It’s a new year. Happy New Year! Being that the universally issued clean slate has begun, I’m sure you’ve already created your exhaustive list of all the new opportunities you want to seize this year. Along with the excitement brought on by new beginnings, fear, anxiety, worry, and imposter syndrome may cause you to question your ability to succeed and thrive. Especially with the year that was 2020, so many of us want to delve into uncharted territory. We know that the only way we can truly grow is by taking leaps into areas that we haven’t been in previously. Our plans for the new year fuel us up until we allow the self-doubt to take over. This experience can be marked by one simple internal dilemma. We don’t trust ourselves.  

I believe that a lack of trust is due to a repeated history of neglecting our deeper knowing. As I reflect on 2020, I’ve learned that trusting my deeper knowing may have just been one of the most major keys I’ve acquired. Last year, I accomplished my long-term goal of spearheading a youth program with Positive Youth Development V.I. As I began this new venture, the ANTS (Automatic Negative Thoughts) in my head questioned my qualifications and capabilities for the role. Was I ready for this? Was I well equipped? My spirit had guided me to take on this challenge head-on and I found myself delving into work that I initially assumed I wouldn’t have the slightest clue about. I was curating youth programming, building and leading teams, doing outreach, drafting contracts, creating invoices, and performing a multitude of tasks without any guidance or rule book. I had to trust myself. I had to lean into my deeper knowing. 

After only 4 months, I succeeded at publicly launching the program’s efforts and leading a team of talented leaders who had assisted me in spearheading the first virtual sexual risk avoidance education course for Virgin Islands youth and launching our first ever Virtual Empowerment Conference! My intentions had remained pure from staying connected to my deeper knowing. The strategies I had used to lead my team to success did not only come from prior experience, it came from being guided by my gut. I learned to trust it. I learned to trust myself. The more I did, the less uncertain and more empowered I felt about the decisions I made.  

As you step out on faith this year pioneering into new horizons, practice self-reliance. 2021 may be new to us but rest assured that our deeper knowing already contains the roadmap for this unchartered territory. Why trust your deeper knowing? Trust it for the simple fact that each of us is designed with a deciding energy behind our deeper knowing. Your deciding energy is the life force ignited by your deeper knowing. This ignition can only occur when we trust our intuitive guidance. Sound discernment is the result of allowing your deeper knowing to guide your deciding energy. 

Learning to trust my deeper knowing and rely on my deciding energy to serve as my compass had sprung from an intention that I had planted. The seed that bore fruit to my confidence was The One Page Miracle. The One Page Miracle is Dr. Daniel Amen, MD, author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life’s, life design one-pager. It is a binding life document that gets you clear on what you want. I know it did just that for me. 

Creating my One Page Miracle with THE personal development book club, The Educated Hour, that I’m a part of, pushed me to set intentions for my spirit. The intention I created for spiritual health was to: “Develop a trusting organic source of deep knowing from my spirit and spirituality.” In almost every way 2020 had required just that. As I mentioned, it required that from me as a leader and I know the year required that from every single one of us as there was absolutely no guidebook on how to survive such an unpredictable and unexpected year.  

Trust your deeper knowing to guide you as this new chapter of your journey unfolds.  

When doubt creeps in this year, I want you to commit to fully trusting yourself. We all know and have felt what the deeper knowing feels like. It’s just time that we trust it. That we listen to it. That we give it its voice and honor its place. Trusting it is the only way that we can allow it to lead us to the greatness and achievements that we so greatly desire. We’ll find that what seemed so scary, so uncertain, and so utterly new to us, isn’t so novel for us after all.