Trust Your Own Deep Knowing
The Antidote To A Loud, Shallow World
As the new year begins, advice is everywhere. Goals to set. Habits to stack. Trends to catch. Thought leaders to follow.
Here’s what feels more honest to me:
Trust yourself more than the droning chorus of “experts.”
Life Is A Circle, Not a Pyramid
We’re not meant to organize our lives around a few voices at the top of a pyramid. We’re more like points on a huge circle.
That circle…call it the sacred whole…is only fully known when each point shines in its own particular way. Your life, with your mix of gifts, wounds, quirks, and questions, is not a small version of someone else’s. It’s a singular, necessary aspect that helps reveal the whole.
When we outsource our sense of what matters to people with microphones and blue checkmarks, we effectively redact our point on the circle.
Even worse, we slowly lose touch with our inner compass. We forget how to listen inward. We forget that we have both a right and a responsibility to be in conversation with our own deep knowing.
Recently, Adam Grant wrote about narcissistic leaders and the damage they do. Like all good writers, he skillfully named what’s obvious to us all. Somehow, our society has evolved to reward crass, look-at-me confidence.
The predictable result is self-serving, power-seeking voices often rise to the top.
Being Quietly Subversive
In contrast, it feels almost radical to say:
“I’m going to reflect. I’m going to discern. I’m going to form my conscience, to discover what rings true with a curious, open heart. And I will quietly live out the answers I find.”
For me, writing these posts is one way to live that out.
I don’t have to be a guru or have a brand for my thoughts to have value. I just have to be honest, curious, and willing to let the rough draft of my own life be seen.
The same is true with my shy songs. A newer one, Shallow People, tries to bemoan with provocative fun. Why do we give the reins of influence to people who are so superficial and exhausting?
Join the Rebellion in 2026
How do you live this out? If you’re not sure, here are some ideas of where to start as the year turns:
Treat your inner life as something worth consulting, not just managing. What is that small, still voice inside saying?
Pay more attention to your own deep knowing: about your health, your relationships, your career, and how to best spend your time.
As the day ends, ask, What did I notice? What did I feel? What mattered to me? Did I let the people I care about know these answers, or did I keep them to myself?
Our world doesn’t need more content (he says, hitting “publish.”).
It needs more people who are in honest dialogue with their own hearts, and who express that dialogue in loving, creative ways…through conversations, as parents, in spreadsheets, in meeting rooms, when fixing a doorknob, making a meal, writing a note, and sketching a folk song.
I think this is the kind of thought leadership we need now: “ordinary” people, quietly trusting their own deep knowing, and letting that trust ripple out into how they live.
If you’re reading this, you’re one of those people.
What matters to you? What is worth the attention of your singular life? We can’t fully know our shared, sacred nature without your answers.
If you feel like it, I’d love to hear them.
Good song!