Maybe You Don’t Need More Clarity

I’ve been thinking about clarity lately.

Particularly how often intelligent, capable women assume they need more of it.

We say things like:

• “I just need to figure this out.”

• “I need to think about it.”

• “I’m not clear yet.”

• “What if”…

And then we do what intelligent women are very good at doing.

• We think.

• And rethink.

We have another conversation about it, with ourselves. Make another list. Turn it over from six different angles. Revisit the decision while making coffee. Again in the shower. And perhaps once more at 3:00 a.m., because apparently that’s when the finest thinking happens.

But I’ve started wondering if clarity, seeing clearly, is always the thing that’s missing.

What if sometimes we’re perfectly capable of knowing what we think but we’re trying to hear ourselves through pressure we no longer recognize as pressure?

I’m not talking about the obvious kind.

The deadline. The crisis. The week when everything goes sideways.

We know when that is happening.

I’m interested in the quieter kind.

• The pressure hidden inside being the one who remembers.

• The one who anticipates.

• The one people depend on.

The one who handles something before anyone else has even noticed it needs handling.

There’s a peculiar thing that happens when you’ve been carrying something for a long time:

Eventually, you stop experiencing it as something you’re carrying.

It simply becomes the way you stand.

And I wonder how much of what we call indecision, overthinking or lack of clarity is actually happening there.

Not because we’ve suddenly lost our ability to know ourselves.

But because we’re trying to make clear choices from inside conditions we haven’t questioned in years.

This is something I’ve come to understand about the way I work with people.

I notice things.

The sentence that gets repeated.

The answer underneath the answer.

The moment someone says, “Oh, that’s just what I do,” about something that is anything but incidental.

Sometimes I can see the pattern precisely because I’m not standing inside it.

That’s the usefulness of a mirror.

A mirror doesn’t decide whether the red lipstick works.It simply lets you see what you couldn’t see from where you were standing.

And once you see it?

Then you get to decide.

That distinction matters to me.

Because I’m not particularly interested in telling accomplished women what they should do with their lives.

I’m much more interested in the moment when a woman suddenly sees something she couldn’t see before and says:

“Ohhh.”

There it is.

Not another answer handed to her.

Recognition.

And quite often, clarity follows.

This idea has been occupying me enough that I wanted to make a room for it.

So on August 25, I’m holding a free masterclass:

UNDER PRESSURE
Save Your Peace. Keep Your Edge.

We’re going to look at the patterns created by the pressure that can become so familiar you stop noticing it and what becomes possible when you can finally see those patterns clearly.

I’ll be doing what I do best:

• Listening.

• Noticing.

• Reflecting.

Being the mirror.

Not because you need someone else to have your answers.

Quite the opposite.

Sometimes you need to see what’s been standing between you and the answers that were already yours.

UNDER PRESSURE
August 25
12 PM EDT | 5 PM BST

If you felt yourself recognizing something while reading this, I’d love to have you in the room.