because of the
way the information lands currently, the ending that I was
writing was this idea that I must have missed it
along the way. I must have done something wrong. I
must have missed a sign, I must have taken a
wrong turn. And that conclusion is just plain incorrect, Like
(18:44):
it just is plain incorrect. And when I tell you that,
a lot of healing came through for me when I realized, oh,
most of my suffering right now, I mean, I am
grieving and I'm letting go of these ideas, like the
idea of how I thought my life was going to be.
And I think that there's sadness that comes with that,
and that's natural, and yet that sadness feels lighter to
(19:05):
me than the sadness that comes from I must have
done something wrong because I'm suffering. And I wonder how
many of us are in that state where we've written
the conclusion to the story, and because we think the
story is over, we're telling ourselves I must have done
something wrong because this is how the story concluded. I
(19:25):
didn't get any of what I wanted. And what Luke
said was basically just wait, Like, can you just wait
for more information to come in? Can you wait before
you decide that this is where the story ends? Can
you allow for there to be a different conclusion somewhere
in the future, And can you not assume that this
(19:47):
is where things end for good? And when I tell you,
I mean, this is this is so healing for me.
This is where all of the healing comes in. This
is where the transformation happens. When you can stay in
the middle of your story without writing foregone conclusions. The
lightness I feel. There's still grief, there's still loss, But
(20:08):
don't add on top of the loss, this judgment of
yourself that you've somehow done something wrong. Instead, see if
you can sit in the uncertainty. See if you can
sit in the discomfort for a little while longer, See
if you can wait for more information to come in,
Because maybe when more information comes in, it's going to
tell a different story. It's going to make everything make sense.
It's going to make the puzzle pieces of your life
(20:30):
fit together in a way that they didn't fit together before.
So don't jump to the end and write the conclusion.
Don't fill in the blanks in ways that they have
not filled themselves in. Allow there to be blanks, Allow
there to be uncertainty. And I wonder if maybe doing
that will lift some of the weight of the anxiety,
(20:51):
the frustration, the tension, the resistance. And yeah, there's still grief. There,
there's still loss, there's still uncertain life is uncertain, so
there's still some uncertainty. But it might feel a little
bit lighter than I did. I hope you find this
as helpful as I did. I am sending you a
big hug and lots of love from a distance, and
I will see you back here next week on The
(21:12):
Writer Story podcast
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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