Ever since the girls were little, when I drop them off at school I say to them, remember that you’re a leader and leaders make good choices. Usually it’s a call and response thing where they’ll finish the last phrase with me, and leaders make good choices. I’m not exactly sure how I settled on this phrase, except that early on as a father it just became really important to me that the girls understand their agency in this life. Besides, as a leadership coach I believe we all have the capacity to lead. I also believe that our first responsibility is to lead ourselves (usually our toughest assignment). Still, learning to lead yourself depends on trusting your own inner voice, and this requires practice with discernment, a tough muscle to build. You ever go through a season of life where you feel like you’re taking the same lesson over and over? That seems to be where I find myself lately.

While driving home from drop off I started listening to Oprah’s Sunday Soul interview with one of my favorite artists, India Arie. On the podcast she talks about her own journey from the brink of walking away from the music industry as she struggled to find herself. A few things she said really resonated with me, the first of which is this idea of learning to trust yourself. As a new artist, she had placed her career in the hands of others. She trusted everyone else’s judgement, but struggled to trust her own. Ultimately she found that didn’t work for her when she found herself lost, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. Her lack of inner grounding led to an outward falling apart. Her worst fears: losing herself, losing the thing she loved (music), and even losing her health were all coming to fruition.

So how did she find her way back to herself? We all want to know, how do you put things back together again? She says that for her, it was through prayer and meditation, building the muscle to listen to her still small voice again. She realized that consistently practicing discernment is critical to leading herself. Yet, It’s hard to call upon a muscle that you don’t regularly use. For most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves we can relate to India’s story of losing our way from time to time. But what happens when you seem to get stuck in a cycle of self-doubt?

This morning during my journal time I did an exercise where I wrote down a list of all of the things that I’m currently doubting myself. It wasn’t a long list, but it was a list of major things. Then I asked myself, where is this doubt coming from? Is it fear? Is it rooted in something I should pay attention to? I’ve learned to not simply ignore fear, because what you resist persists. Then, like a father comforting his own inner child, I asked myself, do you trust yourself? It was a hard question because I had to acknowledge that in some areas, I wasn’t. But asking this question also revealed an opportunity. I’ve been taking the same tests in a few areas over and over when it comes to demonstrating faith in myself. Maybe now that I understand the question, my life can produce a better answer. The most important lesson I’m appreciating these days, is that discernment is an inside job. Because I too am a leader, and leaders make good choices.

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