It doesn’t matter why he didn’t call after what you thought was an awesome date. It doesn’t matter why you didn’t get that job even after nailing the interview. It doesn’t matter why the Rite-Aid cashier rolled her eyes at you. The reasons why do not matter.

It’s utterly liberating to contemplate. Someone did or said (or didn’t do or didn’t say) something. An event happened. This is all you know. This is all you need to know. You don’t need to fill in the empty space with “truth” or speculation or justification. It doesn’t need to be filled. The fact is that the information you are so desperate to know that you create and tell yourself a version of it your head just to keep calm and carry on won’t change anything. You still don’t get a second date or a job or a smile at the checkout.

But how can you get better? Avoid making the same mistakes? Improve your performance? You don’t need more information to do any of that. Because what you’re really asking when you pose those questions is How can I give someone else more of what they want? How can I be more of what they want? And those are the wrong damn questions to pose.

Recently,  someone asked me if I wanted to talk, someone I hadn’t talked to in a long time and missed. And I started second-guessing the offer immediately. Maybe this person is just being polite, or feels obligated or is trying to do the “right” thing and maybe this person is hoping I’ll say no. But I didn’t have any of that information and I couldn’t reasonably get it. All I had was my need and an offer that would fill that need. All that was unequivocally true and verifiable was that someone had typed the words on the screen and that I had sufficient literacy to read them and understand the content of the sentence. The intent, the authenticity, the context were all out of my hands. So, I said yes. I read no more or less into those words than their dictionary meanings and I accepted the offer. And it felt really good to talk. And I felt calmer and happier and just all-around better after it. I didn’t watch the clock or try to talk only about happy things or edit myself in order to make sure the person didn’t regret extending the offer.

As a journalist, it’s very difficult not to think in stories. I’m trained to take three or four bits of info and create a whole narrative out of them, but that instinct doesn’t serve me well outside of work. There are things we can’t know, won’t know, shouldn’t know. Understanding that sometimes all we get is the words on the screen, the eye roll, the radio silence is both difficult to accept and amazingly freeing to embrace.

What you don’t know won’t kill you.

One thing I am learning is how very hard people are to kill. On one hand, our fragile little bodies can be crushed like soda crackers, but on the other, all of the feelings that we’re so sure signal the end for us never really do.

We spend so much time and effort doing absolutely everything we can to avoid these feelings and states of being because they seem to be unsurvivable, but they actually aren’t. They feel terrible and maybe interminably, but they’re not fatal. Feeling them will not kill you. And after you feel them once, you realize this and you are heartened -  maybe not a lot, maybe only 3.8%, but you are heartened. You remember the not dying thing the next time the feeling happens and maybe you come out of that spell 8.1% heartened. Maybe you never reach a point where you’re like those people who can notice a bug on their shirt and calmly flick it away instead of ripping the shirt off, stomping up and down on it and then running to take a shower, but eventually your brain and heart embrace the this-won’t-kill-me idea and when you start feeling something terrible, one or both of them respond with, “Oh, that gross old feeling again? Well, whatever. Guess I’ll eat some Cadbury Mini Eggs while sitting around in my underwear and then get on with life.” You do get there.

You can die of:

starvation
strangulation
gunshots
snake bites

You cannot die of:

shame
humiliation
mortification
embarrassment
teasing
ostracism
insecurity
doubt
anxiety
fear
neediness
rejection
heartbreak
anger
confusion
uncertainty
loneliness
resentment
longing
failure

These things will not kill you. I promise.

Whenever someone asks me about my personal brand, I’m tempted to give them a link to the scene below from The Wire. In it, Marlo Stanfield declares that he’s ready to take on all comers in order to defend his place on the street. “My name is my name,” he growls.

And my name is my name. Since launching Secret Agent Research, I’ve gotten a fair bit of advice – both online and in person – on how to market it and how to use my existing profile and platforms to demonstrate my credibility and my expertise and how to be on my very best behavior in order to get the nice men and women in the audience to open their wallets to me. Apparently, becoming an entrepreneur means that your life is now one never-ending first date during which you must constantly be on guard to make the best impression possible, while clenching your hands into fists under the table and praying to the late Helen Gurley Brown that you’ve done enough ‘right’ to qualify for a second date.

