I was on a retreat with a business owner last week, and he joked that he had seen this on a sign and was going to order it for his office.

I can relate. Because for most of my life, I thought the most useful thing that I could do was think about things. And rethink, and rethink. Even at 4:00 in the morning I was ruminating about the pros and cons of a decision I needed to make.

But then I started to notice something. That after all this rumination, I would often have an insight. Out of the blue. Something that didn’t appear in my analysis, but that I knew somehow, deep in my body, my soul, was true.

And I started asking myself, what if I followed that, rather than the analysis?

Now don’t get me wrong, I would still do the analysis. For example, when I moved from a law firm to a consulting firm, I looked at the pay packages, I thought about partnership, all those things. And I made the move, comfortably that the pay at least looked comparable.

Turned out I was totally wrong about that. I probably would have made a lot more had I stayed in a law firm.

But the move was still the right one, because it really wasn’t about the money. I still made enough over the years, and I did work that resonated a lot more deeply for me.

I found over time that I was generally happier when I chose based on what my body was telling me, my innate sense of knowing, than what a spreadsheet might say.

I still resist, though. I’m all too quick to dismiss something as impractical. I did that with coaching, at least at first. When I was laid off in 2016, I did “know” I didn’t want to go back to a big company as an employee again.

But I thought I would be a consultant, an advisor based on my prior technical expertise. I didn’t even realize that I believed all the statistics about 90 percent of coaches making less than $20,000 a year. That I assumed I could not make what I was making before as a full time coach.

It was fear disguised as logic. As practicality.

It took a good friend saying, “Consulting firm? But you’re so passionate about coaching.”

What she said to me rang true. I knew I had to try.

It was hard, but it also proved true.

What are you overthinking right now? And when you look behind all that, what do you already know to be true?

A lot of my work with clients is pointing out what they are actually doing, versus what they think they are doing.

It turns out that a lot of the stuff that we think is helpful, essential even, is really unnecessary. And our lives get a lot easier, and more effective, when we see that.

For example, what most people think they are doing when they make a decision is carefully weighing options and then deciding based on the data. And when the data are inconclusive they study the numbers intently until they figure it out.

What is actually happening is this—

We see something that’s obvious and we do that.

If it’s not obvious, we don’t do anything until it is obvious, and then we do that.

If we have to do something before it’s obvious, we make our best guess, based on our experience. In fact, the only time we really call something a “decision” is when we come across something that isn’t obvious and we don’t know what to do. Most of the time we’re just doing stuff.

There’s a lot of things we add to this thing we call a decision—analysis, pros and cons, grinding at spreadsheets, fretting at 4 am— that is really just stuff we do until it becomes obvious. Until our innate wisdom kicks in.

Try this and see for yourself.

See what in your decision process is actually useful. And what—like the struggle and the fretting at 4 am—is completely optional.

See how your wisdom will work whether you struggle and worry or not.

And see how maybe things can be a little easier than you thought.

I was about three hours into a retreat with a client of mine. And what we were looking at, again and again and again, was how most of what we think of as our lives is stuff that we either made up, or that someone else made up (like our parents) and we believed.

We can never experience “life,” as an objective reality. Instead, our brains create a representation, a model, and we navigate life by looking at the model.

Do you have a rear view camera in your car? Do you ever back up without actually turning around?

That’s what you’re doing with life, because directly looking at life just isn’t possible.

Instead, we take the data from our senses, our past experience, what we want and don’t want, and we make a map.

We make up a set of rules and feel happy or sad or frustrated based on how well we do with the rules that we make up.

Rules about what success looks like. About whether or not we allowed to make mistakes. About whether being hard on ourselves or worrying is helpful.

We are fooling ourselves with our own magic and we suffer because of it.

This is what my client was doing. Especially with what success would look like to him, what outer events would make him “good enough,” would justify the advantages he felt he had in life.

But now he was beginning to catch himself doing it. We had a good laugh when that happened.

When you see it, even a little, you generally begin to see again and again, in more and more places.

What are you making up in your life? And what will you do differently now that you see that?

I deal with a lot of leaders who have imposter syndrome. I certainly have it at times. The sense that I’m not qualified, that I’m going to be found out.

The sense that, despite my 30 years of experience, I’m a fraud.

When I talk to people about this, it seems like for most, imposter syndrome is most acute when we get asked a question about ourselves. When we get put on the spot somehow.

Our minds go blank! Our moment to shine, and we have nothing to say! We panic! What now?

I used to be convinced that this was evidence of social anxiety, or some other deep psychological flaw. That I could overcome it with an elevator pitch, with 30 seconds that I could trot out anytime, that would show how powerful my work was.

“I help leaders be more impactful by finding and coming from their innate sense of ease.”

Or something like that. (Actually, I just came up with that, and I kinda like it. But as you will see, that just proves my point.)

What I have found instead is that clearing of the mind is a sign that our psychological system is working perfectly.

When my mind is clear, it is perfectly prepared to listen. It is perfectly open to new thought. It is perfectly ready to say what will be most impactful for my audience in that moment.

Experiment with this. Try it for yourself.

Notice when your mind goes blank.

See if you can wait a few seconds (without panic).

See what pops into your head. Sometimes it will be a question to clarify.

At some point you will know what to say. Say it. Notice the impact.

See if it is way better than any elevator pitch you could have memorized.

After you do this a few times, you will look forward to your mind clearing. Your mind will tend to clear more often. You will have access to more fresh, new thinking than ever before.

You might just find that your imposter syndrome has gone away, too. And you might be amazed by how often you know exactly the right thing to say.

Because we aren’t our history. We’re our innate ability to respond to our present and create our future.

Everyone has this. We are made of it.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!