318. Why Your Mind Panics When You Don’t Know

What happens when uncertainty enters the room? 👀

Something changes. Someone goes quiet. The answer hasn’t arrived.

And almost immediately, the mind goes to work.

Fix it. Predict it. Control it. Figure it out.

But what if the information you’re searching for simply doesn’t exist yet?

In this episode of The Kathie Owen Perspective, I explore the tiny space between uncertainty and reaction:

The pause. ⏸️

This is where things get interesting.

We’ll look at inner intention and outer intention from Reality Transurfing and why I think of them this way:

Inner intention asks me to participate.
Outer intention reminds me I’m not the only participant.

There are variables moving outside our field of vision.

That doesn’t mean we become passive. It means we take Radical Responsibility for what belongs to us without trying to control everything that doesn’t.

We’ll also explore Non-Attachment, Courage, surrender, and why our human patterns can become so loud when we don’t know what happens next.

Because maybe you don’t need the final answer.

Maybe you only need enough information for this choice.

And when you don’t have it yet?

Pause.

✨ GO DEEPER

📖 Read the companion article:
www.kathieowen.com/blog/uncertainty

The article takes this conversation further, including surrender, Michael Singer, Reality Transurfing, Human Patterns Under Pressure, and additional resources.

🌊 Explore Reality Transurfing:
www.kathieowen.com/reality-transurfing

📚 Explore my books:
The Truth Bubbles Up www.kathieowen.com/truthbubblesup

Human Patterns Under Pressure www.kathieowen.com/human-patterns

🌐 Learn more about my work:
www.kathieowen.com

And here's something to notice after you finish this episode:

The next time uncertainty hits, listen for the moment your mind starts writing the ending.

Then ask yourself:

Do I actually know this?

Or am I filling in the blank because I’m uncomfortable not knowing?

There’s another layer to this that I want to explore with you.

Because even when reality finally gives us the information we’ve been waiting for...

we have a habit of turning that information into another story.

