Hello, dear reader.

Here we are at the close of 2024, with the collective experience of information overload shared between us and the uncertainty of a year promising intense flux ahead of us. What we can agree on amidst the myriad of disagreements is that uncertainty is a state that ironically is constant in this decade of the 21st century. If the prior decade was an interesting time, the following decade will be an uncertain time.

If uncertainty is the tide, then attention is our vessel. Where we steer it—toward creativity, connection, or even quiet introspection—determines how we weather the storms ahead.

This decade asks us to be sailors and cartographers, charting maps in real time for a world that refuses to sit still. In this effort, we may uncover not certainty but something far richer: a sense of purpose that moves with the waves rather than against them.

What does it mean to find one's purpose? This is an overwhelming concern for many and an afterthought for some. When I first learned of Simon Sinek's Start With Why concept (see TED Talk and book here), I was sold on the idea but lost as to where to begin. Your "why," like your "Self," is within you already, but likely (and like me), you are out of touch with its reality.

The journey is not one of discovering something new but of rediscovering what is true and long forgotten.

In a world filled with guideposts and signposts telling us who and how to be, it is not surprising that our inner compass spins in circles of confusion most of the time. This inner state creates more than difficulty with clarity; it adds to the perpetual sense of incongruence that many of us struggle with, leading to a sense that our identity is out of alignment with our truth.

The murky road ahead described in self-help manuals and by mindset gurus is not as daunting as the copious volumes written on the subject would have you fear. The road is more about realizing your journey has not started until you face your truth, uncertainty, and all.

Keep digging if you aren't intensely uncomfortable at the beginning of this process. Your ego will rebel against your will to find clarity by insisting you need not search here or there, leave that closet shut, and do not look under the bed!

But we must venture under the bed and inside the messy closet to discover what is driving us without our conscious awareness.