Episode 51: The Power of Yet

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My nine-year-old daughter called me out recently, and the funny thing is, I don’t even remember what I was doing. I was trying to do something, apparently wasn’t doing it very well, and made some comment along the lines of, “I’m just not good at this.”

She looked at me and asked, “Why aren’t you being nice to yourself?”

Well, I wasn’t expecting that. 😂 I didn’t think I was being mean to myself. I wasn’t upset or beating myself up. I thought I was simply stating a fact: I’m not good at this.

Except she didn’t hear it that way, and that stuck with me.

Three Little Letters

A few days later, I put a question out on Facebook asking people to share a phrase that had stayed with them. Something they had heard somewhere along the way that, for whatever reason, they still thought about.

I loved reading the responses. Some made me laugh, some immediately made me wonder about the story behind them, and others opened questions I hadn’t even considered. One person commented, “The power of yet is so empowering. It’s all about mindset.”

I’ve heard of the power of yet before. I’m guessing a lot of us have. But maybe because I had recently had that moment with my daughter, I didn’t just read the comment and keep scrolling. I started playing with the word.

I’m not good at this.

I’m not good at this yet.

Same person, same ability. Same exact moment. Nothing about reality changed.

So why does the second sentence feel completely different?

That question sent me somewhere I wasn’t expecting.

Maybe This Isn’t Really About Positivity

The interesting thing about yet may have less to do with positivity and more to do with certainty.

Human beings like answers. We like categories and being able to make sense of ourselves and the people around us. We say things like, I’m outgoing. I’m shy. I’m creative. I’m terrible at directions. I’m good with people. I’m definitely not a numbers person.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with having those descriptions. We need some sense of who we are. Waking up every morning and completely reevaluating your personality sounds exhausting. 😂

But there’s a point where a description can quietly become something more permanent.

A description can quietly become a definition.

Psychologists use the term need for cognitive closure to describe our tendency to prefer an answer over an unresolved question. That makes sense. Uncertainty requires us to leave something open. An answer lets us put it away and move on.

We’re incredibly efficient at doing this with ourselves.

Something doesn’t go well. We struggle with it, feel awkward, or make a mistake. Instead of saying, Well, that didn’t go very well, we say, I’m bad at this.

Those are not actually the same statement.

One describes what happened. The other describes who we are.

And somehow, my nine-year-old caught that before I did.

How Long Have You Believed That About Yourself?

Her question made me wonder how many conclusions I’ve made about myself over the years that I’ve never gone back and checked.

I’m not necessarily talking about huge, life-altering beliefs. The small ones might actually be more interesting because we say them so casually that we barely hear them anymore.

That’s just how I am.

I’ve never been good at that.

I’m not someone who does that.

Maybe those statements are true. That matters too. I’m not interested in turning every honest observation about ourselves into some shiny positive affirmation. Sometimes we really aren’t good at something and sometimes we don’t want to be. Sometimes we’ve given something a fair shot and decided, Nope. Not for me.

There’s nothing wrong with knowing ourselves.

But how often do we go back and check whether something we decided about ourselves years ago is still true today?

You, With Less Information

Think about a version of yourself from years ago. Maybe ten years ago. Maybe twenty. Picture where you lived, what an ordinary Tuesday looked like, who you talked to every day, what mattered to you, what you worried about, and what you thought you knew about yourself.

Don’t look at that person as a lesser version of you. They weren’t.

They were you with less information.

There were things they hadn’t experienced yet, things they hadn’t learned, opinions they hadn’t changed, and parts of life that hadn’t given them a reason to question what they believed.

And some of the things that version of you was absolutely certain about?

You know differently now.

You’ve already outlived some of your own conclusions.

That doesn’t mean every conclusion you make about yourself is wrong. It simply means you already have evidence that some of them weren’t permanent.

You changed. Life changed. You learned something. You experienced something. Maybe you simply got older and saw the exact same thing differently.

Something you once believed was settled turned out not to be.

Yet Doesn’t Promise Anything

That’s where yet becomes more interesting to me, because yet doesn’t actually promise a different outcome.

It doesn’t mean, Don’t worry, you’ll definitely be amazing at this someday. That isn’t how life works.

Sometimes the answer really is no, or we aren’t going to become good at something. Sometimes a dream changes, or we realize we don’t even want the thing we once thought we wanted. Othertimes, continuing to say not yet keeps us waiting for something life has already given us plenty of information about.

So maybe yet isn’t always the right word either.

And that creates a much harder question:

How do we know when “yet” is leaving room for something to grow, and when it’s keeping us from accepting what we already know?

I don’t have a perfect answer for that. I’m not sure there is one.

There’s a difference between leaving something open because we genuinely don’t know what happens next and refusing to close something because we don’t like the answer we’ve been given.

Maybe part of maturity is learning the difference.

We Put Periods on Other People Too

Then I realized we don’t only make these definitive statements about ourselves. We do it to other people.

He’s always been like that.

She’ll never change.

That’s just who they are.

Sometimes those conclusions come from years of experience, and sometimes boundaries exist for very good reasons. This isn’t about ignoring what people have shown us or endlessly waiting for someone to become different.

But sometimes we’re holding someone to a version of themselves that existed five, ten, or twenty years ago.

And if I’ve already outlived some of my own conclusions about myself, I have to at least wonder whether I’ve outlived a few conclusions about other people too.

How many people are we still seeing through an old version of them?

That question is uncomfortable because certainty is convenient. People are easier to understand when they stay in the boxes we’ve put them in.

We’re easier to understand that way too.

But people aren’t static.

Neither are we.

Maybe Yet Requires Humility

When I first read that Facebook comment, I thought I understood the power of yet. It’s positive, encouraging, and hopeful. And yes, it can be all of those things.

But I think there’s something underneath that.

Maybe yet requires humility.

It allows us to say, This is what I know about myself right now. This is what I know about this person right now. This is what I know about this situation right now.

And then it leaves just enough room for another thought:

I might not have all the information yet.

That doesn’t mean everything will change. It doesn’t mean every door should remain open forever, and it certainly doesn’t mean ignoring reality.

It simply reminds us that our current understanding is exactly that: current.

My Daughter Heard Something I Didn’t

Which brings me right back to my daughter.

She wasn’t trying to teach me about psychology. She wasn’t thinking about cognitive closure or identity. She’s nine. 😂

She simply heard her mom say, I’m not good at this, and wondered why I wasn’t being nice to myself.

Maybe she heard something in the sentence that I didn’t.

I thought I was describing what had happened.

I was actually describing who I was.

Those are two very different things.

And that tiny distinction has made me pay much closer attention to the sentences I say about myself without even thinking about them.

Listen for Your Periods

So here’s the challenge I’ve been giving myself: listen for your periods.

Catch one definitive statement you make about yourself. Something you’ve said enough times that it barely registers anymore.

Don’t correct it. Don’t turn it into an affirmation. Don’t immediately decide that you’re wrong.

Just get curious.

Where did that belief come from? How long have you had it? What evidence supports it? Has anything happened since that complicates it?

Then ask yourself one question:

Am I sure the period belongs there?

Maybe the real power of yet isn’t that it promises us a different ending. It doesn’t tell us everything is possible, and it doesn’t tell us we’re wrong about who we are today.

It simply leaves a little room for something human beings aren’t always very comfortable with.

We don’t know.

And maybe we don’t always need to.

Maybe some sentences are allowed to remain unfinished.

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