This is the fifth post in a series I'm writing about finding ruthless clarity in your life. I recommend reading about intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, desire hoarding, letting your un-niched light be a beacon to people who want to pay you, and navigating burnout before you climb into today's rabbit hole. And, if you want to develop your own flavor of Ruthless Clarity, join us for our eight week email course starting on May 11th.
The only reason I cared about developing my intuition was because I didn’t want to be wrong about anyone or anything ever again.
In my early twenties — after a parade of existential turbulence that included debilitating seizures, chronic illness, death, economic chaos, and a v toxic relationship1 — I stumbled into spirituality like it was the last open gas station on an desolate highway.
My logic? If I developed infallible intuition, I'd never make another mistake. I’d have GPS-level precision for my life choices, a cosmic cheat code that would let me sidestep regret entirely. I believed that developing my psychic abilities would give me the one thing I wanted more than anything in life — the ability to control the uncontrollable.
Of course, life humbled me.2
Developing my intuition did save me, just not in the way I'd imagined. Instead of certainty, I got possibilities. Instead of answers, I got... more questions? I wanted neat, tidy, clear directives like, “Do this, that, and the other thing and this good thing will happen to you.” I wanted the secret formula to living a good life.
But attuning myself to subtle influences didn’t yield a succinct set of instructions for navigating this mortal coil painlessly. Intuition whispered complex, layered impressions. It showed me potential paths, not predetermined outcomes. And not like, a couple of options. INFINITE POTENTIAL PATHS.
Uhhhh, that’s not what I ordered. I figured I was doing it wrong.3
As I crawled deeper into the Spiritual and Wellness Industrial Complex™, I met genuinely gifted people. And guess what? Even the psychics who could tell you what your long deceased meemaw ate for breakfast still got dumped, made shitty crypto investments, and weren’t quite sure if their new product launch was going to be a success or a flop.
Turns out intuition doesn’t eliminate uncertainty, it just helps you navigate it with more awareness.
In the years since, I’ve had moments of the laser-cut clarity I prayed for. Times when I moved decisively and efficiently as life handed me potential pathways and said, “You pick.” It does feel amazing to live in that space of ruthless clarity and confidently take steps on the path you’ve decided on because you trust yourself, and I definitely think that self-trust came with developing my intuition.4
I’ve also had months where I found myself whispering “what the fuck am I supposed to do now?” to the sky every quarter hour. Moments where I cursed the version of myself who operated with ruthless clarity because I was so jealous of her, that cocky bitch! Days where I was paralyzed by the fear that if I made the wrong move, I’d never recover from the fallout.
The day after we got the call that my husband’s brain cancer was back, I asked for a sign from anything, from anyone. A butterfly if he would be OK, a skull if he wouldn’t.5
A few hours later, I saw a huge butterfly at the park with our one-year old… !!!!! Feeling more assured, we walked into a local bookstore that happened to be showing a local artist’s work which was focused on, you guessed it, SKULLS.6 Lots of ‘em. Cool cool cool.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do now?”
I learn over and over again that uncertainty is a horrible and beautiful part of life. Every time I get ahead of myself, start planning too much, start to sleep on the job of “living with awareness,” uncertainty jolts me upright. It dumps a bucket of cold water on my head, kisses me on the mouth, and shoves me out the door and stumbling into some surprising experience.
Sometimes in the shuffle my internal compass slips out of my grasp. But eventually I find it again (even if it takes a while… like a while), and figure out how to point back to my true north.
I’ll never know everything7 and at this point I’ve come to accept that forecasting the future isn’t the key to easing my existential anxiety — knowing and trusting myself is. When I do, I stop grasping for the “right answer.” The next step just becomes… obvious.
Starting on May 11th, we’re spending eight weeks unshackling ourselves from the “wtf am I supposed to do” overwhelm and developing our own ruthless clarity. Crafting a precisely calibrated internal compass, if you will. If you’d like to carve out what ruthless clarity looks like for you and start living with it, join us.
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I recognize how staggeringly normal this is for anyone in their twenties… I mean are you even living if you’re not experiencing existential ennui on overdrive between the ages of 19-26?
and continues to!
“Never pass up an opportunity to make yourself the problem.” — me to me
amongst other things… the path to self-trust is probably not singular.
A little on the nose, Pellizzon. In my defense I was pretty overwhelmed and not at my most ✨inspired ✨
Reader, I had a panic attack in that tiny bookstore lol. And then I said, “YOU ALREADY SENT THE BUTTERFLY FIRST THOUGHT BEST THOUGHT.”
much to my chagrin and not for lack of trying!