Why do we crowdsource what we already know?
Queries for the week o we need so many other people's opinions when we actually know, deep inside
My founder coach Amanda Baudier gave me some homework in a session recently that I absolutely loved, and so this week’s queries pull from that homework’s thread.
Amanda asked me to consider: how much outside input are you actually taking in right now? And do you really need all of it? She had me think back to 2011, before Instagram. Then the 90s, before the internet. Then the 1800s, when you literally had to send a letter on a horse to get someone’s opinion on something. People were building things! Deciding things! Trusting themselves because they had no other choice.
When I did the exercise, I went to my high school self, and thought about who was in my life whose input mattered….then college…post college…30’s…and Brightland. And it made me realize how much I’ve been asking, and just how many people’s input, whether welcome or not, has been seeping into my brain during the Brightland chapter over the past few years. Crowdsourcing my own knowing. Quietly waiting for so many others to confirm what I already feel.
So this week’s queries are about that.
This week I’m asking:
Who have you been looking to for guidance/input (founders, employees, mentors, influencers, family, “society”) that you might be ready to rely on a little less?
What’s a decision you’ve been waiting on that you actually already know the answer to?
If you wrote a short love note to your own intuition, what would it say?
What would you do differently this week if you just... trusted yourself and asked no one?
You already know more than you think. That’s really what all of this is about.
This second prompt! I do this a lot. Spend a week and so much energy with a decision, big or small, that my first instinct is usually the outcome after all that effort. BUT, sometimes that time and thinking (although it brings me to the same outcome) allows me to be rooted and sure. I know the alts are not viable and I can move forward with confidence.
Love this realization & activity! Something I’ve sat with when looking through old photos of high school me who felt so much more confident and self assured!