Do You Know Where To Look | Blog

Last weekend, Aila and I gathered with the first group of participants for the opening weekend of The Practitioner’s Path. At one point, Aila shared something I loved that turned out to be a powerful metaphor for us all.

She spoke about watching children on a playground.

When children can see their parent or caregiver nearby, they tend to go farther. They climb higher. They try things they might not try otherwise. They move across the playground with a kind of freedom and curiosity.

The parent doesn’t necessarily do anything; the child just locates them and then moves into the activity.

If something happens, if they get scared, if they need reassurance, they know where safety is. That simple knowing changes how they move through the playground.

It made me think about how similar this is for us as adults.

Most of us are still scanning the environment in subtle ways, trying to determine whether it’s safe to move forward. We look for signals that things will go well, that people will respond how we hope, that we won’t lose something important if we take a step.

We want the conversation to go perfectly. We want the decision to work out. We want the relationship to remain intact. We want to know that if we take a risk, we won’t find ourselves alone or overwhelmed.

We look for reassurance, for certainty – some signal that everything will be okay.

And when we can’t find those signals, we hesitate, we second-guess, we get anxious, and start trying to figure it all out, looking for the right way or the right thing to do.

I remember seeing this clearly during the first few months after I left my executive role to start my own business. I had driven out to Los Angeles to live there for a few months. A friend had driven out with me, and the whole trip there felt full of possibility. We talked about the adventure ahead and imagined what might unfold.

Almost immediately after she left, something shifted. I could feel myself getting revved up inside. Thoughts about needing to “make this work” began to take over.

I started trying to figure everything out at once.

How do I get clients? How do I create a successful business? How do I do this fast so I don’t fail?

The excitement I had felt just days before was replaced by urgency and pressure.

After a couple of days of spinning, I had a realization. The only thing that had shifted from the expanded feeling during the road trip into this pressure and urgency was where my mind was focused.

I started taking scary thoughts seriously and projecting them into some future scary scenarios, and my whole internal system had reorganized around it.

When I saw that, I instantly started to relax. I had the thought, “I just need to have faith it will all work out.”

In a conversation with my coach at the time, Michael, I described what had happened and shared that I needed to have faith that it would all work out.

He paused and then asked a different question.

“What if it’s not faith that everything will work out? What if it’s faith that you’re okay no matter what?”

That question landed in a completely different place for me. I could feel the invitation in it immediately.

That was something entirely different.

Could I put my faith, my safety, not in success but in the knowing of something deeper?

That the real ground wasn’t whether the business succeeded or whether everything unfolded the way I hoped. The ground was remembering that I could meet whatever came.

As I settled back into that understanding, the pressure inside me softened. My world opened back up again. Creativity returned. I could hear the quieter intelligence that had led me there in the first place.

It didn’t make the future predictable. But it reminded me where to look for my ground, my safety.

Years ago, around the hundredth episode of my podcast, I went back and reflected on those conversations I’d had with leaders and founders from around the world.  Different industries, different personalities, different kinds of organizations.

But there was one insight that kept recurring.

The moment they realized they were okay no matter what, something shifted.

They stopped tying their sense of security to a particular outcome.

Decisions became clearer. They were willing to take thoughtful risks. Many of them described feeling less pressure in their work and more present in the rest of their lives.

In their own way, each of them had discovered where to look for their ground.

We hold back from things we might try. We hesitate before saying what is actually true for us. We stay close to what we already know we can manage.

This is when we can spend endless time waiting for certainty or confidence before moving forward.

But something changes when we begin to recognize where to place our certainty and confidence. Not in the outcomes or proof of the past, but in our knowing that we’re safe, we’re ok no matter what.

We can handle the ride, the adventure, the unknown.

What I noticed across all those conversations was that when leaders stopped relating to this as an idea and began to have a felt-knowing, something settled in them. A different kind of stability appeared.

Life does not suddenly become predictable. The full range of human experience still moves through us. There will still be uncertainty, loss, excitement, pressure, disappointment, joy.

But there is a different reference point.

A place inside that doesn’t depend on the moment going a particular way.

A place that knows it can meet whatever is here.

From that ground, people begin to explore their lives differently.

They have the conversation they’ve been avoiding. They step toward the work that feels meaningful to them. They allow themselves to move toward something that feels alive, even if they don’t yet know how it will unfold.

We no longer need guarantees. It’s enough to follow the nudge, the curiosity, the deeper intelligence that wants to move us in a certain direction.

It’s a little like the child on the playground who glances back, sees their parent on the bench, and then runs off toward the next thing that catches their curiosity.

They don’t stop checking in. But they also don’t need to stay close to the bench.

In the work Aila and I do, this is part of what begins to happen for people. They discover that the safety they’ve been trying to create through control, certainty, or external validation actually limits what’s possible for their work and lives.

They begin to recognize something more fundamental inside themselves.

And when that becomes the reference point, options expand; we expand.

We become more willing to engage in our lives more fully. To speak honestly. To create what feels true. To step into responsibility and leadership in ways that would have felt too exposed before.

When we know where to look for our ground, the world becomes a much bigger place to explore.

You don’t have to stay close to the bench anymore. You can glance back, remember where safety lives, and keep exploring.