Learn how to say "I don't know"

Because we live in the era of information and because we really care about what people think about us we usually tell everyone that we know certain things when that's not true. We tell others we know what we're talking about when that's a lie and we do all that in order to look smarter in front of other people and make others think we're better than them.

That happens because these days the words "I don't know" are considered to be the proof of one's stupidity. If you don't know something it means you're not as smart as you should be and you're inferior to others. That's completely wrong.

While working around the house today I was listening to a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson, and in that talk he told an interesting story about an event he had to host, where one of the guests was Dalai Lama.

His story was about a question someone in the public asked, a question Dalai Lama spent one minute thinking about. Everyone thought he's gonna give the best answer the world has ever seen, because such great mind spent one minute thinking about it. However, Dalai Lama leaned forward and said "I don't know".

Such a great mind decided he has no answer for the question the man in the public asked, so he simply said "I don't know". You don't often hear those words any more, because everyone does their best to make up and answer and say something to not look stupid in front of other people. Not knowing is natural, and it's something we all experience.

A few years ago I had no idea I could write in English, because I could barely speak this language. I realized I don't know something and I decided to learn. Today I'm writing as many articles as I can every single day, for both Medium and Steemit, in a language that I had to learn on my own. I got to this point because I accepted the fact that I didn't know something, and I decided to change that

It was the same with programming. I saw other people coding and creating all kind of things, but I knew I could barely write normal text on a computer, so I decided to learn something new again. While I'm not a programmer and while I failed at becoming really good at coding, I can at least understand the basics of programming and write really small scripts that can help me in my work or even create basic websites that I can use to share or sell a product.

Not knowing is part of us. We're not born being experts at mathematics and we're not born knowing how to use a computer. It's natural to not know everything, and we should not be ashamed of that. If there's something we can be ashamed of is not knowing something and not being interested in learning.

I think that's the difference between a stupid and a smart person. A smart guy will realize he doesn't know everything and he'll do his best to learn as much as possible. A stupid person will realize he doesn't know a lot, but he won't try to learn new things because he doesn't care. He thinks he's good enough and everyone who doesn't realize that is an idiot.

This is the kind of person you should avoid becoming, the kind of person that doesn't care about being better and would rather not know something that make an extra effort to learn. You should do your best to always make progress and to learn new things, in order to become better than you are right now.

So, next time someone asks you a question you can't really answer, because you don't know a lot about the subject, just say the words "I don't know", and move on. Learn if possible, or ask the other person for an opinion. It's always better to not know and to be willing to learn than to not know and be ignorant towards learning something new.