This week, we chatted with Dr Amy Johnson, author of Just A Thought: A No-Willpower Approach To End Self-Doubt And Make Peace With Your Mind, about her One Good Thing.

Hi, Amy! If you could suggest one thing we could all do to better our mental health, what would it be?

One good thing I highly recommend is acknowledging three little words that have changed everything for me. I’ve seen them change everything for the people I work with as well.

I don’t know.

That’s the truth, right? We don’t know, and there is enormous freedom in not knowing.

Wait. Not knowing stuff? Why is this your One Good Thing? 

Our mind tells us we know. It’s a brain’s job to seek certainty, and therefore predictability, and therefore apparent safety, in everything. The brain is a major know-it-all, except it’s wrong most of the time. It’s overly certain, overly predictive, overly confident. Just notice all the horrible things it says will happen that never do. Just look at how it compares you to others and tells you what the world thinks of you. Do you ever wonder how your mind knows all that it claims to know?

‘Knowing’ makes our world small. When we think we know what our coworkers really think of us, the hard life that lies ahead for our upset teen, or even just how our afternoon will play out, we’re constrained by imaginary thoughts that appear completely real.

We have a hard time seeing around the blanks our mind fills in with its made-up, habitual predictions. We see evidence that confirms our mind’s theories and we use that as further proof that we should listen closely to our know-it-all mind’s stories.

I think I get it. The problem with thinking we know stuff is that we don’t really know stuff. So accepting that we don’t know stuff might be better for us… is that right?

Absolutely. If you want a bigger life without constraints, see that you don’t know. You don’t know anything for sure. In this I-don’t-know space, we’re discovering rather than confirming. Anything can show up at any moment. You get to be surprised!

The negative, fear-based predictions that show up aren’t facts, they are thoughts. They are a mind doing what a mind does, trying to offer some certainty and keep us safe, but there is no actual safety in make-believe predictions. There is no actual security in pretending we know things we don’t actually know. And there is no actual danger in not knowing (just the opposite, actually).

The less we know, the freer we are. 

How does the power of not knowing actually work to improve our mental health?

Living in the I-don’t-know space works by keeping us here, now, in real-time. In a space before assumptions and theories and imaginary stories. We are present and open. I don’t know what’s here! I don’t know what will happen! I don’t know how things will turn out! You might notice that children live here. Life is new, exciting and full of surprises when we don’t know.

There is unlimited potential in the space before the mind’s knowing. The mind might always tell us what it knows and that’s fine, but we don’t have to believe it. We don’t have to live in those assumptions and predictions. We can live more and more in the wide open, unhindered, unlimited space before thought and ‘knowing’.

If we get comfortable with not knowing, what happens next? How does this help us?

The benefits of not knowing are literally beyond imagination. That’s the point, you see? When we think we know, we create walls and a ceiling around our experience. When we step into not knowing anything at all, there are no limits.

Said another way, the only limits are in what we think we know. If you think you know that your mother-in-law is a person who will never accept you and with whom you can never get along, that’s what you’ll get. When you meet your mother-in-law from a place of I-don’t-know, you’re meeting her for the very first time. Even her judgmental comments are completely different when they aren’t bumping into your mind’s theories about her. You get to discover her fresh and new. Who is this character who makes those comments? How is this interesting, new experience? Before we were taught that there are ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to be, we just experienced life as it was. That’s the space of I-don’t-know.

This is getting philosophical, and I like it. Is there any way we can get not knowing ‘wrong’? 

There are no true pitfalls in the I-don’t-know space, but there is one universal obstacle: fear.

Our mind, always looking for certainty and falsely equating certainty with safety, convinces us that knowing is safe and not knowing is dangerous. It can feel terrifying to not know. How often have you heard someone say they ’hate uncertainty’?

But here’s an interesting thing to consider. Is it uncertainty or not knowing that you fear? Or is it the scary stories your mind tells that you feel quite certain about? Perhaps it’s actually false certainty that scares us. Uncertainty, or not knowing, is open and free.

I suggest leaning into any fear that arises in the I-don’t-know space. You will likely discover some fear at some point, but as you lean right into those feelings you might be surprised at how quickly they dissolve, revealing wide open, not knowing bliss.

Sounds scary… but also cool. How do you personally do your One Good Thing?

I lean into the I-don’t-know space in a few ways.

One thing I personally do often is notice how I feel. Any bit of discomfort, tension or suffering is pointing me to something I think I know. I feel into those sensations when I notice them by noticing where I feel discomfort in my body and hanging out there for a while. Often, as I’m swimming in the sensations, I’ll notice a thought. That thought might be something I think I know, like ‘I could run out of money’, ‘I don’t think she likes me’, or ‘This shouldn’t be happening’. Those are thoughts, not truths. They are my mind telling a story to give me a sense of safety. Those thoughts aren’t The Truth, they are simply a function of the brain. I don’t know The Truth about anything for sure.

Another way I play with living in the I-don’t-know space is pretending to be an alien. I realise that might sound crazy, but try it! Look around your environment and simply see what is, before your mind’s labels, opinions and ‘knowing’ of it. Discover your partner before your mind piles all sorts of biased memories and expectations onto them. Discover the way your bed feels as you curl up in it at night, meet your neighbours for the first time, discover how your lunch tastes. Aliens (and children, if that’s easier for you to imagine) are always discovering. There is nothing to confirm because they don’t know.

Curiosity is key, then. And I guess that would tie into awe (which we know has all kinds of benefits) quite easily, then. How has embracing not knowing changed your life and wellbeing for the better?

Not knowing has allowed my mental health to resurface and shine.

Many years ago, I struggled with various forms of anxiety, as well as bulimia and binge eating disorder. I see now that those struggles were rooted in thinking I knew. I knew feelings weren’t safe and shouldn’t be arising the way they were. I knew what I should be feeling and it wasn’t what life was giving me. I knew the kind of person I was, the family I was brought up in, and how things went for ‘people like us’. I knew what I must do to be OK in life – I knew all the achievements I must achieve and the goals I must realise. I knew all about the type of relationships, career, body, intelligence and personality I needed to have.

When anxiety arose, I knew it was unsafe and should be resisted or changed. When an urge to comfort with food (or by restricting food) arose, I knew I had no other option.

I was dead wrong about everything I knew and life is 180 degrees different now. When I began to see life from a place of not knowing, full of freshness and curiosity, discovering rather than simply confirming my mind’s negatively-biased fears, life opened up – and continues to – in miraculous ways.

Frame Of Mind is Stylist’s home for all things mental health and the mind. From expert advice on the small changes you can make to improve your wellbeing to first-person essays and features on topics ranging from autism to antidepressants, we’ll be exploring mental health in all its forms. You can check out the series home page to get started.

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