What is beyond trust?

Any time I hear someone say “trust me” I get just a tiny bit skeptical.

It registers for me as “I’m trying to persuade you but my argument isn’t solid enough on its own so I’m turning to peer pressure to convince you.”

That’s not so trustable.

There are many things where an argument and persuasion are not possible. How do I trust that I am on the right path, for example. I can believe that I am. I can have confidence that I am. But trust leaves room for doubt.

When it comes to walking my highest path in this lifetime, I don’t trust trust.

I know I am.

Knowing is the ultimate form of conviction. Knowing is what trust hopes to be one day when it grows up. Knowing removes all uncertainty and doubt.

I know with every cell in my body that I am on the right path for me. There is a complete and unshakable certainty that this is absolute truth. I don’t need to trust that. I know.

How do I have this knowing that this is the my path? Well, that is a thought for another day.

Are we allowed to change our minds?

I used to have very strongly held beliefs about certain things. Religion, politics, past lives, free will, nutrition, mental health to name a few.

As part of my heart opening journey and expanding my emotional range, I’m seeing many more things in shades of gray and not so black and white. There’s a whole world of nuance.

After spending a few years in SF, I had very strong judgements towards people who would talk about their past lives. I have since to come to discover things that have changed my mind. A bit. I still don’t think it’s a thing, at least as some of these folks describe it, but I’m not absolutely certain anymore.

Because of our collective dwindling ability for public discourse and discernment, I’m not sure it’s safe for people to change their minds. If you have a certain political belief, it is frowned upon to agree with someone on the other side of the aisle. We have decided to be pro-polarization and anti-discernment.

We are so quick to cancel and completely cut people out of our lives. In doing so, we are reinforcing fixed identities. We don’t allow for people to grow and change because we are comfortable with who they are and how they think.

I’m guilty of this. As with most things I write about here, I’m speaking from my own personal experience and journey. I like for people to fit into nice, neat boxes in my mind of who they are and what they believe. If they change their mind, it messes up my tidy judgements. I’m working through it, and it’s a major shift for me. In doing so, I hope that I can become more comfortable with changing my own mind and allow others around me to feel safe to do the same.

What is this trying to show me?

I’ve been hit by a few trucks over the last several years.

Every single time, I look back and think “how did I not see that damn thing coming?”

It’s a freaking truck. It’s huge. It’s loud. It doesn’t come out of nowhere. And I’m way more nimble than a truck. In theory.

And yet, I’ve gotten run over. Multiple times.

Not by an actual truck. Although once it did feel like that. I’m talking about a truck in the sense of the feather, brick and truck metaphor. A feather being a gentle nudge from the universe, a brick being something quite painful and a truck being a life altering, stop everything in its tracks type of event.

In an attempt to avoid any future truck smashings, I’m really trying to take notice of the feathers. It requires slowing down, a self-reflection practice, deep self-connection and self-awareness.

My favorite truck-avoidance question is to ask “what is this trying to show me?” When something feels off. When I notice something unusual. When I don’t like a particular outcome. When I’m feeling exhausted. When I make a sloppy mistake. Hmmmm… What is behind this? How did we get here? What am I not seeing?

With enough practice, I believe my new advanced feather detection capabilities can be powered up to create a full operational anti-brick defense system.

Are tarot cards a gateway to the divine?

I have a confession to make.

Tarot cards played a significant role on my personal journey into mindfulness and spirituality.

When I lived in San Francisco, we had a deck of Spirit Animals cards in our meditation room. I enjoyed pulling cards from the deck. It was purely entertainment at first. And then it became a practice of self reflection. What is this card trying to show me?

I’d start to notice coincidences. I’d pull the Deer card right before crossing a mother deer on my hike. I’d pull a Simplicity card after a group of people shared that my genius is making complex things simple.

I’m aware of biases, randomness and the human desire to connect the dots. But this went far beyond that for me.

The synchronicities and interconnectedness that I saw occurring with tarot cards started appearing in other areas of my life. The cards opened up a pathway of possibility that previously was closed. A true “what if” was now unfolding.

What if everything and everyone is connected somehow, someway, and we’ve been conditioned by society to feel separate? What if we’ve always been deeply intertwined with nature and the cosmos and each other, and we’ve created stories over the centuries to mute this?

This is where my current beliefs reside. I have many more questions than answers that are constantly evolving, but I believe that there is some greater interconnectedness at play. It is a connection that we have sacrificed for convenience. We have become so good at dismissing it that it requires a deep remembering and listening to even get a taste of it. It’s a belief that I’m excited to continue exploring over the course of this lifetime, and I’m grateful for those $20 tarot cards from Amazon for their part in this story.

How does it connect to the bigger thing?

It is amazing to me how much this question repeatedly shows up in many areas of my life.

When I’m leading product discovery sessions with clients and trying to figure out what to build and when, I am constantly asking how it will tie back to the bigger picture business goals.

When I’m coaching founders about how to navigate a difficult decision, I invite them to consider how this decision impacts the bigger vision of what they want to accomplish.

When I’m planning the next 1 - 3 years from a personal perspective, I am evaluating how it aligns with my understanding of why I’m here on this planet.

When I look at my own life and get discouraged that things feels too disconnected, I remind myself to ponder how it is connected to something bigger than my interpretation of myself.

Zoom out. Like all the way out.

And if you can’t connect the threads to the bigger thing, it’s either not aligned or you are still missing some of the pieces of the puzzle to make the connections. The discernment between those requires practice and intuition and building that skill will provide you with the ultimate navigation system.

If something is truly not connected, we can ruthlessly and confidently move on to the next thing.