Mark: The most common lie we tell ourselves isn't about what we did last night. It's "I don't know what I want." Today, we're exploring a book that argues that's not just a lie, it's a smokescreen for a much more interesting internal battle. Michelle: Oh, I know that feeling. That's the official slogan of every Sunday evening, right? Staring at the week ahead and just thinking, "What am I even doing?" It feels so real, that sense of being completely lost. Mark: It does. But according to Barbara Sher in her classic book, I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was, that feeling of being lost is a symptom, not the disease. What's incredible is that Sher is often called the 'godmother of life coaching,' and she developed these ideas not in some ivory tower, but from decades of hands-on work with people who were profoundly stuck. Michelle: The godmother of life coaching? That’s a serious title. Mark: It is. And get this—she wrote this very book while she was battling breast cancer. Which, when you think about it, adds this incredible layer of resilience and urgency to her message. This isn't abstract philosophy; it's a survival guide. Michelle: Wow, so this isn't just theory; it's forged in fire, literally. Okay, I'm hooked. If we're not actually 'lost,' then what on earth is really going on with us?

Mark: That’s the million-dollar question Sher tackles right from the start. Her journey to this book is fascinating. She had written a previous bestseller called Wishcraft, which was a practical guide for achieving your goals. But then she started getting letters, hundreds of them, all saying the same thing. Michelle: Let me guess. "I love your book, but..." Mark: Exactly. They’d say, "I love Wishcraft, but I can’t use it because I can’t find a goal. I just don’t know what I want." At first, she was stumped. But as she started meeting with these people, she uncovered a stunning pattern. Michelle: What was it? Mark: She realized that every single person who claimed they didn't know what they wanted was, in her words, "locked in an internal battle and didn’t even know it." It wasn't a lack of desire. It was a civil war. One part of them wanted something, and another part was terrified of it for a very good, often hidden, reason. Michelle: That makes so much sense. We live in this age of the 'paradox of choice,' where we're told we have a million options for careers, for lifestyles. It's overwhelming. So we just freeze and call it 'being confused.' Mark: Right, but Sher takes it a step deeper. She argues the paralysis isn't just from too many external options. It's from powerful, conflicting internal needs. The need for security is at war with the need for adventure. The need to make your family proud is at war with the need to be your authentic, weird self. The desire is there, it's just buried under the rubble of that conflict. Michelle: So the feeling of "I don't know" is really a stalemate. It’s two parts of you in a tug-of-war, and you’re the rope. Mark: A perfect analogy. You're not lost; you're gridlocked. And you can't move forward until you understand who is pulling in which direction and, most importantly, why. The book is essentially a field guide to identifying the combatants in your own inner war. Michelle: I like that. It feels much more empowering than just thinking I'm indecisive or lazy. It's strategic. I'm not lost, I'm in a complex geopolitical situation. Mark: Exactly. And once you see the players, their motivations start to look surprisingly logical, even if the outcome is self-sabotage.

Michelle: Okay, so let's get into these internal combatants. What do they look like in the real world? Mark: Sher gives so many brilliant examples, but two of them are perfect polar opposites that I think everyone will recognize. On one end, you have the person who is terrified of risk. On the other, you have the person who is terrified of being ordinary. Michelle: The Cautious Player and the Grand Dreamer. Mark: Precisely. Let's start with the Cautious Player. Sher tells the story of a computer programmer named Judy. Judy wants to work with people, not machines, but she is completely paralyzed by indecision. She can't take a single step. When Sher digs into her past, she uncovers this incredibly chaotic childhood. Michelle: What happened? Mark: Her mother was loving but completely overwhelmed and disorganized. There's this one harrowing story where her mom accidentally leaves Judy's baby sister in a supermarket. Judy, just a little girl herself, has to find the baby and then find her way home, terrified. Michelle: Oh my god. That’s traumatic. Mark: It is. And the result was that Judy learned a core lesson: "If I don't keep everything under tight control, the world will fall apart." So as an adult, any step into the unknown, any risk, feels like she's inviting that chaos back in. Staying in her safe, predictable, but unfulfilling job isn't a failure to her; it's a survival strategy. She's not choosing safety over her dream; she's choosing safety over Armageddon. Michelle: Wow. When you put it like that, her paralysis makes perfect sense. It's not irrational at all; it's a deeply rational response to her past. Now, what about the other side? The person who's afraid of being ordinary? Mark: This is the "Rager," as Sher calls them. And this character is just as stuck, but for the opposite reason. She tells the story of Patrick, a brilliant but temperamental sculptor. He's constantly broke, living off friends, and sabotaging commissions because he refuses to do any work he considers "menial" or "beneath him." Michelle: I think I know this person. This is the artist who posts about their 'vision' on social media but you know their parents are paying their rent. Mark: That's the archetype. Patrick sees taking a normal job to pay the bills not as a practical step, but as a profound spiritual defeat. It would mean he's not "special." Digging into his past, Sher finds out that when Patrick was seven, his father, a millworker, ran for union president. He was a good man, but he was crushed by a smear campaign. His father was broken by this humiliation. Michelle: And Patrick witnessed this. Mark: He witnessed it, and he made a vow. He decided he would never be a victim like his father. He would start at the top. He would get the recognition his father was denied. So for him, rage and a refusal to be ordinary feel like acts of loyalty and justice for his father. He's not just avoiding a day job; he's fighting a generational battle. Michelle: That is fascinating. So one person is paralyzed by the fear of starting, and the other is paralyzed by the fear of not starting at the very top. They're both stuck, just in different waiting rooms, and both are being run by a ghost from their past. Mark: Exactly. And Sher's genius is showing us that these aren't character flaws. They are outdated survival strategies. They are the armor you built as a child that is now too small and is suffocating you as an adult.

