From Confusion to Clarity: Why Your Next Level of Growth Begins Within You

You can be talented, ambitious, and hardworking, yet still feel stuck.

You can spend years building a business, developing your career, growing your investments, or helping other people succeed and still find yourself asking, Why am I not moving forward the way I want to?

You might have the skills. You might know what needs to be done. You might even have a clear set of goals. Yet something seems to hold you back from taking the next step, making a difficult decision, or creating the life you genuinely want.

When this happens, the natural response is often to do more.

More work. More planning. More strategies. More productivity. More action.

And sometimes, that is exactly what you need. If you have been sitting on an idea without taking any action, getting started can help you discover what works and what doesn't.

But what happens when you are already taking action?

What happens when you are a high achiever, a business owner who works hard, a coach who consistently serves clients, or a real estate investor who keeps pursuing new opportunities, yet you still feel disconnected from where you are going?

In those moments, the problem may not be a lack of effort. It may be a lack of clarity.

And the kind of clarity you need may have very little to do with finding another business strategy. It may begin with understanding yourself.

The Hidden Connection Between Confusion and Clarity

When people talk about feeling confused, procrastinating, struggling to take consistent action, or failing to create the life they want, they often treat these as separate problems.

But many of these experiences can be connected.

Sometimes, we struggle to move forward because we don't understand what is happening within us. We don't understand why certain decisions feel difficult, why we keep repeating particular patterns, or why we seem to resist things we genuinely want.

We respond by pushing harder without examining what is causing the resistance in the first place.

The challenge is that we can spend a lot of energy trying to solve the visible problem while ignoring what is happening underneath it.

Imagine a business owner who wants to grow their company but keeps hesitating when it is time to delegate. They know they need a team, and they understand that delegation would give them more time to focus on growth. Yet they continue to control every detail.

On the surface, this looks like a management problem.

But underneath it, there might be a fear of losing control, a belief that nobody can do the job as well as they can, or an identity built around being the person who always has the answers.

Hiring another employee will not automatically resolve those underlying issues.

The same pattern can appear in a coach who struggles to charge what their services are worth, an entrepreneur who constantly changes direction, or a real estate investor who avoids opportunities because of the possibility of failure.

The visible problem is one thing. The reason behind it may be something else entirely.

Clarity begins when you stop looking only at what is happening and start asking why it is happening.

Why Doing More Is Not Always the Answer

There is a point at which taking more action becomes less useful than understanding the actions you are already taking.

If you have not started, action can teach you. You can test an idea, speak to potential customers, launch a service, or explore an investment opportunity and learn from the results.

But if you are already consistent and productive, simply adding more activity may not address the real issue.

You could spend another year working harder without understanding why you keep making the same decisions.

You could build a larger company while becoming increasingly disconnected from the reasons you started it.

You could achieve the financial milestones you once dreamed about and still feel that something important is missing.

This is why it is worth examining the patterns behind your actions.

What makes you hesitate?

What causes you to abandon a direction that once mattered to you?

Why do certain situations provoke a stronger reaction than others?

What are you trying to prove, and to whom?

These questions may feel less practical than building a sales funnel, refining your marketing, or reviewing your investment strategy. But they can help you understand the person making those decisions.

And the person making the decisions is part of the equation.

Your Past May Be Influencing Your Present More Than You Realize

One of the central ideas in my journey from confusion to clarity is the relationship between three things: the past, the present, and the future.

We often imagine these as separate stages of life. The past has happened, the present is where we are, and the future is what we are trying to create.

But our experience of the past can continue to influence how we live in the present and what we believe is possible in the future.

The beliefs we develop, the emotions we carry, and the identities we form can become lenses through which we interpret new experiences.

Sometimes, these lenses help us. They give us useful lessons, skills, values, and a sense of direction.

Other times, they limit what we are willing to consider.

Suppose you grew up believing that making mistakes was unacceptable. You may have learned to associate mistakes with criticism, rejection, or disappointment.

Years later, you become an entrepreneur.

Building a business requires experimentation. You have to test ideas, make decisions with incomplete information, learn from setbacks, and sometimes admit that your original plan was wrong.

But if your identity is built around always being right, experimentation may feel threatening.

You might overthink decisions, delay launching a product, or avoid opportunities where the outcome is uncertain.

You may tell yourself that you are being careful, when part of what is happening is that you are trying to protect yourself from an old discomfort.

Your past is now influencing your present, and it may be quietly shaping your future.

This does not mean that every hesitation comes from an unresolved past experience. Nor does it mean that you should ignore practical risks. It means that understanding your patterns can help you distinguish between a decision that requires careful analysis and a reaction driven by something you have not fully examined.

The identity you build can become a box

As we grow, we develop an identity. We learn how to see ourselves and how we believe we should behave.

We become the responsible one, the achiever, the dependable person, the problem-solver, the successful professional, or the person who never gives up.

These identities are not necessarily negative. In many cases, they help us develop discipline, contribute to society, and fulfil our responsibilities.

The difficulty begins when we believe we must always live up to a particular identity, even when it no longer serves us.

