I had two experiences this week with a sudden, deeper knowing.

The first was with a person who is in the process of becoming a client of mine.

He just had an exit and is trying to figure out what to do next. We were talking about some of the possibilities, and about seeing that he really didn’t need to do anything, that he was already whole and complete, as a prerequisite to seeing what would show up next.

He had already had a significant opportunity. He was being recruited to be CEO of a startup that was starting to scale and he was excitedly telling me about the opportunity, the underlying opportunity, what it could mean financially.

And then he stopped and looked at me.

“Wait a minute. I don’t want to do that.”

He just knew. There was nothing logical, nothing “on paper,” to explain how he knew. The opportunity looked great. But he sensed that there was nothing new for him there.

He had worked his ass off and made a lot of money. He knew that path. And he now knew that the next thing would be something else. He didn’t know what it was—not yet—but he knew it was not this.

The second experience came to me just this morning.

I have been posting every Friday morning for the last few weeks, but I was going into an online retreat for four days and it started at 8. I would need to come up with something fast and post it before going online.

And when I woke up this morning, I just knew—

“I don’t want to do that.”

I didn’t know when I would post, or what I would write. But I knew “not this, not right now.”

As it turned out, I did write a post—you are reading it now.

It came to be in about 5 minutes. At a break.

Because I trusted it would come. Because the “no” that happened then made room for the “yes” that happened just now.

What do you say no to?

What could it make room for if you did?

My client, a CEO who has just sold his company, set aside two days to come to Aspen and do a mini retreat with me. We were going to take this past Tuesday and Wednesday to look at the work we had done over the last couple of years to get to this point, and also to set him up for whatever was next.

I was excited to have this extended time together, and also a bit nervous. While I had some ideas about how to use our time, how to point to the space where things happen, how to look upstream at the source of our creativity, I’m not exactly sure I trusted that things would unfold exactly as they needed to.

Turned out they did. Without me.

My client, who I will call Matt, texted me Monday afternoon. His flight to Denver had been delayed, so he missed the connection to Aspen. He was now going to stay over in Denver and fly to Aspen Tuesday afternoon (instead of Monday evening).

His new flight left on time and I drove to the Aspen airport to pick him up. But the website showed that his flight was more and more delayed. And it had been raining in Aspen all day.

Matt was supposed to land at 2:30. At 3:15 he texted me. He was back in Denver. The cloud cover had been too low to land and they went back to refuel and try again.

At 4:00, they canceled the flight. And Matt decided that rather than come to Aspen for what would now be a day at most (his flight was first thing Thursday), he would return home.

We talked today. And I asked him about his trip.

“What amazed me was all of the suffering going on around me as the situation kept changing. A woman burst into tears. A man was livid and started yelling at the gate agent. But the kids were all doing great—they were playing in the airport, acting like there was nothing wrong. Because there really wasn’t.

“What I saw was that I was perfectly ok. That life was happening differently than I thought, but that it wasn’t really a problem. And that I could just sit and enjoy the time away rather than struggling to change something I had no control over.”

It is entirely possible that my client saw more by going through that experience than he would have had he come to Aspen for two days.

And I saw that when you look in the direction of insight, insights tend to happen. Even if they don’t happen the way you think they might.

When we look toward what is always true, we see that the world is just happening. Our struggles come from the fact the we want it to be different, or that somehow we think we deserve a different experience. When we really see that, we find there’s a lot less to do.

Turns out I didn’t even need to show up for my client to have a massive insight!

What’s possible for you when you let go of what you don’t control?

And how much do you actually control, anyway?

We tend to believe the things that we think about ourselves.

Our biography, our talents, our challenges.

That story that you always tell about how you overcame your fear to enter and win the big race. Or the story, often deeper, that we are somehow not enough.

I want you to set those aside for just a moment. You will continue to think those thoughts. You will continue to think all kinds of thoughts. That is how we are made. We are thinking machines.

But occasionally, our thoughts settle.

If you take a moment, you might see your thoughts settle, just a bit, even right now. Like the snow in a globe when you stop shaking it.

It’s what happens when we aren’t trying to manipulate our thinking. Calm and clarity is our default state.

It’s in these moments that fresh thinking is possible. It’s in these moments that you might begin to see who you really are.

Not your thoughts. Not your accomplishments, your history, your redemption story.

What I see, in myself, and in you, is the infinite capacity to create. And everything has this capacity.

A tree, a flower, a dog, all create.

Humans create primarily through thought. They think, and then they experience and feel those thoughts as reality.

The fact that our experience of life is 100 percent internally generated, that we only experience and feel our own thinking rather than something happening outside of us, creates some odd results that we accept because we don’t tend to see them.

We establish “the rules” through our thinking and then judge others (and often ourselves) for not following them. We establish goals through our thinking and then judge based on whether we’ve met them.

We accept our own and others’ stories of who we are and allow them to confine us.

We create “I’ll have arrived when I…” stories and then suffer until we do. And then we suffer again when we see that we are no different than we were before.

We miss that we are judge and jury. We miss that we have made it all up. We don’t see  how small we have made ourselves and the world.

All you are is the infinite capacity to create.

How are you using it?

How are you creating yourself? How are you creating your partner, your colleagues, your adversaries? (Even the idea that you have adversaries?)

What if you stopped, just for a moment, to see everyone, yourself included, as they really are?

What would you create then? And what would you stop creating, because you saw it doesn’t serve you?

I work with leaders and teams who are often trying to take on big change. And I notice a theme, no matter what type of change people are trying to take on.

Maybe I’m helping a leadership team get more aligned.

Maybe I’m helping a sales team close more deals.

Maybe I’m helping the CEO create a more inclusive and innovative culture.

The theme is this—things can look solid that are really just made of thought.

Corporate life is hard. Some of us develop habits to protect ourselves, to try to keep ourselves safe. Some of us are focused more on advancement, or winning.

We use these habits so often that we think they are real and solid. So real and solid that we are afraid not to do them.

I was working with an organization a few weeks ago where the former CEO is still involved in the company. He coaches several on the executive team. He maintains relationships with several external partners. He has maintained a “kiss the ring” culture even after supposedly retiring.

It is limiting the organization. And it is all made up. He has been able to convince those around him that he continues to have more power than ever. More power, in fact, than he ever really had. Because you can’t really have that kind of power without someone else consenting to it.

And if the new CEO and the board told him to get out, he would have to get out. A new thought. One with some fear, certainly, but one that would bring immediate change.

All change requires is new thinking. All new thinking requires is seeing that our old thinking isn’t real or solid. It constantly changes. Corporate cultures emerge through the habitual thinking of those in authority, fueled by the self-preservation instinct of those reporting to them. When the leaders change their thinking (or more commonly, when the leaders change), the thinking of the organization will follow.

All a sales team needs to change its effectiveness is for one person to see that listening is more effective than telling.

All a leadership team needs to change is to see that every person’s view of the world is equally valid, and that I can learn more from the others than I can teach them.

Curiosity, borne of seeing that my world, and yours, are never solid and never true.

When a team sees this, they can make any change necessary.

What will your team see today?