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

Posted: Wednesday February 23, 2005 5:59 AM EST

By Connie Habash http://www.awakeningself.com

Page 1 of 2 pages for this article  1 2 >

Stuck.  Mind is blank.  Out of options.  You’ve come to an impasse - a situation in which you’re not sure which way to go.  The path seems to just end there, and the overgrowth of the brush has covered the direction.

We all come to places and times in our lives when we don’t know what to do.  We weigh our options, and none of them feels quite right, or they have big costs that we aren’t yet willing to pay.  It can feel helpless, hopeless, and scary. We may feel that we’re alone and have to figure it out all by ourselves.

The only thing we can be certain of is that we can’t go back. Perhaps we are ready to leave a relationship that no longer works, or a job situation that’s become torturous.  But leaving it leaves us wide open - a place of vulnerability in facing the unknown.  Or, perhaps we’re willing to embark on a new career, or allow someone loving into our lives, but we just don’t know how.  We feel compelled to figure things out, and figure them out quick.  What way do I go, and how do I get there - fast!

We want to DO something.  Granted, if we’re in a dangerous situation, we must act, and act swiftly, in order to get out of danger.  But let’s assume that most of us aren’t faced with real danger, but a more imagined threat - the great mystery.  This is the unknown of the future, which never tells all, despite our best attempts at getting advice from our friends, family, astrologers, psychics, and financial consultants!

Because we don’t know what’s ahead, the mind starts considering possibilities.  If you have the kind of mind that worries and is often looking for the perceived threat, that potential danger that lies around the corner, sitting with the unknown can become pretty unbearable.  So, we figure, we must come up with a PLAN.  A plan gives us security.  Then we feel like, yeah, I’m going somewhere.  The plan is often based on how to protect us from the potential threats that the fear-based mind has come up with.  And then we have to DO something about it.

Has this pattern occurred before in your life?  This pattern tends to repeat over and over: we come to a crossroads, we don’t know what to do, we get scared, and we make a plan - a plan based on fear and self-protection, rather than on our heart.  Instead of following what truly gives us joy, we fall into the trap of staying safe because we haven’t learned to sit with the uncomfortableness of not-knowing.  We haven’t yet learned to BE.

Perhaps what the universe is calling for, rather than DOING something, is to sit down and BE.  When we relax and allow ourselves to be, then something greater than us can come forth. When we’re trying so hard to DO and make something – anything – happen, we may be interfering with that process.

Think about the growth of a child.  From a baby, the child naturally grows into an adult without any of us having to do something to make that happen.  We don’t sit down with a plan, and say, “OK.  In the first year, we’ll need to make the baby grow a foot, we’ll have to seal up the opening on the crown of the head, and we’ll need to have the following motor skills developed through this comprehensive plan, as follows.” How ridiculous!  We know that if the baby receives proper nourishment, ample love, attentiveness from the parents, and is allowed to play and BE, nature takes it’s course.  We don’t inject growth hormones into our children to try to make their growth happen.  When everything is in order, it naturally happens.

There is a Taoist term that roughly translates as “the action that arises of itself.” It’s called Wu-Wei.  When we become present, let go, and trust that something beyond us will show up, guess what - it does.  In the philosophy of Taoism, everything has its own nature, it’s own essence, already within it. To quote from “The Tao of Pooh”, by Benjamin Hoff, “the more man interfered with the natural balance produced and governed by the universal laws, the further away the harmony retreated into the distance.  The more forcing, the more trouble… Only then did life become sour.” Lao Tzu, the father of Taoism, observed that when the natural order prevailed, the people were happy.  When the leaders of the country tried to control everything, the people became dissatisfied.  Being worked much better than controlling.

Worried about nothing happening if you stop and just BE?  Keep this in mind - the universe is always changing.  Nothing ever stays the same for too long.  If we give it a chance, by not-doing, the natural, harmonious action can bubble up to the surface.  This is Wu-Wei.

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