In a recent coaching conversation, my coachee shared his astonishment that nobody had told him how simple a specific process he was learning to apply was.

He was discovering his ability to synthesize things but wasn’t aware of it. He assumed that everyone else could do what he could do, and didn’t realize that people didn’t tell him, because they didn’t know.

People can only share what they know or what they think they know.

But they don’t know what you know or what you don’t know.

And so, they can’t tell you what you don’t know. Sometimes they don’t know it themselves. And sometimes because they believe that you know.

But being used to powerful and knowledgeable parents, teachers, and other grown-ups, children develop the belief that others know it all. They then may learn that some people may not know it all, and they start to believe in experts or scientists. Science must have the answer to everything, and one just needs to know the ones who know.

Once that belief is engrained, it becomes difficult to let it go.

The risk is that not knowing becomes nobody has told me.