Knowledge Is Power

I've really been wanting to love my new iPhone, but strange happenings are many and my patience, as of late, is none.

So this morning, on my day off, I made an appointment at the Apple Store at the Mall of America (god help me) and went to consult the geniuses at the Genius Bar. I was initially annoyed that I had to make an appointment. But that was yesterday when we fought the afternoon mall traffic to find a place to park and then did the stop-start walk all the way around the mall behind hoards of aimless wanderers only to be told there was a two hour wait ahead of us.

Ugh!

Needless to say, we left.

Today, however, I was smart enough to make the earliest appointment I could get, which was before most stores opened and all the walkers are professionals and actually know how to walk.

Hooray!

To my pleasant surprise, the geniuses at Apple deserve their name. Do they know everything? No. I stumped my guy a couple of times. But he knew to keep looking for the answers. And for that, I am grateful. None of this I-don't-know brand of customer service. Give me a bona fide problem solver and I'm a fan for life.

My iPhone and I are now on speaking terms -- although I continue to have trouble with accidently dropping calls, answering calls when I'm trying to silence them, making phone calls I have no idea I've made (sorry Laura!).

The patience I need, I've realized, is less for my new electronic device and more for myself. Shocker, I know. Seems that when I don't understand something, I don't just get frustrated, I get a.n.g.r.y.

And what is anger, but fear.

When did I get so afraid of not knowing? When did not knowing translate directly into not only feeling stupid, but being stupid? Maybe it's been there my whole life, but is more exacerbated now that technology is no longer my profession. I'm behind the times. I don't know it all. I don't even know all the technology that would normally allow me to figure out for myself. In the world of iClouds and syncing and backing up and disappearing calendars, and information getting pushed from places it shouldn't have access to...I don't know. It isn't rocket science, but it's new.

And new is different. And fun. But when you just don't quite get it and have been set loose with a completely personalizable piece of technology that is out of my realm of experience...well, it can be just plain scary.

Until now. Until a little Apple genius shared with me some details I was lacking. Until I embraced my fear and went in head on, willing to be vulnerable and not know it all, and asked for...

...gulp...

...help.

Knowledge is power. I walked out of the Apple store this morning feeling like a million bucks. Not because I was anywhere close to knowing it all, but because I knew in my gut that I still had the potential to learn. To be dangerous. :) And to play.

I'm not one for resolutions, but it seems to me this year it would behoove me to make better friends with my technology. Not so that it can take over more of my life, not so I can become more dependent on it, but so I can better utilize the tools I have at my disposal.

Viewing technology as the tool it is and doing the work to learn how to use it allows me to live my life where technology acts in service of me...not making me its slave.

Fear is what makes us a slave to whatever it is we're afraid of. Seeking knowledge and actively learning gives us power over the fear.

What self-limiting fears will you work to vanquish in the coming year?

Power on!//