Consider a successful business owner whose identity is built around being self-reliant.

They have always solved their own problems. They are proud of being able to handle everything.

As the business grows, however, that same identity can make it difficult to ask for help, trust employees, or build systems that allow the company to operate without their constant involvement.

The quality that helped them succeed at one stage may become an obstacle at another.

The question is no longer simply, What do I need to do to grow my business?

It also becomes, What am I holding on to about myself that makes the next stage of growth difficult?

Sometimes, moving forward requires more than learning a new skill. It requires questioning an old definition of who you are.

The Words You Learned May Still Be Shaping Your Decisions

Another important part of this process is language.

As children, we learn much more than words. We also absorb beliefs about ourselves, other people, and the world around us.

The messages we repeatedly hear from parents, teachers, communities, and other influential people can become assumptions that we carry into adulthood.

If you repeatedly hear that the world is dangerous, you may grow up approaching unfamiliar situations with suspicion.

If you are constantly told that you must work hard to earn approval, you may learn to measure your worth by how much you accomplish.

If you grow up believing that financial security can only come from avoiding risk, you may find it difficult to explore opportunities that require calculated uncertainty.

These beliefs may once have helped you adapt to your environment. But they are not necessarily suitable for every stage of your life.

As an adult, you may be trying to build something different from what you were taught to expect.

You may want to build a business, lead a team, create financial independence, or pursue a career that reflects your interests. Yet the beliefs you absorbed earlier can continue to influence how you respond to these ambitions.

The challenge is that familiar beliefs can feel like facts simply because we have carried them for so long.

Clarity requires us to examine them.

Is this something I genuinely believe, based on my present understanding?

Or is it something I accepted years ago because it was what the people around me believed?

Does this belief help me make better decisions today?

Or am I continuing to live by it because questioning it feels uncomfortable?

You do not need to reject everything you learned in the past. You need to become more conscious of what you carry forward.

Are You Building Success for Yourself or Trying to Prove Something?

This is a particularly important question for coaches, entrepreneurs, business owners, and real estate investors.

Ambition can be a powerful force. It can help you develop discipline, overcome obstacles, and pursue opportunities that once seemed impossible.

But ambition can also be driven by something you have not fully examined.

In my work with clients, I have seen how people can spend years building careers and businesses without fully understanding why those achievements matter so much to them.

Some people carry what they describe as a chip on their shoulder. They want to prove something to themselves, prove someone else wrong, or finally earn the recognition they felt they lacked earlier in life.

That desire can produce remarkable results.

Someone who was underestimated may build a successful company. Someone who felt overlooked may become a respected leader. Someone who experienced financial insecurity may work relentlessly to create wealth.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to succeed or creating a better life for yourself.

The question is what happens when the need to prove yourself becomes the primary reason behind your decisions.

You may achieve more while enjoying less.

You may keep pursuing bigger goals because the previous achievement never gives you the sense of fulfilment you expected.

You may sacrifice relationships, personal interests, or your own well-being because slowing down feels like failure.

You may reach a point where you look back at everything you have built and wonder why you built it in the first place.

When the goal changes but the underlying need remains the same

Think about a child who desperately wants approval, love, or recognition.

As that child grows up, the object of desire may change. Instead of seeking a parent's praise, the adult may seek professional recognition, a larger house, a luxury car, or a higher financial status.

The external goals are different, but the underlying need may be similar.

A bigger business might be a genuine expression of your vision. It might also be an attempt to demonstrate that you are good enough.

A larger real estate portfolio might reflect a thoughtful investment strategy. It might also be tied to a belief that you must keep accumulating wealth to feel secure or respected.

A coaching practice might be built around a genuine desire to help people. It might also become a way to seek constant validation through clients' approval.

The point is not to assume that one motivation makes your goals more legitimate than another. Human motivation is often complex.

The point is to become aware of what is driving you.

Success is worth pursuing, but it is worth asking whether the way you pursue it is aligned with the person you want to become.

The Cost of Building a Future From an Old Identity

When you plan your future, you naturally draw on what you know.

Your past experiences help you identify opportunities, assess risks, and make informed decisions. That is useful.

But if your picture of the future is simply an extension of an identity formed in the past, you may end up creating a different version of the life you already know.

You might pursue the same kinds of goals, repeat the same relationship patterns, or make decisions based on the same fears, even when you believe you are moving in a new direction.

For example, an entrepreneur may leave a job to build a business because they want more freedom. Yet they may recreate the same exhausting work patterns they experienced as an employee.

A coach may start a practice to do meaningful work but gradually build a business that leaves them with no time for the work they actually enjoy.

A real estate investor may set out to build long-term financial independence but become so focused on acquiring more properties that they never stop to define what financial independence means to them.

In each case, the external circumstances have changed, but the underlying pattern may have remained.

This is why clarity is not only about deciding what you want to achieve. It is also about understanding why you want it and whether your current choices are taking you towards the life you actually want.

Clarity Requires You to Understand Your Emotions, Not Just Your Thoughts

Many of us learn to prioritise logic and suppress uncomfortable emotions.

