You Obviously Know What You’re Doing

Sitting in a jazz club listening to a big band jam on Benny Goodman is hardly the moment I would expect to be thunderstruck with a life lesson.

I was catching my breath after dancing with a new partner. We started chatting and he asked how long I have been dancing.

“You obviously know what you’re doing,” he said.

I opened my mouth, ready to set him straight. I had an odd urge to insist on my beginner status, to elaborate on my vast inexperience. Thankfully, I stopped myself. I realized I liked his version of me better.

Still, I couldn’t help thinking, do I know what I’m doing? Is it really obvious?

Why isn’t it obvious to me?

I’m not thinking now about dancing. I’m thinking about the many ways I feel like I flounder in life, the long list of ways I trip myself up.

I’m wondering: what would it feel like to truly believe that I know what I’m doing?

And then there was that word obviously. I chewed on that for some time. While I was set to parse out the many layers and nuances behind why I’m not good enough or knowledgeable enough, a stranger was kind enough to point out a different way of seeing me.

Why was it obvious to him? Because I was doing it.

The truth is that I have put a lot of time into learning to dance. I’ve shown up night after night. I’ve stayed in the room even when I’ve felt awkward and uncomfortable and embarrassed.

It’s funny how all of that is so easy to overlook. It’s sad how quickly I can discount my efforts. And it’s Illuminating to see how that habit carries into so many parts of my life.

It showed up last week when I started a new project for a client. It’s a lot of work—taking a book of short stories from rough draft all the way to finished, printed book. Even though this is something I’ve done before, I was hit with some outlandish, catastrophic worries, like what if the file won’t upload properly? What if my computer dies?

Juxtaposed with these crazy thoughts was the voice of my client saying “I trust you. You’re the expert.”

What she was saying was that I obviously know what I’m doing.

Isn’t it curious that we should ever need someone else to say that? Even more curious is how believing that seems to release excess mental energy that has to go somewhere, and it goes into making up crazier and crazier nonexistent problems.

Is my computer really going to explode? Of course not.

Am I going to suffer a life-threatening illness the moment I start a new project? Probably not.

Will I suddenly forget the rules for punctuation around quotation marks? Not likely.

What about you? Are you going to protest when someone compliments you? Maybe. At first.

Are you going to feel scared when you’re doing something new and exciting? Definitely.

But my guess is that there are many things you are very good at, and many areas where you obviously know what you’re doing.

What are those things? And if I pointed them out to you, what would you say?

The trick to finding those things is, I think, to get out of your head. Don’t wait. Turn up the music, move your feet, and jump into doing whatever it is you do best. I’ll be here to cheer you on.