“Figuring it out”

Ask a college student the difficult question of what they are going to do with their life and it’s likely you will hear, “I’m still trying to figure that out.”

The funny thing is if you ask a 60-year-old the same question as they approach retirement many will still admit, “I’m still trying to figure that out.”

You know what figuring out really means?

It means:

I am scared to make a decision.

I am too nervous to tell you what I really think because I’m afraid I’ll be judged.

I am looking to the left and right and waiting to see what my peers will do.

I don’t want to act out of alignment and choose the wrong thing.

Figuring it out is another form of hiding. As a culture, we can do a better job not creating this expectation that we have to have A to Z mapped out before we decide. Instead, we should just expect an answer on what the next step looks like.

We learn as we go. If we stop going then we stop learning.