Nobody likes a know-it-all

Five years ago, I was at a plant medicine retreat at a gorgeous home in Northern California. 

It was luxurious and secluded. I walked in the house in all white as I nervously prepared for our first ceremony to find our hosts trying to figure out how to turn off the AC. 

They planned to light a fire in the fireplace thanks to the dip in temperature later in the evening and didn’t want to mess with the forced air at a later time. 

The home had been through numerous renovations over the years and as I walked around, I noticed that there were three different AC zones. I immediately took this on as a little project to keep my nerves at bay. I found each one and shut them down, noticing that if one was still on, the others wouldn’t fully shut off.

My mentor and the retreat hosts were all grateful for my ability to troubleshoot. Until the next day when I found out that my tendency to know everything and help wasn’t necessarily always as helpful as I believed.

This ability I believed was one of my strengths was actually a trauma-response to my own upbringing and how I was teased when I didn’t know something. So, I made a point to learn how to know things. And it carried through into adulthood as a “gift” that kept others at arm’s length.

Sure, I had gained a ton of random knowledge over the years and considered myself incredibly helpful to those around me, yet I tended to butt in and help when help wasn’t necessarily needed. I shared facts, skills, and information I had accumulated over the years just to prove I was smart enough to sit at the table, only to ostracize myself and stay disconnected from the people I really wanted to connect with.

I was grateful for this awareness of my unawareness. And once I saw it, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before. It took a strong mentor willing to tell the truth of what she saw through a lens of love for me to see it. 

She didn’t share as a know-it-all. She shared because she wanted the best for me. She shared because she knew this “ability” I had developed was actually hurting me more than it was helping me.

I can honestly say now that I’m still a recovering know-it-all. I catch myself often wanting to share my knowledge or experience when someone comes to me with a problem, and even still often fail to just listen and get curious.

The reason I share this story is because I want to be very clear when I say:

STOP TELLING PEOPLE THE ANSWER.

Because I have such a deep awareness of being a know-it-all, I’m even more sensitive to people on the internet, friends and family, along with colleagues and coaches telling people what to do. 

Unsolicited advice is rampant. 

“If you want to do X, do Y.”

“The only way you’ll ever get to X is to stop doing Y.”

And I can see how sharing this can have a flavor of telling you what to do, when in reality, I am hoping this brings some sort of awareness to your conversations, posts, and engagement with the world around you. 

Nobody wants you to give them advice unless they ask specifically for it. 

How do I know this? 

Because each and every one of us has the answers to our own questions. I’ve seen it first hand in myself and others. And the moment I stopped trying to be a know-it-all, I began to see that it was just my ego believing that I had the answer. 

So, what do we do to change our know-it-all behavior?

Get curious.
Ask smart questions.
Dive deeper.
Stop trying to make it about you.

Even if you think you know the answer, I promise you that most people will want to find the answer for themselves–and then you might see that the answer YOU thought was the right was actually just you believing you know better.

Don’t get me wrong–I LOVE knowing the answer. It fills my ego to win, to know, and to get things right–yet I have learned that if my heart is filled with love, my ego doesn’t matter. 

Let’s love people into their own answers by asking great questions and allowing them to find the answer. Our hearts desire to be filled up more than our egos ever need to be.