“Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

Steve Jobs, Entrepreneur, co-founder of Apple

(Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005¹)

“All that the pathfinder needs is his senses and knowledge of how to interpret nature's signs…”

In his book Nature Is Your Guide: How to Find Your Way on Land and Sea, record-breaking navigator Harold Gatty claims that there is no such thing as a sense of direction. He explains that a person who appears to have such a “sense” is actually using their five ordinary senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling), informing and informed by their experience and intelligence.

Today we have GPS satellite navigation and numerous other technologies, yet we still rely on our senses for much of our day-to-day orientation. Whether we're walking down a city street, moving around our living space or driving to a friend's house, we're supported in our journeys by our five senses, our intelligence and our experience.

But we make a mistake when we try to use exactly the same “navigation system” to make our way through life. Consider these statements:

• “I want to get clarity on my overall life path before I take the next step.”
• “I'm stuck. My life's at a roadblock and I need to get moving.”
• “I need to define my values and purpose so I can start heading in the right direction.”

Remember: people tend to think, speak and act as though their thought forms have the same qualities as the material world.

We use material-world metaphors for our work, then respond to them as though they're a material reality. We say that life's a journey, a struggle, or an adventure, then start behaving as though that's actually the case!

Fortunately, you have a built-in guidance system; it's called wisdom…

It's a context-sensitive, up-to-the-minute, and comes from before your habitual thinking, from the intelligent energy behind life.

You can think of this innate wisdom as an “emanation” from the formless energy behind life. Everybody has the wisdom of the universe within them. No one has access to more wisdom than anyone else. So, how do you become more and more open to wisdom, and allow it to guide you? It's already guiding you, moment to moment…

• When you're feeling more and more agitated as you think about something someone did last week… that's wisdom, activating the “psychological pain-withdrawal reflex”.
• When you're lost in contaminated thinking, and it suddenly occurs to you that you're feeling your thinking… that's wisdom, pointing you back in the right direction.
• When you finally stop ruminating on a problem and the answer suddenly arrives… that's wisdom, penetrating the veneer of habitual thinking.
• When you're soaking in the tub and a flash of insight lets you know exactly how to proceed in an area where you were blocked… that's wisdom, giving you strategic guidance.

The wisdom that comes with clarity is typically accompanied by a good feeling; a sense of peaceful knowing that's very distinct from the “fervent rightness” of our habitual thinking.

Bear in mind that wisdom is looking out for your best interests. And while that doesn't mean that everyone's going to like what you do when you act on your wisdom, they'll often be able to “see the wisdom” in it. Wisdom often seems obvious in retrospect; people say things like “I don't understand how I didn't see it before.” It's also worth remembering that wisdom is the source of insight, and that you've already been acting on it in a variety of ways throughout your life. It's good to see wisdom as the ordinary, everyday thing that it is. As you become more and more attuned to your wisdom, you may be surprised at just how easily you notice and are guided by it.

So, does that mean that the circumstances of your life are all going to be a bed of roses? Not necessarily. Everyone has hardships to go through and losses to deal with. Furthermore, you don't know if your idea of what a great life looks like today will even appeal to you as you live life with a greater clarity of understanding.

So, if we're being guided by wisdom, where does that leave the whole domain of goal-setting?

I've got some good news and some bad news for you…