When 'Knowing' Doesn't Cut It...
Hi there!
Welcome back to the MoodiNews. Every Thursday, we discuss a variety of matters related to mental health and self-improvement.
I’m so glad you’re here.
Today, we will be continuing our current series on: THERAPEUTIC ONE-LINERS! YAY!
The phrase that we will be reviewing today is: Knowledge is only rumor until it lives in the bones.
This phrase was recently made popular by author and researcher Brené Brown, but it originates from the The Asaro tribe of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea as a cultural teaching.
Here’s what it means:
Until we physically integrate a new piece of information, it can’t really serve us in a dependable way.
In our modern world, this idea that Knowledge is only rumor until it lives in the bones gets SERIOUSLY overlooked—especially when it comes to self-help literature and the self-improvement movement.
The point of this one-liner is to emphasize the difference between knowing and doing.
Knowledge is only rumor until it lives in the bones tells us that simply knowing something is NOT the same thing as living it out.
In order to truly understand a concept, or even appreciate it, we must often go through it—because, at the end of the day, there is no substitution for lived experience.
Therefore, according to this phrase, the only way to REALLY know anything well is to become acquainted with it through practice.
(…And, additionally, knowledge that remains unactualized (i.e., not made into reality through action) is essentially akin to hearsay.)
Of course, education and vicarious learning are both integral parts of human development.
However, simply ‘knowing’ information only goes so far, and we must also learn to IMPLEMENT what we know in order for it to truly serve us.
My job as a therapist is to give people practical guidance and tools that, when implemented, improve the quality of their lives.
Therefore, when it comes to doing our inner work, knowing is not enough—we must also practice INTEGRATION.
As I tell my clients in therapy:
You know many things…
But I don’t care what you know, I care what you do!
For example:
1) You know that good communication is important, but how often do you really pay attention to the words that you say to your partner?
2) You know that eating junk food is bad for you, but how often do you still eat whatever you want?
3) You know that excess stress is bad for you, but how often do you invite unnecessary chaos into your life?
In that same vein, we all ‘know’ that spending too much time on our electronic devices is bad…
But do any of us actually change our behavior to match what we know?
Of course not!
Even with research to confirm the risks of over-consuming social media, most of us still do it—because knowing and doing are NOT the same thing.
Now, you might be thinking, ‘I know I shouldn’t be on my phone so much, but I can’t imagine ACTUALLY living that way…’
But today’s therapeutic one-liner, Knowledge is only rumor until it lives in the bones, reminds us that:
Unless you actually spend less time on your device(s), just ‘knowing’ that screen time can be harmful will be insufficient in proving useful for you.
Until you actually implement and feel the difference for yourself (i..e, experience a change in your ‘bones’) by changing your habits, you won’t truly ‘know’ how much excessive screen time can negatively affect your life.
Again, the takeaway here is that we can’t REALLY know something well until it’s been ENGRAINED in us through personal experience.
In summation, in order to accumulate real knowledge, we must surpass basic understanding and actually enact what we think we know.
(ESPECIALLY when it comes to self-improvement, knowing without doing will never be enough—the body must participate in the integration of wisdom alongside the mind if we want to successfully implement habit change!)
Unsurprisingly, many people take comfort in ‘knowing’ lots of things, but then live a life void of much integration (think, armchair experts or hypocrites).
Still other people struggle to live up to their potential, or find themselves falling short of their own standards, because they have difficultly converting what they already ‘know’ into tangible, fruitful action.
If either of these situations apply to you, then today’s one-liner, Knowledge is only rumor until it lives in the bones, could be the key to getting you back on track.
Remember: We discover who we are, what we’re capable of, and how the world really works through lived experience.
And once a person embodies—through integration—the things that they know, then that’s a route to real wisdom.