As humans, we are wired to make sense of the world. It’s a natural ability to observe what happens in our lives and try to figure out what it means. But when life gets confusing or challenging, this useful skill can turn into an obsession. You can get stuck in a mental loop, endlessly trying to understand the "why" behind an event, convinced that you can't move forward until you have a neat, logical explanation for it.

This constant need to "figure things out" can feel productive, but it's often the very thing that holds you back. According to speaker Russ Littau, true growth sometimes requires a radical shift in perspective—one that involves letting go of the need for immediate answers. This post explores a few surprising ideas from his work about why relaxing your grip on understanding might be the most powerful step you can take.

1. Our Need to "Figure It Out" Is Actually Holding Us Back

The core problem begins when your mind latches onto an experience and demands to know "why it's happening or what it means." Littau explains that this is precisely where we often "trip ourselves up." You believe that understanding is a prerequisite for growth, but in many cases, the opposite is true.

When you try to force an explanation for a significant life event, you are limited by your current level of awareness. You find yourself using old logic and past experiences to interpret something entirely new. This effort to shoehorn a new reality into an old framework can actively prevent a more expanded understanding from emerging naturally. By insisting on finding the answer now, you can inadvertently slow down the very process that would eventually bring the clarity you seek. Littau describes how this insistence paradoxically gets in our way:

...the more we try and understand the more it slows down this natural or hinders therefore slows down this natural process of allowing the understanding to find us rather than us trying to find the understanding.

2. Spiritual Growth Often Happens in Reverse: Awareness First, Understanding Last

We typically think of growth as a linear process: we learn something new (understanding), we apply it and see it reflected in our physical life, and then our general awareness expands. You read a book, apply its lessons, and see the results. According to Littau, this logical sequence often applies to the small, incremental steps we take in our personal development.

However, during what he calls the "big shifts"—major, spontaneous leaps in growth—this process is often completely reversed. It's a counter-intuitive sequence that can leave you feeling lost if you don't recognize it. This "reversed" process unfolds in three distinct steps:

1. Awareness Expands: First, a spontaneous, non-linear jump in your awareness or vibration occurs. This isn't something you study for; it's a profound internal shift that happens on its own.

2. Physical Reality Changes: Next, your external, physical experiences begin to change to match this new, higher level of awareness. Your circumstances, relationships, or opportunities start reflecting the inner shift you've already undergone.

3. Understanding Follows: Finally, your conscious understanding of what's happening is the last piece to fall into place. It lags behind, playing catch-up to the changes that have already occurred in your awareness and your physical life.

This concept feels strange because we are conditioned to believe that understanding must come before change. But in these pivotal growth moments, you are living the change long before you can articulate why.

3. You Can't Grasp a New Reality with an Old Awareness

If you've ever felt like you're going in circles trying to solve a problem, Littau's metaphor of an "awareness circle" will resonate deeply. Imagine a circle that contains everything you are currently capable of comprehending, both physically and non-physically. It represents the sum total of your current knowledge, beliefs, and understanding.

The problem arises when a major life event occurs as a direct result of that spontaneous jump in awareness. The reason for this new event—the expanded understanding behind it—exists outside of your current awareness circle. You are experiencing the physical effects of a shift that your conscious mind has not yet integrated. This creates a deeply frustrating paradox: you feel the change has happened, yet the reason remains maddeningly out of reach.

You feel stuck because you are trying to use the tools, logic, and consciousness from inside the circle to understand something that is, by definition, outside the circle. No amount of analyzing from your old perspective can help you grasp a truth that resides in a new, expanded one. He captures this futile effort perfectly with a simple analogy:

...we try and understand but we can't because the understanding is not in here it's in here and when we use our current consciousness to try and understand what's going on what we're doing is we're trying to figure it out in here but you can't figure it out in here because that's not where it is...

Conclusion: The Power of Allowing

The central message here is that true, transformative growth sometimes asks us to let go of our most ingrained habit: the need for immediate understanding. It requires trust and faith—what Littau cheekily calls "four-letter words"—in the process itself. When you're in a situation you can't make sense of, it may be a sign that you've already taken a massive leap forward.

Your understanding isn't absent; it's just playing catch-up to your already expanded awareness. As Littau notes, understanding will always make itself known in the course of time. Your job isn't to force it, but to create the space for it to arrive. By releasing the pressure to figure it all out, you allow that new understanding to find you when the time is right.

What experience in your life right now could you simply "be with," trusting that the understanding will find you in its own time?