You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
A few days ago, I had a conversation with a client feeling stuck and frustrated.
The more he studied his field, the more he realized how much he didn’t know, and the more frustrated he became.
This is what I told him, and maybe this is a great message for you today as well: Realizing how much you don’t know is not really a problem. In fact, that’s the perfect place to be.
Because knowing what you don’t know is only (small) part of the picture.
Most of us live in the larger expanse of what we don’t even know we don’t know, which is the uncharted territory of possibility and growth. Feeling lost or insufficient isn’t failure; it’s a sign that you’re ready to move into that new unknown.
He shared how he felt the urge to stay small, not because he wasn’t ready to grow, but from a place of fear.
Your mind comes first from a place of protection, and it is designed to seek safety, not expansion, and without the neural highways already laid down, your nervous system resists new territory.
So I told him: Start small. Start now. Because doing is how your brain begins to build the roads to new places.
Emotions as Feedback
He reflected for a moment, and then asked: “I thought you just worked with emotions. Is the brain really this involved?”
And that’s when I shared what underlies it all:
Emotions are your brain’s way of giving feedback on your environment, and where the nervous system is or isn’t safe.
Emotions are meant to move through you like waves.
When the brain has a mediocre pattern to follow, or, especially after trauma, gets stuck in a loop, those emotional waves cannot move through and out of you.
That’s when life starts to feel a little flat. Like you’re always a little sad, disconnected, or resigned.
Here’s what’s happening underneath the surface:
Your brain builds shortcuts (neural pathways) to operate quickly, efficiently, and stay safe.
If those shortcuts were formed in times of stress, trauma, or constant overload, they end up replaying the same emotional scenes, over and over, which is why you tend to repeat situations in your life.
This loop impacts your limbic system (your emotional center), your neurotransmitters, and even your hormones.
But to you, it often just feels like you’re sad, disconnected, or stuck, without knowing why.
Loops Can Be Rewired
We tend to think emotional “stuckness” is a personal failure of willpower or discipline.
But the truth is more hopeful:
Those loops can be interrupted and reorganized. Your nervous system can learn new patterns if you gently and safely guide it there.
That’s exactly what therapeutic hypnosis does:
It creates a safe, embodied space for old emotions to be felt, processed, and released.
It gently rewires neural loops, not through force or willpower, but rather through calm, intentional reprogramming.
Your body remembers calm. Your mind recalibrates around safety. Your system returns to ease.
What If You Started Exactly Here Right Now?
If you’re feeling stuck, that’s okay. It’s a great place to be.
You are standing in the fertile ground of what you don’t yet know. This is where all growth to greatness begins.
Here’s how you can reclaim that safe expansion:
Lean into discomfort, from a space of curiosity.
Let your emotions be your compass. Feel where they are in your body, and let them move through you, without attaching to the story.
Seek tools like hypnosis that offer gentle, neuro-informed guidance, not force, hype, or shame.
If you’re ready, you can join us at The Lucid Hour, and start right now.
And how would that feel?
To slowly let the uncomfortable feelings swirl through you, and then out of you?
So you can come back to yourself, simply by remembering that you are safe and whole and ready for something new.
If this resonated, you might enjoy the following hypnotic audios:
If you’re ready to explore this more deeply, Creating Stability inside The Lucid Hour is a hypnotic audio I created to support exactly this moment: the tender edge between control and surrender, between doing it all alone and letting life hold you.
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