We’ve all heard the phrase, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” It’s believed by some and has become a life philosophy of many. In the traditional sense, those seven words convey that ignorance of a problem or a misdeed can prevent you from being unhappy or harmed by worrying about it.

I became curious about what else it could mean and explored how what I didn’t know was actually hurting me. Hurt doesn’t always signify something dangerous or life-altering. The hurt we face can be as simple as the hurt we do to ourselves through our assumptions, judgments, defensiveness and disagreements with others.

I recently had questions about my future and realized that what I didn’t know could have led me to a decision I would have regretted. What I do know now is what we don’t know can definitely hurt our ability to thrive now and well into the future.