We tell ourselves to be rational, stay strong, keep going, or stop overthinking.

In business, there are good reasons to make decisions using evidence rather than allowing every passing emotion to dictate what we do.

But ignoring your emotions altogether can also make it harder to understand your needs and reactions.

Emotions can provide information about what matters to you, what feels threatening, and where something may need your attention.

For example, frustration might point towards an unmet expectation. Anxiety might reveal uncertainty or a perceived threat. Resentment might indicate that a boundary needs attention.

These emotions do not automatically tell you what action to take. They are not always accurate interpretations of a situation. But they can give you a starting point for asking better questions.

Imagine a coach who feels uncomfortable whenever a prospective client asks about pricing.

Instead of immediately dismissing the discomfort or lowering the price, the coach can pause and explore what is happening.

Am I concerned that the price is genuinely too high for the value being offered?

Am I afraid the prospect will reject me?

Do I believe that charging more makes me selfish?

Am I uncomfortable with being seen as someone who commands a premium fee?

These questions help separate the practical business issue from the personal beliefs that may be influencing the decision.

The same approach can be useful when an investor feels unusually anxious about an opportunity, a business owner becomes defensive when receiving feedback, or an entrepreneur repeatedly avoids difficult conversations with employees.

You still need to evaluate the facts. But understanding your emotional response can help you make that evaluation more clearly.

Your Potential Is Not Always Found by Becoming More of Who You Already Are

We often imagine personal and professional growth as a straight line.

We start somewhere, work hard, gain experience, and gradually move closer to our potential.

Real growth is rarely that simple.

There are periods of progress, periods of uncertainty, setbacks, discoveries, and moments when we realise that the direction we have been pursuing no longer fits.

Sometimes, growth requires you to build on what you already know. At other times, it requires you to question something you have believed about yourself for years.

Throughout history, many influential thinkers and creators have had to find their own direction rather than simply follow the expectations placed on them.

In my training, I discussed the example of Mozart and the distinction between the role his father wanted him to fulfil as a performer and his own desire to compose music.

The broader lesson is that the path towards your potential may require you to distinguish between what other people expect of you and what genuinely matters to you.

This does not mean you should automatically reject advice, ignore responsibilities, or abandon commitments whenever they become difficult.

It means that you should be willing to examine your direction rather than assuming that the expectations you inherited must determine your future.

For a business owner, this might mean questioning whether the next stage of growth should involve expanding the company or building a business that gives them more freedom.

For a coach, it might mean deciding whether to serve more clients individually or create a different model that better reflects their strengths.

For a real estate investor, it might mean examining whether the next acquisition supports their actual financial goals or simply satisfies the urge to keep growing the portfolio.

Your potential is not necessarily realised by accumulating more of everything. Sometimes, it is realised by becoming clearer about what deserves your time and energy.

How Do You Begin Moving From Confusion to Clarity?

In my own experience, one of the first things that helped me move towards clarity was learning to ask better questions.

I reached a point where simply trying harder was not enough. I needed to understand what had happened, what was influencing me, and where I genuinely wanted to go.

That process began with curiosity rather than a list of instructions about what I should do.

Here are a few ways you can begin applying the same principle to your own life and work.

1. Identify the pattern behind the problem

Instead of focusing only on the immediate difficulty, look for recurring patterns.

If you keep procrastinating, ask what tends to happen just before you delay.

If you repeatedly struggle to delegate, examine what you believe might happen if someone else takes responsibility.

If you keep changing your business direction, ask whether you are responding to useful information or escaping the discomfort of committing to one path.

Look for what repeats across different situations.

The objective is not to criticise yourself. It is to understand what is happening well enough to make a different choice.

2. Examine the beliefs behind your decisions

Pay attention to the language you use when describing yourself.

Statements such as "I'm not good at selling," "I have to do everything myself," "I can't afford to make mistakes," or "Successful people must always be busy" can influence your behaviour more than you realise.

Ask yourself where these beliefs came from and whether they remain useful.

Are they supported by evidence from your present circumstances?

Are they assumptions you have never questioned?

Could there be another way to interpret the situation?

You do not have to replace every negative thought with a positive affirmation. The more important step is learning to recognise that a familiar thought is not necessarily an unquestionable truth.

3. Understand what you are trying to satisfy

When you set a goal, look beyond the outcome.

If you want to grow your business, what does that growth mean to you?

Is it greater financial security, more freedom, a bigger impact, intellectual challenge, recognition, or something else?

If you want to acquire another property, what purpose does that acquisition serve within your wider investment plan?

If you want to grow your coaching practice, what kind of work do you want to spend your days doing?

There is no universally correct answer. The important thing is to understand your own answer rather than automatically adopting someone else's definition of success.

4. Learn to recognise when the past is influencing the present

When a situation triggers a strong reaction, pause before assuming that the situation itself explains everything you are feeling.

Ask yourself whether this experience resembles something you have encountered before.

Are you responding to what is happening now, or are you also reacting to what you fear might happen based on previous experiences?

