The Gift of Ignorance in Achieving Big Goals

Can ignorance help you accomplish your biggest goals?

As a coach, yoga teacher, and mindfulness practitioner, a core part of my practice and work with clients is to facilitate awareness. The process of creating awareness is the essential function of a coach.

So it feels like a strange question to ask whether ignorance — being unaware — might actually have some value when it comes to achieving big goals.

Yet this is one of the insights and lessons I learned in 2023: sometimes, it might be better to be unaware.

In my last weightlifting session of 2023, I did not want to lift heavy. To be honest, I really didn’t want to lift at all.

Yet I showed up for my session with my coach. The experience yielded several valuable lessons that turned out to be some of my biggest lessons of 2023. I already covered two major themes in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.

This installment covers the next big lesson:

Lesson 3: Sometimes It’s Better to Be Unaware of the Magnitude of What You’re Trying to Do

Usually I like to know how much weight is on the bar before I lift it. But on that day, I didn’t ask. I wasn’t feeling up to lifting but I had no energy to argue about it. So I just followed commands to do the lifts.

My previous PR had been 205 pounds, but the last time we did heavy deadlifts I got stuck at 200. This time, I was able to get 200. After completing one, my coach asked me to do another, which I did.

Then I walked away while he changed the weights.

When I stepped up to the bar, he told me to prepare to do two reps. I was able to lift it for two.

I was shocked to learn after that the bar was 210. I had assumed it was 205. We hadn’t hit 205 last time we went heavy, so why would he have increased by 10 pounds?

Although I had just hit a new PR, I was disappointed.

I wanted to know I was going for a PR when I stepped up to the bar.

So we went for another increase. I stepped up to the bar, assuming it was 215.

After lifting it without a lot of struggle, I was shocked to learn it was 220.

Again, I was a little disappointed that I didn’t know in advance what was on the bar. This time, however, my disappointment was less. At least on this lift, I went in knowing I was going for a new PR at a weight I had never attempted before.

The Challenge of Conquering the Mind

Some other coaches who were around the gym while I was doing the heavy lifts thought I was crazy for being disappointed.

The biggest challenge of the heavy lifts is the mind game of it: knowing what’s on the bar and being able to lift it anyway.

From their perspective, not knowing what was on the bar was a gift, in that I didn’t have to battle the mind to do the lift.

From my perspective, this is exactly why I wanted to know what was on the bar.

For me, the deadlift it’s never just about the deadlift. One of my goals when going for the heavy lifts is to conquer the mind game aspect.

It’s not just about whether I can lift the weight.

It’s about whether I can lift the weight even knowing how heavy it is, and that I never did this before. It’s about getting out of my head and trusting my body and the technique I’ve been learning.

The challenge for me is to get out of my own way; rather than conquering the barbell, I am trying to conquer my mind.

The deadlift is a metaphor for the heavy lifts in life: the difficult tasks, the big, bold moves that feel risky. It’s about the places I tend to get in my head and get in my own way.

The deadlift is a metaphor for the heavy lifts in life: the difficult tasks, the big, bold moves that feel risky. It’s about the places I tend to get in my head and get in my own way.

When I’ve failed on heavy lifts, it’s often because at least subconsciously, I let the number on the bar affect me. I change some part of my technique.

When I lift a heavy weight while knowing what’s on the bar, I feel the the achievement high and the confidence that comes from knowing I can do a hard thing and not get in my own way.

The Benefits of Being Unaware

And yet, as I considered my conversation with the other coaches, I realized that maybe there is some benefit to not being aware of the scope of what you’re trying to do.

Reflecting back on some of my big achievements in my life, I easily came up with a long list of things I had accomplished that were bigger in scope than I had realized at the time.

In many cases, I was able to see the magnitude of what I had done, or what had been at stake, only through an observation by someone outside of me.

When I reflect on the differences between the things I do with ease and the places where I get hung up, one of the big distinctions is that when I get stuck, I perceive the stakes to be higher. The load seems heavier — even if it isn’t.

Perhaps there’s some value in being ignorant of the stakes in order to increase your capacity.

Of course, that’s the illusion: the load isn’t necessarily heavier. It just seems to be that way.

This might be one of the most important lessons I’m taking with me.

Perhaps there’s some value in being ignorant of the stakes in order to increase your capacity.

If I can find a way to do things without thinking of them as being such heavy lifts, then I might be able to lift a lot more than I am currently lifting in life.

How to do this is still in the mystery. I’ll be experimenting with it, and I welcome your thoughts and ideas.