Recently, I was invited to see a movie at a huge outdoor mall. I didn’t know whether there would be parking, how I would find the parking garage, how I would enter the parking garage. I got a spike of anxiety, and an old, familiar refrain started playing in my head: I don’t know how. I don’t know how. I don’t know how.

People are often surprised—really surprised—when I express how often I am overwhelmed by feelings of “I don’t know how.” How often is that, you ask? Sadly, almost all the time. Seriously.

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My brain starts bleating out “I don’t know how” when confronted by things that barely count as tasks, much less as challenges—such as unfamiliar parking garages, or a new rice cooker I have to “figure out” even though it largely involves pressing a single button. (Still, it took me three months to remove it from its box, even though I’d specifically wanted it for Christmas.)

I am consumed by feeling that “I don’t know how” whenever I embark on a new project or get a new opportunity at work—even when those projects and opportunities technically require efforts that I (should) have proven that I very definitely know how to manage. Write a pilot? I don’t know how. (Never mind that I wrote a whole TV show). Pitch a movie? I don’t know how. (Never mind that I have pitched probably 25 movies, and landed about twenty percent of them.) Write a book? Nope. I don’t know how to do that, either. Sure, this would be my nineteenth or twentieth book. Okay, fine, I don’t even know how many books I’ve published. But what if I forgot? What if those were outliers? Or lucky coincidences? What if I’ve been a sham all along?

That is what it is like in my head, almost all the time.

The reason that this surprises people is that the perpetual churn of “I don’t know how” happening in my head doesn’t, in the end, seem to greatly impact my life choices. In other words, I do get the books written. I do go up for the movies. I do launch the crazy tech start-ups that I’ve been dreaming about (visit www.incantor.ai if you’re curious!) I do, even, manage to show up to movie theaters and make rice in my scary new rice cooker.

So this week I’ve been reflecting about why that is, and I came to a really startling realization that felt like an insight.

I don’t know how is different from I can’t.

I really want to emphasize: I almost always feel that “I don’t know how.” I would say ninety percent of my life is spent feeling this way. But I almost never think “I can’t.”

And this week, it occurred to me that these two things are intrinsically related. If I don’t know how something is done, how on earth would I be certain that I can’t do it?

It struck me suddenly that the annoying refrain that syncopates my whole life to the feeling of “I don’t know how” is actually protecting me from a far more fatal rhythm: the deadly drumbeat of “I can’t.”

Because obviously, even if I don’t know how to do something, I can try. I can do my best. I can ask, I can study, I can puzzle it out. And that usually is what I do end up doing. I can’t tell you how often I receive notes from a studio or a book editor only to respond, “I don’t know how to do what you’re asking, but I’ll try my best.”

I don’t know how leaves open the possibility of learning, and also of mysterious grace that provides insights, solutions, and clearly marked Parking Garage signs. It is a statement that inherently refers to process, not product. It is not predictive. It is true of where I feel I am today; it says nothing about where I might be tomorrow.

I can’t, on the other hand, is a conclusion. It is a closed door. If life were a lawsuit, it would not even be an argument permitted in court. It would be deemed conclusory and thrown out.

So if you, too, have a voice in your head that’s stuck on a repeat cycle of self-doubt, maybe the key lies in a simple substitution. Maybe instead of I can’t, you can try I don’t know how. That way, the door stays open—to growth, to learning, to giving it the old college try; to unexpected parking success, and perfectly cooked rice from your new rice cooker.

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