The Magic of NOT Knowing How

Kris Plachy: Hey, let's talk about the magic of not knowing how to do something. Let's go! Welcome to the podcast this week. Thank you for joining me. We are coming into the tail end of January. I'm Kris Plachy. I'm your host of the Leadership Is Feminine Podcast and this season, we've been talking about CEO magic; and what an interesting thing to be talking about in this time right now. I have so many fun things to talk about, and if you follow my Instagram, my business profile, you'll see that I just recently shared a post about my daughter who just recently received an incredible offer to play soccer when she graduates.

She's a junior right now, she'll be graduating in a year and a half, and she already has verbally committed, which is super exciting, she's been playing as a goalie, since she was about five. When before they even really had goalies, she would still play back there, and she had a really interesting story. But I'll save that all for another day. But it's a reminder, because she could not have ever planned for how this was all going to happen like this, how this magical offer came to her, and it really makes me think about the way that I have had to do my own work, and I think a lot of the work that I do with my clients, and let me lean into that with you.

We tend to be a very organised society, right? We like to have our plans, we like to have our structures, we like to have our rules, we like to have our laws, and I'm not suggesting we shouldn't I'm just saying that that's what keeps society functional is parameters and planning. We like to believe that we know how things happen. We like to believe that we know why things happen, and we like to believe that we have control over things happening, that we have some level of knowing, of how even your day is going to go right? That you wake up in the morning and you look at your calendar and you say okay, I have these appointments today and I have these meetings today, and I have to take my kid here, I have to go hear from my doctor, and you just wake up in the morning and you know, that's what's going to happen today and you don't question it.

Part of the reason that I know this last two years has been so disconcerting for so many of us is that we haven't been able to feel like we have control, and we haven't even really believed in or known how to get out of this whole crazy pandemic, although maybe there is a way, we just listen to doctors. But that's another story. So I wonder about this. Because when I get an idea; I have an idea, I have a coach, and I'll say to her, "Oh, I want to do this thing, I want to put this thing in the world. I want to figure this out." And then my brain immediately wants to go into how are you going to do that? And I start to get into what I find is very structured and linear thinking, and that's what the world wants us to have is that, and so it's natural for all of us to do that.

But what I love about my coach is she is always reminding me, "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Maybe let's not get into the how." Maybe let's focus on not worrying about the how, not investing our energy in the how, but into really stepping into the vision and the belief of what it is that we want, what it is that we want to create, not how we're going to do it. Because I want you to think about what that does to you. So, over the past several weeks, I've been talking about different kinds of elements for magic, and one of them right was the vision board, and that what we want in a vision board isn't just things you want, right? That's lovely, and put them all over your board.

But you want to be looking at things that make you feel amazing. Why? Because we create from feeling and feeling is what really triggers our behaviour, our choices and action and that's what drives the results that we have. And so when we have a goal, we have an idea that we want to achieve in the world; because we're so oriented to the plan, we don't sit with the vision. We get right to brass tacks, we get right into the how, we get ran into the whoa, what are the steps I have to follow? What are the tactics I have to implement? And we lose the magic. Like, think about the difference between the vision of what you want, I want you to think about that one thing that you want most right now in your life, what is it that one thing? Go there! Be her. Step into that space. Live that moment right now; live as if it's happening.

What does that feel like? What does it feel like to be in it? And then I want you to come back out and say, 'Now how am I going to do that?' So maybe your big thing that you want is, you want to have a business that generates $20 million a year or you want to have travelled to a certain country or you want to help a certain group of people and change the way that they live their lives. Whatever it is that really calls to you. Think about the energy difference between the vision and the dream and really stepping into the belief of it as though it's happening, and then okay, so how you going to make that happen? Is that the same? It's not the same, and that doesn't make it wrong; it just means that you can't know the how.

I think this is fun to do for everything. I think about my marriage, I have a beautiful marriage. I've been married for 25 and halfish years, and it's funny because I had a crush on my husband when I was a freshman in high school. He was a senior; I had a total crush on him. But I was just a dopey little freshman, right? You don't want anything to do with me. And he went off to college, did his thing and I went off to college, and then we managed to meet up was 1993. And it was the weekend of my best friend's wedding, and we managed to meet up at a bar in our hometown, and we talked like the whole day, we were all in this bar. And it was really loud, and he and I just talked, talked and talked, laughed and laughed.

And he was still finishing his master's degree, and I was still in college in San Diego. And he said he was coming to San Diego and I was all excited, and I thought, "Oh cool. I'll get to see you there."  But he never came. But something about that experience with him really, really made me I just was like, 'Oh my God, this guy.' And I could totally see him being in my life. But I was young then. And so anyway, then I moved home and I got invited to this Christmas party, and so I went and there he was. And we had a great time again, talked, talked and talked, played pool all the things he said he would call me, and he didn't.

But I still give him a hard time out about, and so a couple months later, I decided okay, I'm going to call him one time, and if he doesn't call me back, then whatever. Now this is in the 90s, y'all for those of you who are young, this is back when there were no cell phones, there's no texting. I left a message on his, answering machine, and he called me back. But he hadn't called because he was studying for his physical therapy boards. And he's now that I know him. Of course I know that's how he is. He's focused like that.