And that’s where this conversation gets even more interesting. 👀

Transcript

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Kathie (2) 0:00

Can we talk later?" Four words. That's all the text says. "Can we talk later?" And suddenly your mind is off to the races. Why? What's wrong? Are they mad at me? Did I say something? Did I do something? You start scrolling backward through your texts. Wait, yesterday they said, "Okay," instead of, "Sounds good." Was that weird? They didn't put a heart on my last message either. Oh my God, something is definitely wrong. Except you don't know that. You have four words: "Can we talk later?" That's the information. Everything else, you filled in the blank. And here's what I've been thinking about lately. Maybe the problem isn't uncertainty. Maybe the problem is what we do the moment uncertainty hits the room, because we don't like a blank. We want to fill it. We want an answer. We want to know what happens next, and sometimes we would rather invent an answer than sit inside a question. So what if you didn't? What if you paused? And what if, just for a moment, you allowed reality to remain unfinished? Welcome to the Kathie Owen Perspective podcast. My name is Kathie Owen, and I study human patterns under pressure. My work sits at the intersection of psychology, consciousness, emotional regulation, and leadership. And lately, I've become fascinated with one particular moment. It's the moment when uncertainty hits the room, because that's when our patterns get loud, and that's also where we have a choice. When I speak about this on stage, I'll often ask the audience, "Uncertainty just hit the room. What do you do?" And then I stop. I don't answer the question. I pause, and you can almost feel what happens in the room. People start thinking. Somebody eventually says, "I try to fix it." Someone else says, "I overthink. I worry. I take control. I shut down. I try to figure out what's going to happen." Exactly. But there's something happening before all of those things. There's a tiny space, a pause, and most of us move through it so quickly that we don't even know it's there. Something happens, uncertainty hits, and go. Fix it. Predict it. Control it. Explain it. Google it. Text somebody. Replay the conversation. Do something, anything. Just don't sit here and not know. But what if that tiny space is where your power actually is? I've talked about the pause many times, but I'm starting to see another layer of it. The pause isn't necessarily where we find the answer. Sometimes the answer isn't available yet. That's important because I've spent plenty of time pausing while secretly trying to solve everything. Maybe you've done that, too. We call it pausing, but inside our head, we're holding a board meeting. What does this mean? What should I do? What happens if they say this? What will I say if they do that? Maybe this means dot, dot, dot. Maybe this, that means dot, dot, dot. That's not really a pause. That's prediction with our eyes closed. The pause I'm talking about is different. It's the moment where I can recognize, "I don't know yet." And instead of treating that as a problem, I leave it alone, not forever, just for now, because maybe reality hasn't finished giving me the information. So think about a pitcher standing on the mound, game on the line, pressure everywhere, thousands of people watching. He gets the ball, and what does he do before he throws it? He pauses. Maybe he adjusts his hat, takes a breath, looks at the catcher, sets his feet. Just for a moment, everything gets quiet. Now, imagine if instead his mind took off. "What if I miss? What if he hits it? What if we lose control? What if we lose the game? What if I screw this up? What happens tomorrow? What are people gonna say?" Now he's not throwing one pitch. He's throwing 20 imaginary pitches into 20 imaginary futures. The pause brings him back. This pitch, that's all. He doesn't need to know how the game ends. He needs to be present enough to participate in what is happening now. Throw the pitch, then reality gives him more information. And that brings me to something in reality transurfing that has changed the way I think about uncertainty. Vadim Zeland talks about something called inner intention and outer intention, and I've developed a very simple way of understanding it in my own life. Inner intention is my intention. Outer intention is the universe's intention. Now, stay with me here because I don't mean do nothing and let the universe handle it. Actually, I think that's the opposite of what I'm talking about. Inner intention matters. I participate. I make the call. I have the conversation. I create the thing. I set the boundary. I ask the question. I throw the pitch. But here's the problem. My intention only knows what I know. My mind doesn't know what somebody else is going to decide tomorrow. I don't know what conversation is happening somewhere else. I don't know what opportunity has not appeared yet. I don't know what somebody is thinking. I don't know what will change next week. I don't know every variable moving around me. And yet, how often do I decide that I already know how everything needs to happen? That's where I get into trouble because inner intention starts trying to do the universe's job too. And I love this distinction. Inner intention asks me to participate. Outer intention reminds me that I'm not the only participant. There are things moving outside my field of vision, and I don't have to control them. I couldn't control them if I tried. This does not mean I stop wanting things. I think this gets misunderstood sometimes. Non-attachment does not require amputating desire. I'm gonna repeat that because it's important. Non-attachment does not require amputating desire. I can want the relationship to work. I can want the opportunity. I can want someone I love to be okay. I can want the client to say yes. I can want the pitch to be a strike. I can want something with my whole dang heart. That's human. The shift happens when I really want this quietly becomes this is how it needs to happen, because now inner intention has taken over the entire field. I've already written the ending, and reality hasn't finished the sentence. That's where the pause comes back in. Wait, what do I actually know? What is mine right now? And what am I trying to know that simply isn't available to me yet? This is where the three principles have become incredibly important in my own work, and those three principles are non-attachment, radical responsibility, and courage. And I do not see these as nice ideas. I see them as something I practice inside the pause. Non-attachment says, "I can want this without deciding exactly how it must unfold." Radical responsibility says, "What is actually mine to do? Maybe I need to make the call. Maybe I need to apologize. Maybe I need to ask the uncomfortable question. Maybe I need to set the boundary. Maybe I need to do absolutely nothing yet because I don't possess enough information, but I take responsibility for my part." Not everybody's part. Not everybody's part. And then there's courage, and I think sometimes we imagine courage as taking massive action. But I'm beginning to think some of the most difficult courage happens after I've done what's mine and before I know what happens next. That's uncomfortable. I made the call. Now I wait. I told the truth. Now I don't know how they'll respond. I submitted the proposal. Now I don't know. I set the boundary. Now I don't know what happens to the relationship. I threw the pitch. Now the ball has left my hand. That's the pause. I've done what is mine, and now I don't know. Can I stay here without abandoning myself? Can I stay present without reaching for a pattern just to make the uncertainty disappear? That is courage. And maybe this is why our human patterns get so loud when uncertainty hits. We have control, perfectionism, over-responsibility, people pleasing, criticism, withdrawal, avoidance. Different strategies, same discomfort. I don't know what's going to happen, and every pattern whispers some version of, "Let me fix that for you." I see it like the little devil on your shoulder. "Let me fix that for you." But it can't, because the future has not happened. So maybe the goal isn't to become better at predicting it. Maybe it's becoming better at staying present before it arrives. That is a very different kind of power. And there's another piece of this that I've been noticing. Eventually, reality does give us more information. The phone rings, the person responds, the client decides, something changes, the pitch crosses the plate, and we think, "There. Now I know." But do we? Maybe we know more. That's different. Sometimes the next piece of information is just that. The next piece, not the final answer. Someone says no. Information. Someone pulls away. Information. Something falls apart. Information. Something unexpectedly opens. Information. None of those things require me to immediately write the rest of the story. I can observe, choose, and then pause again, because maybe the pause isn't one moment. Maybe life is uncertainty. Pause, information, choice, uncertainty, pause, more information, another choice. Again and again and again. Maybe we're not supposed to finally escape uncertainty. Maybe we're learning how to move with it. If you wanna explore this idea more deeply, I wrote a companion blog post for this episode, like I always do. I'll link it in the YouTube description and the show notes below. And if you're watching on YouTube, it'll be in the first comment, so it's easy to find. There are additional resources in this companion blog post, too. But I don't wanna finish this episode here, because there's something else I want you to notice. Go back to those four words: can we talk later? Imagine receiving them today. Notice what your mind wants to do. Notice how quickly it wants to fill the blank, and then pause. Don't solve it. Don't tell yourself everything is gonna be okay, because you don't know that either. Don't tell yourself something terrible is coming. You don't know that. Just notice, "I don't know yet." And maybe that's enough, because there's something very interesting that happens when reality finally gives us the information we've been waiting for. We take that one piece of information, and almost immediately we start building another story. And if we're not careful, we call that story reality. It is not. And that's a conversation I think we need to have. We'll get there. Until next time.