Well, I suck at dating. I’m too enthusiastic, too aloof, don’t ask enough questions, ask too many, inevitably drop food into my cleavage, etc. Instead of meeting for coffee, I once drove across the country with a stranger. When it comes to behaving in a strictly prescribed way in order to bring about a narrowly-defined outcome, I balk. This would also explain why I don’t diet and can’t knit.

What I can do pretty damn well is act like myself. I can show up, speak knowledgeably and enthusiastically about what it is that I do and my credentials, ask people questions about what it is that they do, brainstorm ideas, tell anecdotes, offer opinions, gesticulate wildly. And I can WRITE. I can tell stories, deliver analysis, draw lines in the sand, dole out witticisms and thoughtful perspective. If you don’t like the me that comes across in person or on the page, there is not a whole lot I can do about that. I can strive not to interrupt you when you talk or to avoid penning all of my articles in text speak, but there is no amount of judicious brand management or personal marketing that can make you like the person behind and under it if you just don’t agree with how I see the world and my place in it.

And ultimately, I don’t need to get better at marketing; I need to get better at prospecting. We all do. You can’t, as an entrepreneur, a writer, a job hunter or just a human being, sell a feeling of ease or trust. You can only sell yourself as you are and work to get increasingly more astute at identifying prospective buyers, readers, employers, friends and lovers from those who aren’t a fit with what you’re offering. It’s not about crafting the perfect message, it’s about talking (in your own imperfect way) to the right audience. And it’s about never ever forgetting your name and making sure you’re always willing to stand behind it.

I started a business. It’s called Secret Agent Research. This is how it happened.

A few months ago, I was sitting in my windowless office in the middle of nowhere. I had just received a stellar annual review and my boss was going to recommend that I assume more management duties, but he warned me not to get my hopes up – our company had exactly one female senior manager and only six female employees on the white-collar side. I had just finished almost single-handedly negotiating a $5M+ supply contract that was going to put us back in the black after a year of our facility standing idle and I knew this wouldn’t be reflected in so much as a dollar extra on my pay check. And I was dealing with the fallout of a break-up that came completely out of left field. Oh, and I had just fired my first therapist after he told me that my biological clock should be my biggest worry. Something snapped. I realized that I was hiding out from life and that the longer I continued to do so, the more difficult it would be to re-engage with it when I finally decided I was ready. I realized that I was too damn ambitious to put my future success in someone else’s hands or to pin my hopes on the possibility of a bigger, better job that I needed to convince someone to offer me. In addition to Forbes, I’d been doing client consulting/copywriting on the side for a few years and I decided that if I was ever going to take the plunge to be my own boss, there was absolutely no time like the present. It was never going to be easy or safe or pain-free and I was losing precious time waiting for it to be. I bought a domain, got a lawyer to set up my LLC and consulted the most pedantic tax accountant in town. And then I gave my notice. No drama, no hard feelings. It was just time.

I’m writing this from Montreal. After I left my job, I decided my life could use even more risk, so I embraced location independence. I found a cheap sublet in the most European city in North America, packed up what I could fit in two suitcases and haven’t looked back. It’s difficult to overstate what a difference working for myself makes in how I see my career. I walk a little taller and when someone asks what I do, I’m proud as hell to say that I run my own business. I’m happy to work outrageous hours and network like a fiend, because I’m working on projects that I’ve chosen and I’m connecting with amazing, like-minded people. No longer am I a petitioner, I’m a peer.