But my point being, if someone had said, if I had said I want to marry someone I want to, I could have told you everything about him down to the car this guy drove and he didn't even drive the car that I thought he would be driving. But then all of a sudden he was driving it. After we got together he surprised me and he bought himself a new car and it was the car. I was so clear about who I wanted to be with in my life. I could have never determined the how I didn't ever figure that out. I could have never figured out how I ended up being an entrepreneur despite my constant effort of trying to figure it out. I could have never figured it out the way it came together.

This offer that my daughter has gotten to play a D1C program; the way that went down, she could have never played that. So what did she do instead? She worked. We just talked about it at dinner. She's like, 'I just love to play.' Do you love what you do every day? Do you focus on what you love and what you want more of in your life and in your business in your relationships? Lean into your joy, my love, lean into the vision of what you're creating, curate it, treat it tenderly and passionately and commit to being more and more of her every day. And drop your need for all the whys, the all the hows of what you're going to do, all that how energy is what makes you keep trying other people's approaches, and it doesn't work.

Your vision, your beliefs, your magic is what makes things work. And I'll say this as it applies to leading a team. Because this really has been something I'm working on, and I'm going to be going away at the end of February with four other beautiful women to do a co-creating kind of retreat, and I'm really, really thinking about that. I teach you all sorts of tactics; how to hire, how to fire, how to delegate, how to hold your boundaries, how to have a difficult conversation, I teach you that.

But no matter what, there's always people who teach that 12 times they still don't- like it doesn't resonate and then other people here at once, and it totally does. And I realize there's this missing piece. And the piece to me is that energy of how versus the energy of really, really believing, of really having a vision of what you're trying to create with your team, with who you hire, with what you want that to look like. Instead of just, well, how do I say it? How do I make that happen? How do I hire great people? How do I fire that right? I get that that's important.

But when we over focus on the how we lose the magic, and building a team curating those relationships, nurturing, a vision is so much more than tactics. So when you look at your life, and you look at your accomplishments, I'm willing to bet money, with very limited exception, you could never have predicted the how, despite how badly you wanted something to happen, and I really believe the more connected you are to what you want to create, the less you really have to fight with the how. And I think that what happens to us when we over focus on the how is we live in worry. And I had this really random thought the other day, I was like, I wonder what it would be like if I really never worried, and I remember talking to my girlfriend Brooke about this.

This was years ago, and she was like how I've so she was, I didn't get it because it's so out of that in my mind. But she was like, I just have been really thinking about how much I worry and how I wonder what it would be like to just not worry and what for whatever reason, a couple days ago, I thought, Huh? How much more capacity would I have to carry my vision and dream and believe into it, if I wasn't busy with being worried? And trying to figure out how things will or won't happen is what Foster's worry, right? How am I going to say this? How am I going to make this happen? How many get my daughter in a four year school?

How am I going to make right like the amount of energy we put in that which of course I have no control over that. Who am I kidding? So ridiculous. So the man I worried. Wonder what would happen if I didn't worry? So this podcast for me is about a couple things. It's about inviting you to release your need to know how and to trust instead that the vision that you have for what you want most is real, and the more you lean into that, the more the how generates. You get offers, right? You get presented with invitations and offers on a regular basis. And the more you believe in, and lean into that vision, I believe the more that that happens. And that that is where the gold is, is in you really nurturing that vision, that dream that what you were kissed with uniquely, it does belong to you, and it wouldn't be there if it wasn't real.

The only thing that prevents it is you giving up on it. Not nurturing it, and then the last thing is to really look at your life like, are there pieces and parts of you focusing on how something will or won't happen, that are triggering worry, anxiousness. And I do feel like on a macro level, we've been going through this socially and as a society and as a cultures as a culture as a world; it's a global culture. Everybody wants to know how everybody thinks they know how, what if we all just collectively, sort of instead of being mad at everybody for not doing it right, not figuring out how or denying the how or arguing with the how, or believing our how is better than your how?

What if we just collectively leaned into this vision of a healthy, thriving, open, free, loving global community, but if we don't worry about the how, what if the vision and the dream of that perpetuates it without us having to worry about it? Anyway, I know this is a little macro, but I just you know, and when you experience a success, which we just had with our daughter, which is so fun, and it was just such a trip to me to go through that with her and to have this college visit and to sit down with this wonderful coach. I mean, don't even know, and then just be sitting across from us and say, 'Well, we definitely want to offer you a spot,' it just happened. It was like wait, what? I always feel like that's supposed to be like a thing because you make it such a thing in your brain, right?

My daughter's dreams are coming true, and it just happened while we're sitting in some Adirondack chairs on Astro turf, like, oh, I never want to be able to make that how in my brain. And it was magical and perfect and just as it's supposed to be. So whatever that is that you're curating and nurturing and loving on for this year, lean into the vision, the lean on to the dream, and don't worry so much about the how. Dreams aren't achieved through tactics. They are achieved through hard work, meaning directed work that you love, that you're consistent and persistent in that you show up for yourself. That you do the parts you do all the parts. That's what translates vision into something that you get to experience in the real world. So anyway, thank you for tuning in. It's always great to chat with you all. I'll talk to you next time.