Recognising a pattern does not make it disappear instantly. It gives you an opportunity to respond more consciously rather than automatically repeating an old reaction.

With practice, reflection, and appropriate support when needed, you can develop a different relationship with those patterns.

5. Build a future that reflects your values, not just your old expectations

Once you begin understanding what has been shaping your decisions, consider what you want to build from here.

You do not need to have a complete picture of your future before taking the next step.

Start by identifying what matters to you, what you want to contribute, and what kind of life you want your work to support.

Then ask whether your current decisions reflect those priorities.

Your goals can still be ambitious. You can still pursue financial growth, build a company, develop a coaching practice, or expand your investments.

The difference is that you are becoming more deliberate about why you are pursuing those things and how you want to pursue them.

6. Use repetition and feedback to turn insight into growth

Understanding a pattern is important, but awareness alone is not the entire process.

You also need opportunities to practise responding differently.

In my discussion with the group, I highlighted three factors that contribute to growth: time, repetition, and feedback.

Time matters, but time alone does not guarantee progress. A person can spend years in the same circumstances without meaningfully changing their behaviour.

Repetition matters because you need to practise applying what you learn in real situations.

Feedback matters because it helps you recognise whether your efforts are working or whether you need to adjust your approach.

Consider a business owner who wants to become better at delegation. They can reflect on why delegation feels uncomfortable, practise assigning responsibilities, review what happens, and seek feedback from their team or a trusted mentor.

Over time, they can learn to distinguish between situations where closer supervision is necessary and situations where their need for control is getting in the way.

The same principle applies to leadership, sales, communication, investing, and personal development.

Growth is not simply about waiting until you feel ready. It is about learning, practising, observing the results, and adjusting.

7. Surround yourself with people who support your growth

The people around you influence what you consider normal, possible, and worthwhile.

If you spend most of your time in environments where nobody questions familiar assumptions, it can be difficult to recognise the patterns shaping your own life.

A supportive community can provide space for honest conversations, new perspectives, constructive feedback, and shared learning.

This is particularly valuable for entrepreneurs, coaches, and business owners, who may spend much of their time making decisions and carrying responsibilities without having many opportunities to reflect openly.

The right environment does not simply tell you that you are doing well. It also helps you recognise where you may be limiting yourself and encourages you to examine those areas without losing sight of your potential.

You do not need everyone around you to understand your journey. But having people with whom you can think honestly, learn, and grow can make a meaningful difference.

The Goal Is Not to Eliminate Every Fear

One important distinction is that clarity does not mean you will never experience uncertainty again.

You may still feel fear when making a major business decision. You may still experience doubt when entering a new market, hiring a senior employee, or considering a significant property investment.

You may still have difficult days when old patterns return.

The objective is not to create a life in which you never experience discomfort.

It is to develop a better understanding of yourself so that discomfort does not automatically determine your choices.

When you recognise what is happening, you can evaluate the situation more clearly. You can distinguish between a genuine risk that deserves attention and a fear that needs to be examined.

You can learn from the past without allowing it to dictate every future decision.

You can plan for the future without becoming so consumed by what might go wrong that you lose touch with the opportunities and relationships in front of you.

And when you do become stuck, you can begin to recognise it as part of a process rather than proof that you have failed.

That is a meaningful form of progress.

The Most Important Question May Not Be What You Want to Build

When we think about clarity, we often focus on external questions.

What business should I start?

What should my next investment be?

How do I grow my client base?

What should my next career move look like?

These are useful questions, and practical decisions still require research, planning, and sound judgment.

But there is another question underneath them:

Who am I becoming as I build the life I want?

Your business, your career, your relationships, and your investments are all important parts of your life. But they are not the entirety of who you are.

If you become so focused on achieving your goals that you lose touch with your values, curiosity, relationships, or sense of purpose, you may eventually find yourself questioning the direction you have taken.

This is why I believe that clarity is not simply about figuring out the next move. It is also about understanding yourself well enough to make choices that align with what matters to you.

There is a part of you beneath the titles you hold, the roles you perform, the beliefs you have inherited, and the expectations you carry.

You may call it your core, your deeper self, or your sense of purpose.

Whatever language you use, the task is to become more conscious of what matters to you beneath the noise.

I often think about the analogy of a sculptor revealing a figure hidden within a block of stone. The process is not simply about adding more material. It is also about removing what obscures the form.

In a similar way, personal growth can involve examining the beliefs, reactions, and identities that no longer serve you.

You begin to understand what is genuinely important, what you want to let go of, and what kind of future you want to create.

You may not know exactly what your potential looks like yet. You do not need to.

You can begin by paying attention to the things that give you a sense of curiosity, connection, peace, and meaningful challenge.

Then you can take the next step, learn from the experience, and continue refining your direction.

As you become clearer about yourself, your actions can become more deliberate. And instead of constantly trying to force yourself forward, you may begin to move with a stronger sense of direction.

Final Thoughts: Clarity Is a Journey, Not a Destination

There is no guarantee that understanding yourself will make every business decision easy or every challenge disappear.

