Nobody Has Everything Figured Out—and We Need to Stop Pretending We Do
Embracing the beautiful truth that nobody really knows what they're doing—and that's perfectly okay.
For a long time, I thought being an adult meant eventually reaching a point where you knew what you were doing.
I'm still waiting. 😂
I've been a mother, built a career, managed employees, helped customers through difficult situations, made big decisions, made wrong decisions, started over, changed direction, and learned more lessons the hard way than I can count.
And I still have moments when I think:
"Wait... I'm supposed to know how to do this?"
The funny thing is, I don't think I'm alone.
We Learn a Lot of Life While We're Living It
There are so many things we're expected to somehow know.
How do you rent your first apartment? What questions should you ask? How do utilities work? What happens when something breaks? How do you handle a difficult customer? Manage employees? Make a major financial decision? Help your child navigate something you've never dealt with yourself?
Where exactly was the class for all of this?
Because I apparently missed it.
Over the years, I've realized that many people aren't walking around with all the answers. They're learning as they go, just like I am.
Some people are simply better at looking like they know what they're doing.
Asking Questions Is Not a Weakness
One of the most useful things I've learned in my career is how powerful it can be to say:
"I don't know. Can you show me?"
You can have years of experience and still learn something from the person who started yesterday.
That doesn't erase what you already know. It adds to it.
I've managed storage facilities for more than a decade, and that work has put me in front of people during all kinds of moments in their lives. I've seen moves, new beginnings, financial struggles, family changes, loss, and people simply trying to figure out what they're supposed to do next.
It taught me something I carry into everything I do now:
People don't need to feel stupid for not knowing something. They need someone willing to explain it.
Sometimes the Plan Changes
My life hasn't followed one perfectly straight line.
I don't think many lives do.
There have been chapters I never planned for and times when I had to figure out what came next without having a perfect answer.
For a while, I think I looked at starting over as going backward.
I don't anymore.
Starting over doesn't mean starting from nothing. You take everything you've learned with you.
Every job teaches you something. Every mistake teaches you something. Raising a family teaches you something. Difficult seasons teach you things you probably never wanted to learn.
Even the things that didn't work become part of what you know when you take the next step.
You Are Allowed to Change Direction
Another thing I've learned is that success doesn't have to mean staying on the path you started on.
Today, alongside my career, I'm building things I never would have imagined myself creating years ago.
I'm developing Main Street, writing practical life guides, creating children's stories, learning about e-commerce, publishing, design, and a hundred other things that regularly make me think:
"Okay... how do I do THIS now?"
And then I figure out the next piece.
Not all of it.
Just the next piece.
That's been an important lesson for me because sometimes looking at the entire mountain makes you afraid to start climbing.
You don't always need the whole plan.
Sometimes you just need the next step.
Maybe We Should Admit We're All Figuring Something Out
This idea has become part of the reason I create.
I want people to feel comfortable learning. I want young adults to know they're allowed to ask questions. I want parents to be able to say, "I don't know either—let's figure it out." I want people starting over to understand that they haven't lost everything they've learned along the way.
And I think we could all use a little more humor while we're doing it.
Life is serious enough already.
We don't need to pretend we have everything figured out on top of it.
So if you're sitting there wondering why everyone else seems to know exactly what they're doing while you're still asking questions, here's something I've learned:
They're asking questions too.
Some of us have just gotten better at admitting it.
