Where is your wisdom in the decision-making process?

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I’ve been thinking a lot about this thing called running a business and how many decisions we have to make in any given day as business owners.

Pair that with living in the Information Age when we have an overabundance of resources at our disposal, and it seems that many of us are living in a constant state of overwhelm.

Ironically, this abundance doesn’t seem to make the decision-making process any easier but instead encumbers us by providing more options and perspectives than we can process. Too often, we simply get stuck in overwhelm and avoid making a decision for as long as possible. We turn away from our own wisdom (or convince ourselves that this wisdom does not exist) and instead, wait for someone else to tell us what to do, as if this will alleviate our fears of making the Wrong Choice.

I notice this tendency in myself, as well as with some of my clients and other business owners I know, where there is this impulse to gather as much data as possible before making a decision. In no way am I condemning gathering information and doing your due diligence, but at what point do you bring your own inherent knowing to the table?

And I get it! As entrepreneurs, we’re living on the edge of our comfort zones each day, experimenting with ideas that we hope will work and taking steps into the unknown. That’s the nature of running a business! We become intimate with uncertainty, and even still, there is a yearning for stability, a sure thing, and we seek answers that we hope will provide that stability as we navigate entrepreneurship.

So we might look to those we deem as outwardly successful or the expert and gather resources and information from them, determined to follow their suggestions for a tried and true method of reaching a certain outcome.

This decision-making process looks different for each of us. Maybe we want to keep gathering information to delay making a choice. Sometimes, we want to craft the most fool-proof action plan before we take step one. Or perhaps we want to seek the approval of others whose opinions we respect to assure ourselves that we’re making the Right Choice.

And to a certain degree, all of these activities can be helpful. But I keep wondering:

The way we seek out information and make decisions is changing. Or rather, we’re being called to change how we approach decisions.

We are still at the beginning stages of the Aquarian Age, which is asking us to move from more hierarchical structures to more flat, network-based structures. In this shift, we’re seeing a rising of the collective consciousness and a returning to the understanding that we as individuals have the wisdom that we need. Instead of looking to those we see as “above” us for answers, we are finding more value in the insights of our peers and in our own intuition.

2021 is also the year of the Hierophant in Tarot, which as Lindsay Mack shares, is also reinforcing the idea that we are collectively working towards embracing the truth that we are our own gurus. (Listen to this podcast of hers, or read the transcription.)

With these energetics of astrology and Tarot supporting us on this journey, I can’t help but wonder how we can incorporate this same mentality into the business realm. Where we step into an era that honors the wisdom of those who came before us and who have proven successful, but we also acknowledge that their success is their own unique experience. And we have our experience, which is just as valid.

As with all things, this is not about placing blame or saying that there is a right or wrong way to do this (I don’t believe in that kind of cut-and-dried binary thinking). I’m also not saying that we shouldn’t have role models or find inspiration in others’ success.

For many of us, relying only on our intuition can feel really scary since we were brought up in a world that values systems, process, order, and linear thinking. We are now embarking on a massive shift that is asking us to incorporate more of our embodied wisdom.

How might trusting your wisdom look in your business?

Instead of relying on outside pricing methods, try sitting with what feels good to you. What feels like an uplifting energy exchange between you and your customers or clients?
Trusting in the marketing practices you enjoy and that help you genuinely connect to others rather than doing what you “should” do. (This is the foundation of a mindful marketing practice!)
Creating the offerings that truly resonate with you rather than a reiteration of what everyone else is doing, even if those other offerings appear to be successful.
Operating in a space of sharing and cooperation over competition and scarcity.

Our wisdom can serve us in every area of our lives and businesses if we learn to trust it and balance it with external factors. I find that I feel happiest and most balanced in that sweet spot where I take a few valued external opinions into consideration, but ultimately leave the final decision up to my intuition. It takes practice, and I’m by no means an expert. But on the occasions where I find that sweet spot, there is ease and flow, and things just seem to work out.

This shift to relying on our wisdom is, I believe, a key component to the future of mindful, value-based business. We all have wisdom inside us, which can serve as our compass in the decision-making process. As business owners and simply as humans in 2021, we are faced with lots of decisions every single day. So isn’t developing our inborn decision-making tool one of the most valuable things we can do for ourselves and the world?