a common problem is we don’t notice when we are genuinely confused.
parents taught us to be fearless, but never admitted that nobody in their right mind could be fearless. they were setting us up for failure. thus, instead of not fearing anything, we learned to hide fears.
somehow, hiding fear from others became hiding it from ourselves. through the practice of hiding fear we stopped noticing it.
we prefer knee-jerk reactions to confusion: keeping a poker face or smiling, nodding, and jabbing at the next obvious thing without stopping for a second. it became a habit to the extent that self-help writers teach us to “schedule time for strategic thinking“. this is sad because it reveals the autopilot mode that we have to learn to turn off.
so, to practice confusion awareness I started saying things like “I’m confused,” “I have no idea what’s going on,” “I’m lost” out loud. I figured I first need to be more aware of how I react to reality not meeting my expectations.
you can’t fix your wrong reactions to confusion until you defeat the control freak in you. it’s ok to have goals and plans but that requires equal understanding that the world doesn’t work according to your primitive models.
every once in a while, just watch how life unfolds before you. it’s less painful than insisting that it obeys your batch of orders, a.k.a. todo list.