Day 89: Quiet Trust

I talked on the phone with one of my closest friends for several hours today.

1. I haven’t done that in a while, and it was extremely enjoyable.
2. Living in a house with poor reception + wifi is great fun because your friend will cut out just as they’re saying something important and you get to yell “HELLO” back and forth every 5 minutes.
3. Man, I feel so grateful for my friends. They’re all so weird and lovely.

One of the topics we talked about was having an inner knowing that guides us on our path. For her, that path is writing; currently for me, it’s making a living working on things I love.

We initially spoke of this inner knowing as confidence. It’s a conviction that you can make things happen even when navigating in a fog of uncertainty. It provides the sense that you’ll get to where you’re headed — that you’ll ultimately succeed.

In the past, this confidence (sometimes arrogance) helped me throw myself into pursuits even when I wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting myself into. Things like working at Google, then making videos and building an audience, then diving deeply into meditation.

When I reflect on this inner knowing now, it has a different flavor. It’s the same energy, but much gentler. It feels less like a proud confidence and more like a quiet trust. A trust in life and wherever it will take me. A trust in myself to be able to meet whatever is happening.

This trust feels like a big part of the reason why I find this whole endeavor of working to create a successful business fun rather than stressful. Even when I can’t see anything in the fog and I don’t know where I’m headed, there’s the knowing that everything will be okay. Okay doesn’t mean that I’ll succeed at my goal, in the way that I’ve formulated it, no matter what; okay might mean that the path takes me somewhere I never anticipated. And all that matters is being present for every step.