Michelle: Okay, this is getting a little heavy. We're all just acting out childhood dramas. That's... a little depressing. How do we get out? How do we break the cycle? Mark: This is where the book becomes so hopeful and so radical. Sher's answer is deceptively simple: Action. Not thinking, not planning, not journaling forever. Just... moving. She has this incredible quote: "High self-esteem comes after action, not before." We think we need to feel confident to act, but she says we need to act to feel confident. Michelle: That’s a huge reversal of how we usually approach things. We want the map before we take the first step. Mark: And she says the first step is the map. The most powerful story in the whole book, for me, is about a woman named Jessie. Jessie is 45, she's shy, she works in her husband's office in Atlanta, and she feels completely adrift. She has no idea what she wants. She joins one of Sher's "Success Teams" to find a passion. Michelle: And what happens? Mark: Months go by. Nothing. Then one day, out of the absolute blue, she announces to her group, "I want to race sled dogs." Michelle: Wait, what? In Atlanta? Mark: Exactly! It's completely absurd. She's never seen a sled dog. She lives in Georgia. It makes no logical sense. But it's the first thing she's said with any real energy. So her team, following Sher's principles, doesn't question the logic. They just say, "Okay! How can we help?" Michelle: I love that. They didn't ask 'why,' they asked 'how.' Mark: They did. They helped her find a summer training camp for sled dog racing in Minnesota. She goes. It's hard. She's discouraged. But she sticks with it. That winter, she goes back to Minnesota and actually competes in the Bear Grease sled dog race. She doesn't win, she just finishes. And then she goes home to Atlanta. Michelle: And... is she a sled dog racer now? Mark: No. The day she got back, she quit her job. The experience didn't make her want to be a sled dog racer for life. The experience showed her that she was the kind of person who could go to Minnesota and race sled dogs. It proved to her that her own instincts were trustworthy, even when they seemed crazy. The action itself was the therapy. It broke the spell of inaction and gave her the courage to figure out what was next. Michelle: That is insane! And wonderful. So the point wasn't to become a sled dog racer. The point was just to do the thing? The action itself was the answer. Mark: Precisely. It's not about finding the 'perfect' passion and then acting. It's about following any spark of desire, no matter how small or strange, and letting the act of following it teach you who you are. Action is the ultimate tool for discovery.

Michelle: So what I'm taking away from all this is that feeling stuck isn't a character flaw. It's a symptom. And we spend so much time trying to think our way out of the trap, analyzing our options to death, but Sher's work seems to prove you have to act your way out. You have to go find some sled dogs. Mark: You have to find your sled dogs. And you don't have to do it alone. That's the other crucial piece of Sher's work. Her whole philosophy is built on this idea she shared in a famous TEDx talk: "Isolation is the dream-killer, not your attitude." It’s why she created her 'Success Teams'—small groups of people who just help each other take the next step, no matter how weird it seems. Michelle: It reframes the whole problem. The question isn't "What is my one true, perfect, lifelong passion?" which is terrifying and paralyzing. Mark: Right. The real question, the one Sher would want us to ask, is much smaller and more manageable. It’s: "What's one small, scary, or even ridiculous action I can take right now that feels even a little bit alive?" Michelle: That’s a question you can actually answer. It could be signing up for a pottery class, or researching a trip, or just calling that one person you've been meaning to talk to. Mark: It could be anything. The point is to move. To create a little data. To prove to yourself that you can. So, maybe that’s the question for our listeners today. Michelle: I love that. We'd love to hear from you. What's a 'sled dog' idea you've had? Something that seems totally impractical, maybe even a little embarrassing, but it just won't leave you alone? Share it with the Aibrary community on our socials. Let's build a kennel of crazy ideas. Mark: Let's do it. Because as this book shows, sometimes the craziest idea is the most direct path back to yourself. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.