My inner know-it-all is a big obstacle for me.
Maybe you can relate.
When something new comes up, I want to be first to know. I have an insatiable need to figure things out.
When I’m the first to blurt out the answer and everyone else notice, my inner know-it-all smiles.
I hate to feel dumb. But acting like a know-it-all is hardly a solution.
When life gives you the chance to see something about yourself, you have the opportunity to make a choice.
Awareness brings freedom.
Operation: Defeat Agent Smug… at all costs
Let’s take a quest to uncover what lies underneath a person’s inner know-it-all! I want to unlock it so that I get a better sense for who I really am.
And though everybody’s inner know-it-all looks different, we could probably get a good sense for it by describing it as something like the following:
- smug
- self-righteous
- closed
- smarmy
- pseudo-intellectual
- sarcastic/insincere
- habitual rather than spontaneous
- rigid rather than adaptable
- impatient
It’s actually exhausting to try to be a know-it-all.
Are there times in your life that you’re content even when you don’t have all the answers? Taking refuge in your inner know-it-all can feel safe. What do you like more than safety? What are you willing to take a risk for?
You know what helps me? Getting outside my comfort zone. This can mean something as straightfoward as freewriting. That might be all it takes.
Freewriting puts me in the hot seat in a way that displaces my know-it-all into the back seat.
Here’s what I have learned from trying to be a knowitall:
Knowitalls confine themselves to small spaces. They see a limited picture that fails to be accurate once they step into a larger arena.
So…
Look for some bigger challenges and take them on. Find something outside your comfort zone.
Engage with people directly and at a greater depth. Be spontaneous. Just see what happens. What you do doesn’t need to be brilliant. Just be spontaneous and imperfectly articulate and notice what happens.
It can be as simple as actually inviting inspiration to be present in your working life.
A know-it-all is blocked off from inspiration because they think they have it already. When you freewrite, you move from the wide field of uncertainty and unlimited possibility and make discoveries. You step into chaos and don’t ask it to be ordered according to your whims.
Growth awaits!