When You Know Better And Still Do It Anyway
On ambivalence and the messy middle of healing.
When we moved to NYC almost three years ago, we left our big house and our big life in a small-ish town in favor of a smaller presence in a much larger ‘pond’. We put all our favorite things into storage in anticipation of moving them into a dream home that should have been done by now—or almost done by now, at least.
Three years later, the house still hasn’t broken ground. And we’ve lost all three sets of keys to that storage unit.
The irony is not lost on me.
None of these are the keys to our storage unit…Photo by Samantha Lam on Unsplash
All of our favorite things are in storage. Our custom bed frame, crafted from ancient Tibetan monastery doors. A vintage pinball machine. A live-edge table big enough to seat our entire family.
I organized that storage unit within an inch of its life. There are spreadsheets. The boxes are numbered and color-coded, and three sets of keys are distributed to three different people in case of emergency.
So when I realized NO ONE could find their copy (including us!) I was like, how can this even be happening?!
I’d planned so hard. I’d organized this as a fail-safe solution. I’d done everything right.
And still…
It didn’t matter.
The house hasn’t broken ground. The keys are still lost. And all my organizing, all my preparing, all my doing it right, didn’t change any of it.
What I’m realizing is that, despite meticulous planning, I still have very little control over the outcome. And that is a difficult truth to accept.
I remember back in the day when I was losing everything - circa 2008ish. The business was gone, the money was gone, we were losing the house, and my (then) marriage was in the shitter. A friend called to ask if I was okay (a fair question).
“Everything must seem so out of control,” she said, her voice filled with concern.
And I gave her my answer—the truth I knew then and still know now:
“Hardly anything is in our control. I’m just more aware of it right now.”
I meant it. I really did.
And here’s the thing: I still mean it.
But knowing something and living it consistently? Those are two very different things.
Even though I know that I can’t control outcomes, I still default to trying when I’m scared. When something matters to me. When the stakes feel high and things feel uncertain.
You can’t just decide to stop using your most primal survival tactics and then never use them again. That’s not how any of this works.
Fast forward to this year. The book was done (and I mean DONE, people!) I’d worked so hard—writing, revising, working with experts. I was in the final stages, ready to hand it over to the world.
And then my publicist said the thing I wasn’t expecting to hear:
“Your platform isn’t quite ready.”
My publisher agreed. Maybe we should push the launch another six months. Maybe we need more time to build.
I sat there, stunned. Hadn’t I been doing all the right things? Everything they’d told me to do? I’d followed every piece of advice, checked every box.
I cried in that meeting—and I don’t cry.
Because it wasn’t just about the book, it was about the realization I’d been trying to outrun.
All my trying, all my planning, all my working this thing into existence... and I still couldn’t control when it would be ready. When I would be ready. When the world would be ready for it. If the world would ever be ready for it.
I’d literally come to the end of myself, and the thing I wanted was still just out of reach.
And that’s when I started to wonder…
What if I’m holding on so tightly to the thing I desperately want that I’m choking the life out of it?
The house that won’t break ground. The book that’s not quite ready to launch. The keys I can’t find to the life I’ve been storing.
What if the problem isn’t that I’m not trying hard enough?
What if the problem is that I’m trying too hard?
This is the ambivalence I’m sitting in right now.
I know—intellectually, spiritually, from life experience—that control is an illusion. That hardly anything is in my control. That trying to force outcomes usually backfires.
And yet…
Control is my go-to. It’s how I survived chaos. It’s how I rebuilt after everything fell apart. Spreadsheets, fail-safes, and making sure I’m doing everything ‘right’. That’s hard-wired in me.
And I can’t just decide to uninstall it because I intellectually understand it doesn’t serve me anymore.
Coming to terms with your most primal survival tactics is messy.
You can’t just say “I’m not doing this anymore” and then not do it. You can’t say “I know this now” and then always know it in a way that changes your behavior.
The truth is, I DO know that hardly anything is in my control. I’ve always known it.
But I also keep forgetting it. And then having to learn it again. And again.
You can’t color-code your way into certainty. You can’t organize chaos into submission. You can’t plan hard enough to guarantee outcomes.
Ambivalence is the middle of healing.
It’s the space between knowing and doing. Between understanding and embodying. Between the wisdom you’ve earned and the survival tactics you can’t quite let go of.
It’s holding two conflicting truths at once: I know better. And I’m still going to do it anyway (sometimes).
And maybe that’s okay.
Maybe the point isn’t to resolve the tension. Maybe the point is learning to live in it without needing it to make sense. Without beating yourself up for being human.
I don’t have this all figured out. I’m not going to pretend I do.
But I’m learning to sit in the discomfort of knowing one thing and doing another. Of understanding that control doesn’t work—and still reaching for it when I’m scared, hopefully, with more awareness.
That’s where I am right now. Right in the middle.
What’s the tension you’re sitting in?
What do you know intellectually but can’t quite live out consistently? Leave a comment below and let me know - tell me I’m not alone in this :-)