One thing that’s helped me with pretty much anything I’ve ever wanted to get better at: surround yourself with the people who are already really into it.
Kayaking: I found the boaters who lived and breathed it. Same thing in mountain running: get around the people for whom it isn’t a hobby, it’s a way of being in the world. Peace too: hang out with people who prioritise presence and joy, and who have a genuine allergy to drama for the sake of drama.
There’s what they teach you outright, but there’s also simply the lessons learnt from what they do, and just as important, what they don’t do.
There’s that saying isn’t there? “Be the stupidest person in the room.” It was the perfect antidote to my competitive ego, which very much wanted to be the best one in it. You cannot be arrogant and be teachable at the same time.
Today I’m trying to build something that helps people find stable peace and presence, in a form I never expected to find myself in: a business.
Who would have thought a monk would need business advice to serve more people? Turns out I can learn so much here too. So I’ve been getting coached. Gathering guidance from people who know things I don’t. And it’s been valuable. Solid advice, followed wholeheartedly, has made a real difference.
But.
What’s happened to me, and what I watch happen to a lot of people, is that gathering guidance quietly slides into outsourcing yourself. You stop checking what’s true for you and start checking what the expert said. I’ve followed advice that was, by every external measure, good advice, and it was still wrong for me. Not because the content was bad. Because it wasn’t built for who I actually am.
So there are two things here, not one.
Gather guidance. But don’t hand over your inner authority while you’re doing it. Most of us do the second one without noticing, and I’d put AI on the hook for this at the moment. Write me this. Decide for me that. Bit by bit, the muscle that makes you certain of your own answer, the one with an actual opinion, goes quiet from disuse. You lean on something else to say “go ahead.” I don’t think that’s helpful long-term. I’d argue it’s also a less interesting way to live.
A few months ago I made a decision I still find difficult:
I stopped taking money for anything that wasn’t wholly a holy yes from me. Not because the work was bad, but because saying yes to things I could do, that weren’t me, was a way of trying to appeal to everyone. And when I try to speak to everyone, I pretty much end up speaking to no one. I lose myself in the crowd.
Who am I, really? What am I about? What do I know?
I know from experience what it costs me when I’m not clear on that, or don’t hold to it. Easy, no. Satisfying and life-enhancing when I do? Yes! Turns out it’s better business too, but that was never why I started.
I was drawn to the Ishayas partly because they had no rulebook. They never asked me to become one of them. And that’s what I want to pass on to you.
Ascension doesn’t ask you to copy me either. What it does ask, and help you with, is to take a clear, honest look at who you actually are, and in that clarity, have the nerve to start saying no to the things you’re not.
Guidance matters. Inner authority matters. You need both, and (outside the genuinely arrogant few) most of us are short on that second one right now: a clearer and more trusted connection to our own knowing.
So tell me. Where are you following advice, or living an answer, that no longer feels true?
I really want to know. Am I the only one out here looking at this?