Your Opinion Counts. But Your Fear and Resistance Will Tell You It Doesn't.

For about 10 years now I’ve been paying really close attention to the reasons people don’t do the things that underneath they are being called to do.

The lies we tell ourselves that keep us safe, and keep us small.

The fear talking that isn’t wisdom.

The stories that aren’t intuition.

Steven Pressfield calls this Resistance, and it’s a powerful frame.

One of the lines that the lies, fear, stories and Resistance like is that we don’t know enough.

We don’t know enough for our opinion to count.

We don’t know enough for us to raise our hand in this room.

We don’t know enough to step into this leadership role.

But more pernicious than this, even, is the way that we let our fear invalidate the knowing we do have.

I remember leading a discussion with a group of academic researchers - some of the most exciting minds at one of the UK’s leading universities. That kind of group can get spikey sometimes, and that was happening as one of the participants pushed hard on the way he’d seen pseudoscience not backed up by academic research be used in leadership development work (by people like me, was the implication).

I can’t remember what I said in the moment - I’m pretty sure I broadly agreed (because I broadly agree) and so I probably highlighted that we need to be careful of the assertions we make.

But I knew something was up because it stayed with me, and I used the sense that I had missed an opportunity - as I have many times before - to enquire.

Here’s what I came up with:

Academic research is an AMAZING way of knowing. The scientific method is one of the most incredible things humans have ever created.

But it is not THE ONLY way of knowing.

And just because we believe very strongly in one way of knowing doesn’t mean we should dismiss all other ways of knowing, some of which have been around even longer than the scientific method.

If you’re going to spend a lot of time with professors and post-doctoral researchers, like I have, then it’s good to remind yourself of that.

If we don’t, we can get trapped, like a client of mine once did.

He was invalidating his ways of knowing, holding himself back from taking greater leadership and creating something that the world needed, by essentially telling himself this lie: only professors can have opinions that are worth sharing.

The way we broke down that lie was to look at the people he had learned some of the most important ideas in his life and work. Two of his favourite authors, who he had learned incredible ideas and insights from, are Dan Pink and Simon Sinek. What’s interesting about those two people? They are incredibly influential people who are not academic researchers.

But the work they both do is impactful and influential - the chances are that even if you’ve never heard of them, they have influenced your life in some way, such is the breadth and depth of Pink’s writing and the stickiness of Sinek’s ‘Start With Why’ framework. And the skill of both as storytellers.

It pays to remind ourselves of the things we know: we have our experience of our lives, we have the books we have read, the podcasts we have listened to, the work we have done, the courageous steps we have taken.

We have the deep knowledge of our people and our ancestors and our spiritual paths.

We have the creativity inherent to all humans.

You don’t have to be a professor of parenting to have learned lessons worth sharing about bringing up children.

You don’t have to be a behavioural economist to know about decision making.

If you’re faced with a behavioural economist who wants to help you with your decision-making, then listen. But bring your knowing with you to that conversation, too. Because it counts. And because they’re a human too, they don’t have all the context and, indeed, they might not be a smart as you.

Just like academic research is only one way of knowing, academic smart is only one kind of smart.

Mostly, we aren’t in conversations with academic researchers, and our opinions still matter. In our workplaces, in our families, in our relationships.

And more broadly.

The changes you want to see in the world only happen because leaders, writers, artists, parents, teachers and entrepreneurs stand up and change things.

They only change when we make things happen that wouldn’t otherwise have happened.

So remember: you know things.

And don’t let a pernicious lie about that stop you from stepping forward into what is possible.

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PS My new book, The Power to Choose: Finding Calm and Connection in a Complex World, is out now! Get your copy here: https://geni.us/powertochoose

This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.