But it can change the way you approach those decisions and challenges.

You begin to recognise the relationship between your past experiences, your present reactions, and the future you are trying to build.

You become more aware of the beliefs that influence your choices and the needs that may be driving your ambitions.

You learn to question familiar patterns rather than automatically obeying them.

And you become more capable of pursuing success without losing sight of the person you are becoming along the way.

For coaches, business owners, entrepreneurs, and real estate investors, this matters because your growth is not determined by strategy and execution alone. It is also influenced by the person making the decisions, leading the team, serving the clients, and choosing which opportunities to pursue.

So, if you feel stuck right now, do not immediately assume that you need to work harder or find another strategy.

Take a moment to look beneath the surface.

Ask better questions.

Understand the patterns you keep repeating.

Pay attention to what matters to you.

And begin building a future that reflects not just what you have learned to become, but also what you genuinely want to grow towards.

You do not have to figure everything out today.

You only have to become a little more conscious of where you are, what is shaping you, and where you want to go next.

That is where the journey from confusion to clarity begins.

A question to reflect on:

What is one pattern, belief, or expectation from your past that might be influencing the way you make decisions today—and what could change if you became more aware of it?


TRANSCRIPT 

This week is about clarity and I would say clarity pretty much defines a lot of what we're trying to do. We might not use the word clarity sometimes. Sometimes we might say that I feel confused. I feel like I'm procrastinating. I feel like I'm not going towards my goals or I feel like I don't have the business, the life that I want. But a lot of it is connected to clarity. When we say I can’t seem to take action or consistent action that also connects back to clarity and a lot of people to overcome that they try to take more action which is useful when you haven't taken any action and you can gain some level of clarity as you take action but if you are the kind of person who already takes action who's already consistent who's already a high achiever a lot of clarity shows up in very subtle ways that stops you from moving forward. And that's what we want to cover today is the deeper areas of where confusion arises or lack of clarity arises. And once I've learned at least and I've seen with my clients as well, when you're able to see the root of confusion, then you can at least understand why something is showing up. And when you understand why something is showing up and you understand where you're trying to go, then you can remedy that a little bit. But if you don't know where something is coming from, you don't understand the pattern, you're disconnected from what's happening, then a lot of times you're just doing things because your nervous system is taking you one way or another. And we have an interesting nervous system as human beings because it will hold you back from doing things because it will try to protect you. It will hold you back from doing things because it might be too painful or uncomfortable to do something. But we all know as human beings when something becomes big enough, something becomes a mission, something becomes something very powerful for us, there's a bigger why behind it and we understand where we've come from, then your mind is okay with spending that expending that energy. And especially if we understand our patterns, we can put we can step back from it and see it a little bit outside of our our own challenges when we're in the highs and lows as Fitzum described. So, I'll go through a journey with you here. And then this kind of also explains what I take my clients and you guys through in the background. Like I usually have this framework in the back of my mind when I'm working with you, even at a one-on-one level. And this also gets us prepared for our group coaching session on Thursday where we'll go much deeper. Today, I just want to get you to think about some of these areas and reflect on some of those up until Thursday. and Thursday we go much deeper as we go into our discussions and other exercises that we will go through to create more clarity. So our topic from confusion to clarity and the first beautiful picture that I have it took me three times to do this [laughter] is it's a a little stick figure in the middle and there's past there's future there's present at the bottom and there's a connection between past future and present and I like this diagram because it's simple and there are only three components to it. There's your past, there's your present, there's your future. Uh, and I'll start with myself. Um, if I were to go back a few years in the past, I remember a lot of confusion that came into my life when I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know where I was going. It wasn't it wasn't necessarily because I didn't believe that I had the skill set or I didn't know I could do well or that I couldn't move forward. It was a lot of it was I didn't know how I should have acted based on the thoughts and emotions that I had within me and that was related to the past. And then as I move forward I had built an identity and that identity was essentially a box in my mind that I had to live up to that identity that was built up and that was the ego identity that was showing up in the present and it was even showing up if I did any kind of planning in towards the future. So the planning was a was an extrapolation of what had happened in the past the identity that was developed out of that and the future that I was going towards and then and we're in a world where a lot of people talk about presence and being in the moment and those kind of things. There was no presence whatsoever because I was either stuck in the past or I was stuck in the future. And when I tried to be present with myself, tried to connect with life, tried to enjoy things, I couldn't because I was stuck in my mind. I was stuck in my own personal hell and I literally called it that and I didn't know how to get out of it. And no matter how much I tried, it wouldn't work things. There was no presence whatsoever because I was either stuck in the past or I was stuck in the future. And when I tried to be present with myself, tried to connect with life, tried to enjoy things, I couldn't because I was stuck in my mind. I was stuck in my own personal hell. and I literally called it that. and I didn't know how to get out of it. No matter how much I tried, it wouldn't work. Not to mention that other people around me didn't understand the problem either. So they would make it worse for me. Not intentionally, but unintentionally. and they would try to point out to the box of my identity. Well, you're this kind of person, why