My Big Insight on “Figuring Things Out”

I had what felt like a pretty massive insight about figuring things out yesterday.

Most people come to me because they want to figure something out. They want to fix something so that things work better.

A pretty universal experience.

Over the last 7 months I’ve been looking in the direction of our innate wisdom, the nature of thought and our ability to direct the focus of our creations.

In studying this, I’ve heard the statement “what if it wasn’t up to you to fix”, said multiple times, which puzzled me and mildly annoyed me.

“What do you mean it’s not up to me to fix whatever is going on in my life! Who the heck’s job is it?!”

Yesterday I saw something new that shifted my understanding.

While we’ve all had the experience of things working themselves out with little or no effort on our part. (Also a universal experience as far as I can see.)

Even when there’s something to do or be, no “figuring out” is needed!

Here’s what I mean.

What we typically do when we have an issue (aka problem), we strategize a solution. We ask for advice, we read case studies, best practices and tips.

We try to find a solution now, for something that happened in the past, and that we’ll do in the future.

While learning more on a topic, in and of itself is not problematic, thinking that this process is how we figure things out or believing it’s the only way solutions come to us, can be one, because it’s simply not true.

What I saw yesterday for the first time (or at least at a deeper level) is that when I ground myself in the moment, very little “figuring out” is required or necessary.

The ideal course of action simply flows through me. It happens in real time with all the intelligence of my experience, my intuition and whatever other wisdom sources come through me naturally.

It also takes into account the context of the moment that I can only know in the moment, and that I can only take into account if I’m present to it.

This is why grounding is so powerful.

I don’t need to figure out the "how to", I can rely and depend on my grounding to guide me.

Now, here’s what I’m not saying.

I’m not saying that learning from books, articles, programs, others, is not valid. They are useful for as long as you’re called to learn from them, and often a lot less useful than we think.

What I’m seeing is that most leadership “problems” don’t need figuring out, they need a good dose of grounding.

Through grounding, the next step is clear and simple. And that’s all we ever needed anyway.