Not that I’m not scared out of my mind by times. Like when I saw what looked like a huge tarantula skitter across my living room floor and into the spare room (I locked the door and haven’t gone in there since and that was six weeks ago). Or when I can’t fall asleep at night because I’m alternately fretting about someone being able to shatter the glass in my front or back doors and walk right into my apartment and the possibility of growing old alone. Or when I realize that I have no idea where in the world I’m going to be after April 30 when my sublet is up. And not that I’m not really, really lonely by times. My French can charitably be described as cavemanesque and being unable to use words to conduct the basic interactions that lead to human connection kind of sucks. A lot. But the fear and the loneliness is manageable and it’s sort of the point. I feel it, it doesn’t kill me, I get up the next morning knowing that the next time I feel it, it probably won’t be as bad and even if it is, I survived it before and I can do it again. Lather, rinse, repeat. If there was a way over, under, around, or through something that didn’t involve just doing it, I would have found it long ago. There isn’t. There is only doing. Doing what you want to do, doing what you have to do, doing what will make you happy, doing what you know will hurt. That’s it.

Fundamentally, this whole process isn’t about breaking free from my cubicle life (I actually had my own office) or embracing my true destiny as a captain of industry. It’s about building trust in my own judgment and faith in the fact that I’m capable of knowing and implementing what’s best for me. And right now, what’s best is launching a market research firm from the comfort (well, relative comfort; this place doesn’t have a couch) of a Montreal apartment, going to yoga in the middle of the day and working on projects and brainstorming ideas with other smart, funny, accomplished women (like her, her, her and her). And being okay with having a giant spider for a roommate (still working on that part).

My shoulders have always been a trouble spot. My sisters used to make fun of the way I would try on new clothes at Christmas – scrunch my shoulders all the way up to my ears and then ask if the hitched-up garment looked okay. I even sleep in that posture. Everyone knows that crossing your arms over your chest is a classic defensive stance, but I guess I’ve always figured there was no similar law against pulling up your shoulders and tucking your head down like a turtle. There should be – it looks weird and makes your joints ache.

Whenever the yoga instructor offers encouragement for everyone to drop their shoulders, I assume she’s specifically referring to my poor posture. And, indeed, when it’s time for hands-on adjustments, invariably the teacher du jour tries to push the tension out of my shoulder blades. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, they just spring right back up.

Yes, I do yoga now. I have gone 11 times in 14 days. It was very simple. I paid a fee and I go to class. Two weeks ago, I wasn’t someone who practices yoga. Now, I am. I don’t feel more spiritual. I don’t feel more in tune with my body. My legs frequently ache and my flexibility is laughable and I don’t like when other people put their mats too close to mine. No, I feel good because I made a commitment. I decided to do a thing and then I did the thing and I keep doing the thing. And I made it a thing that it would hurt me not to do. If I don’t go to yoga, where else will I get exercise? And if I don’t exercise, my health and fitness will suffer. If I don’t go to yoga, I will just work all day without interruption. And if I work all day without interruption, I will burn out quickly and it will get difficult to force myself to go outside even when I need to. So, I go to yoga.

Not all changes are so easy of course. Going from someone who isn’t a world-renowned neurologist to someone who is takes a whole lot more effort than mastering downward dog, but I like this principle. There is something hopeful in the idea that you can always add and subtract and try on and take off, that your story isn’t immutable. If you want to be a person who does yoga, do yoga. Congrats, you’re there! If you want to be nicer to your mother, you can just start being nicer to her. Maybe it matters why you weren’t nicer to her before and maybe it doesn’t, but even understanding that won’t help you to be nicer to her now. The only thing that will? Doing it.

So often, we get knotted up in trying to figure out why we aren’t A or we are B. And as valuable as figuring that out is to our understanding of ourselves, it doesn’t actually help us become A or stop being B. Knowing can’t substitute for doing or changing. There are probably some excellent reasons why you’ve been afraid to learn to drive, but if what you desperately want is to get your license and drive up the PCH, all the self-knowledge in the world won’t bring that to fruition. You need to get behind the wheel and practice. Understanding precisely why you’ve sabotaged all your previous romantic relationships won’t actually be much of a comfort to you when your current one goes south because you failed to work on it, will it? And there might be a well-sourced laundry list of explanations as to why you’re failing half of your classes, but being able to list them all in ascending order of importance isn’t going to wow your professors into passing you. What good is insight without application?

The only thing holding me back from being a person who did yoga was the fact that I didn’t do yoga. And that was a pretty easy fix. The shoulders will come with time.