Sometimes we actually don't know what we're talking about - and it matters.

Yesterday I had an interesting lesson in "expertise." I was talking to my doctor about a stuffy nose - some days it's so bad I can barely breathe. I told him that I once saw a specialist who told me I had a deviated septum, but I wasn't sure he got the diagnosis right. I mean, shouldn't I know how my nose works at this stage in my life?

"If my septum is deviated, why does my stuffiness switch from one side to the other? Shouldn't it be broken to one side or the other? It can't switch. I just need a better nose spray," I self-diagnosed.

Seemed pretty reasonable to me. After all, if I bent a pipe, it would be broken to the left some days and the right other days. That's how the world works, doesn't it?

"Actually," said my doctor with some patience, "It can shift. Your deviation could be in the form of an "s" which would make it seem like one side or the other is blocked at different times. A nose spray won't fix that. You see, we doctors have been under-the-hood. We know more than what things "look like" on the surface."

I sat for a moment, and then apologized. "I didn't think of that. I guess I should stick to being a good patient, and let you be the good doctor. Thanks for explaining."

That conversation was a reminder to me that for all of our experience, all of our brainpower, all of the data at our fingertips, "expertise" is much more than what we can "think" about a situation. There's a reason my doctor - or anybody else, for that matter - trains for years in their profession. Why they continue their education, practice in the real world, accumulate experiences and go beyond the "initial reasonings" of becoming an expert.

Just thinking things out may not be enough; that's why we have expertise and why we value it.

Remember when we thought you could "get a cold" from "being cold"? That the Sun revolved around the Earth, because it sure did look that way to the naked eye? That you could represent yourself in court, fix your own car or straighten your own teeth?

All sorts of things we thought were "easy to figure out" - because on the surface it looked like it didn't take much. Until you learn - sometimes the hard way - that there's a big difference between reading WebMD and getting the diagnosis right (or the prescription).

Yesterday I reminded myself that there's a lot that I "seem" to know that I really don't understand. That experts are so beneficial because they not only find out the facts, but that they prevent me from making big mistakes by assuming I know more than I do.

It's also why the value of expertise is so much more than the single hour we spend in their office. It's the years of work that makes it possible for them to create so much benefit in an hour, that would take us a lifetime on our own to replicate.

That's what experts do.
That's what YOU do.
It's up to all of us to value it.
And that, my friends, is nothing to sneeze at!

#alwaysinspiring