aren't you living up more to that? I'd be like, am I? I don't know. I don't know if I am. and again, so I was just stuck for a few years like that. And the first piece of clarity that came in was when I was in so much pain that I wouldn't listen. I didn't care about the thoughts anymore inside of me. I didn't care about the boxes. I didn't care about even the future at that time and it everything broke down to the basic. The basic was that I felt the pain and beyond pain there was just a level of calmness and underneath that calmness was there was just if the best way I could describe it was this little this little fire was a candle of inspiration that said you know what you need to ask better questions you need to understand what happened and where you need to go. It was not you should do this, you should do that. It's like I needed to ask better questions for myself and those around me. And that started a process of asking questions and that led towards a lot of clarity. And I kind of shared that journey because you are probably going through a journey and we're all in different phases of that journey or adventure if you want to call it. I would call it more of an adventure because it's fairly unpredictable but it can feel like that. So what we want to do is put some pattern to the unpredictability or uncertainty of it all because I don't think it's that unpredictable. Once you figure out what the how the past, present and future interact within you then ideally you are not you're not stuck in the past in guilt, shame, ideas, thoughts of what I could have been, should have been, could have done. You're not stuck in the fears of the future. They can still be fear, but you're not stuck in it. Oh, what if this goes wrong, that goes wrong? It doesn't have that much weight anymore. And essentially, you can actually live your life right now, which means that you can connect with your own thoughts, your own inspiration, you can connect with the people around you, and you can grow towards that potential that you're trying to grow towards. And I look at the process as a lot like unraveling parts of you. A lot like a like a little bud flower about but opening up into a flower. If you don't like flower analogy, a chrysalis turning into a butterfly. If you don't like that, then a little chicklet to an eagle if you want to go to the manly analogy. [laughter] And so whatever whatever works for you that potential cannot be realized if you're stuck in the past or you're afraid of the future and there's a part of your nervous system that keeps pulling you in those directions. So let's go through that. So the first piece of it is the past. What happens in the past? The first piece of confusion that's created within you is the past. And the past is connected to two important things. One is your emotions. The other one is thoughts. and thoughts specifically connected to language. So the emotions point to your needs as a human being. That's that's a your natural body signals that tell you this is this is what I need as a human being. And now think back to the earlier time in your life as a child. If you needed food, you would naturally cry for food. Like those were because you didn't have a language or you would try to point like I my my one-year-old son like he will try to point and try to make us understand. If we don't understand he gets a little louder and louder and louder until we do get it. Then we have to put a little bit more effort into it because he doesn't have a language yet. But he's very attuned to his own needs. He needs water. He needs food. He needs play. He needs love, connection. Those kind of things which are very basic to every human being. and stay with me because this will start to unravel as we move forward. So what ends up happening though is that in those first years and the first piece to remember is that you came into this world not as an empty bank like an empty slot. You came in here with certain tendencies some certain inclinations interests every human being I have three children all three are very different from each other. They have different interests from the time they came even the way they would look at you. I remember my my second daughter well my first daughter who's 10 years old now she had a smile on her face as soon as she came into this world like you could tell she was very smiley and like I didn't teach her that. Nobody taught her that. Maybe it developed genetically. Maybe it was part of her core. My second daughter, she has these big eyes and she just stares into your soul. I remember I took her from my wife and I went for like 30 minutes. I sat in the other room. She was in my lap and I was looking at her eyes. She would not blink. She would just I got uncomfortable just her staring at me. [laughter] I'm not kidding. And for the next few years, she she would just anybody she would see she would just stare like and it's very obvious because she has big eyes. So she just stares until like what is going on? She just stare. She does not smile. She does not have any [laughter] kind of expressions. In fact, one of the funniest moments. So we took her we took both of my daughters. We were on a cruise to a comedy show. It was supposed to be for kids and she's sitting in front and this comedian is like there are lots of kids there with families. He is working so hard. My my it was the first comedy show. My older daughter, she's kind of smiling here and there. She was getting some of the jokes. She's just like this. And I could tell like the comedian was sweating and we were at the in the first row. I'm like, [laughter] "Give him something." But that's just how we she was. I didn't teach her that. Nobody taught her that. That's just a part of her. So then in the first early years, the you have the emotions that connect to needs. And then slowly by the second and third year, you're learning language and language and this is very interesting. Your thoughts that have language in them like you have thoughts that are image oriented. You can see pictures in your head. You can hear sounds in your head that are connected to the environment. Those are natural things like pictures, sounds, your mind creates images and sounds and all kinds of stuff and sensations that are connected to your senses. But language thoughts are a little bit different. You when you're given a language, you're not just taught words. You're taught a whole culture within that language. You're taught a whole religion connected to that. And religion can be religious in the spiritual sense. It could be religious in the secular sense which means a set of beliefs that you need to accept to be able to adapt to that environment at least initially. So you're given a whole set of programming with language and the advantage is that you understand very complex ways to say hey this is what I want that's what I want. Let's talk about this abstract thing that you cannot with pointing at things. but here's and that's a powerful thing about language. But there's this book called the four agreements. I love how it says that language is also like a spell. If you for example you're around an adult that you trust and they're they're protecting you or taking care of you, your parent, and they look at you and said, "Watch out, Tommy. The world is a dangerous place. Don't go out there." And he keeps reaffirming that, keeps pointing to the evidence of that. and he keeps saying it over and over that becomes a spell in your mind that the world is dominantly a dangerous place. Now imagine fast forward a few years later a bunch of friends tells you let's go travel to the other side of the world let's go to Europe or Asia it's like are you crazy I can barely [laughter] so your reaction would be very if you bought into that and you felt that it would be it doesn't matter how intelligent you are as a human being it'll be hard for you to make sense of that because human human children adapt that way so and eventually as we move that forward in the present you build an identity based bas on met or unmet emotional needs plus the language you're that you're given and that both of those can become turn into like something that's solidified which means that now you're given a box of an identity and within that identity you have several roles in them depending on where you are in your journey. So you might have a role of a citizen of a son of a daughter of the head of [clears throat] a department or you're working in that department or you have a role of a good religious person. These are roles and that identity is very complex has multiple roles in it and those roles are based on the past that is given to you. Now you're in this box of multiple roles and identities. By the way, they're not all negative. They're just it's a box because your now your mind runs everything through those boxes. It looks at everything through those lenses and then you try to build the future and present with that identity. And what ends up happening is that your past shows up in your present and your future whether you like it or not. And it happens so fast, so automatically that you don't know what to do with it. And now think about it. You're living as a grown adult, all of us, you're trying to build a life in a complex world, uh, with lots of things happening in the world. Um, you're trying to build a business, you're trying to grow a business, you're trying to build relationships, you're trying to discover yourself in the process. And what your nervous system is doing is keeps pulling you to the past and saying, "No, no, that's not what you're doing. this is what you need to become because you were taught this this and this and you should do that. What makes it worse is that think about emotions. Emotions are a very powerful system for human beings to tell you that hey for example going back to my son if he feels thirsty he doesn't have language but he does this. He just excuse the way I'm going to do this but this he sticks out his tongue and does that. That's his that's his symbol for his need to he's thirsty. He's figured that out. or he will point at something. He has an emot and if we don't hear it then he will show more emotion in there. He will show visual and emotional cues and we get it. It's very simple. But as you add language to things then it gets more and more complex. Then for the sake of language that's more complex. We suppress and repress emotion. Now we don't know what our needs are as human beings. And needs can grow. Like in the beginning you have the need to survive, you have the need to connect, you have the need to be loved. But slowly that need becomes the need for respect, the need for connection, the need for status, the need for growth. Now you're trying to grow, but you're stuck in the need to be loved. You're stuck in the need to be accepted as a child in your past. And there's a part of you that doesn't does not know how to grow that. So you will see lots of even a lot of people's success can be attributed to that. you look at some business owners who are highly successful. If you ask pay attention to what they're saying, they won't say that. But what they will say is that I've I've had a chip on my shoulder. I've been trying to prove something all my life. Who are they trying to prove something to? They will say, "Well, I need to prove it to myself." Or sometimes if they're honest, they'll say, "I needed to prove myself to my parent or I needed to prove a parent wrong or somebody in my environment wrong." And they will spend the rest of their life doing that. The and they might they will get a certain amount of success out of that. But the problem is that if you watch them in their day-to-day minute-by-minute decisions, they might have gotten success. But that is at the cost of who they are deep down at the cost of their joy at the cost of their their need for a love connection those kind of things. Now this doesn't mean they shouldn't be success. We shouldn't go towards success. I think that's important. But success at the cost of you living up to some past thing that you went through, whether it was trauma or a pattern that was given to you is is not worth it. And I've seen that over and over with the clients that I work with is that they've spent the past 20, 30 years building themselves up in a career and building a life. They look back, he's like, I don't know why I built it. I they cannot. It's hard for them to go back and understand what's happened. And even when they're thinking about building the future, they get stuck in the past. They build a different version of the past and they don't realize it. It just looks a little bit different. U in the words of Alan Watts, as a child, we looked for chocolate. Now the chocolate is a Ferrari or it's a bigger house. it's all the same. The chocolate was a need for love, connection, depth, growth, whatever that might be for that child. and to finalize this if you look at some of the masters in the world that we all admire for example they have interesting journeys let's take like Len like some of the famous ones Einstein Da Vinci VS Ramachand who who's still alive who's a brain scientist when you look at their journey and I learned some of these in the book mastery when you look back at them. You see that their path was never straightforward. They had to really make sense of who they were in the process and they had to grapple with their path. They had to grapple with what mattered to them. And at times, for example, Mozart is said to completely disconnect his relationship with his dad because his father wanted him to become a performer for the bourgeoisie in that region. But what he really wanted to be was a composer. Now we know the rest that it was in composition that he found a part of himself. Now, it's not all of him, but that was a part of him. And he had to really fight with his survival instincts to figure that out. It took him years. Now, I'm not saying that's everybody's journey, but it the this this path can be very unpredictable. And our prediction usually is that it looks like this is that, oh, we're here when we're born and then we go up towards our potential in a straight line. That's not what happens. It happens more like this. It's all kinds of ups and downs. At times, we're on a high. At times we completely crash and this adventure just goes up and down and the whole process I believe just based on my own experience and how I've the people that I've worked with the past 11 plus years is the same pattern you see over and over. The ones who are connected to themselves, they understand that there's something underneath the layers once they get this instinct that there's something underneath their layers of needs, emotions, language, thoughts, identity, and that something has been trying to communicate with them all their life. That something is their core, that something is their soul, whatever you want to call it, that something was there when they were 5, 6, 3 years old. They remember it probably at that time but that something got buried under the weight of all the things that they learned. So all the things they learned as useful as they are in society to survive they were not useful in terms of growing towards who they really are and clarity comes when you go towards who you really are deep down that's not your name that's not your identity roles it's beyond all of that it's it's underneath and there's an analogy that Michelangelo talked about I think it was Michelangelo when somebody asked him how did you build the statue of David which everybody admired he's like I didn't I just took chipped away what was covering David and our life is that it's chipping away of thoughts emotions understanding our needs chipping away language that's given to us that's not useful for us and then eventually building a present in the future that aligns with who we truly are underneath and it sounds cliche but it's it's not even the end goal of who we truly are because we don't know that could be a lifelong maybe multiple lifelong process But real clarity happens when you start to touch on that. And I'll go back to my story. It wasn't important for me to get to wherever I needed to go to. The goal wasn't important. The business wasn't important. The life I was trying to build like the outcomes were a good measure for my mind to say, hey, I'm going this way. It wasn't the outcomes. The life that I built, the business that I built, the family that I built, those were those happened as a process. And I did have a vision for that. But it was the as soon as I figured out, going back to that story that I told you in the beginning, as soon as I figured out that there was a little tiny flame that just was burning inside, I realized that underneath all the thoughts, all the emotions, all the beliefs, all the roles, my job is to make that flame a little bit bigger and bigger and bigger. And the biggest difference now versus 10, 15, 20 years ago is that's become a bigger flame. Now I don't get confused easily by fears. I don't get confused easily by my past. I can I struggle with it at times, but I can work through it much faster versus being stuck for months and years. And it's that stuckness that breaks people down. We get stuck in our thoughts and we don't know how to approach other people that are connected to us. We get disconnected from people around us. We get stuck in our own thoughts and emotions. We don't know how to make the next move. We get stuck in our fears that are given to us by other people. We don't know how to work through them. And underneath it, there's a part of you that does not care about any of that stuff. All it cares about is for it to get that flame within you is getting wanting to get bigger and bigger or that flower wants to bloom or that chrysalis wants to turn into a butterfly or into an eagle. and you cannot imagine it right now what the height of that potential is. Your role is to look back in the past and figure out what do I need to deal with to get out of the gra grapples of the past and come to the present as a part of me even if it's a small part of me and build a future based on that potential that matters to me. If you can begin to do that now you're starting to connect to your potential. It doesn't even matter what you achieve and what you don't, but you will in the process because when you listen and watch the masters that are around you, all they care about is that deeper part of themselves. That doesn't mean they sacrifice everything around them for it, but they know that's the important piece. If they lose that, they lose everything else. So they're not willing to sacrifice that for a business, for a relationship, for for some cause or for some religion or cultural identity, whatever it might be, because that's the most real thing that they know of and feel in their core. You can call that your soul. You can call that your core. You our I really believe that our biggest job is not to figure out clarity in terms of oh, what business I need to do. It's clarity in terms of who we what that part of us is. And it's not as vague as most people think because you live with that every day. You either live with your thoughts that traumatize you that that give you a lot of pain and suffering or you connect with a part of you that gives you a sense of peace, a sense of connection, a sense of curiosity. And all of a sudden you begin to live like a child again. That child that disconnected at 3, four, 5 years old. And now you start to go back to that child, but with a new strength, with a new awareness, with a new with new knowledge. Now you're not at the whim of everybody. Now you can make your own choices, decisions, but you're just as curious as that child. And what ends up happening is that curiosity leads to more and more clarity, more and more action and action in the right direction. A lot of people think that their past doesn't affect their future. and they're given these phrases that your past doesn't define you. Only if you've dealt with it. Um, a lot of people are taught that your your current situation doesn't define your future. Only if you can deal with the current. A lot of people are taught that your future is bright and you'll create all this and that and the other. Only if you can free yourself from what is holding you back and you can build something towards a path that is unique to you. Not because somebody else has told you or a bunch of people or society or parents or whatever it might be, but it is your path and you can you can really see it and feel it. It's not just it's more real to you than than something you can touch right now in this physical reality. And once you can feel it in that way and see it, then nobody else needs to tell you. I don't need to tell you. Somebody else doesn't need to tell you. Nobody needs to motivate you. It is just as real as everything else around you. and not only do you go on that path, you guide others around you. you help other people connect to that flame within. And that I feel like is the most honorable existence we can we can have, at least based on my experience.