What Have You Known for Years?

I think most of us know more than we’re willing to admit. Not in a fully formed way, or in a way we can easily explain. More like a whisper. A pull. A recurring truth that refuses to leave us alone. We spend years trying to answer questions we already understand. We postpone what we know. We negotiate with it. We bury it beneath responsibilities, expectations, obligations, and achievement. We hope a larger paycheck will quiet the whisper. We hope the next promotion will answer the question.

I know because I’ve done it myself.

For years, I thought I was trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with my life. I wasn’t. I was trying to find the courage to admit what I already knew.

Like many ambitious people, I did everything I was supposed to do. I pursued the big jobs, the important-sounding titles, the increasing responsibility, and the rewards that come with being trusted to carry more. And I was fortunate. I learned. I grew. I succeeded.

But there was always a question waiting for me when the noise died down. It wasn’t, “What should I do next?” It was, “Is this what I’m here for?” That question followed me for years—through promotions, accomplishments, and moments that looked successful from the outside. The difficult part wasn’t achieving those things. The difficult part was realizing they couldn’t answer the question I was really asking.

For years, I prayed about it. Journaled about it. Talked about it with accountability partners. I wasn’t searching for a new answer. I was trying to find language for something I’d sensed for a very long time.

What makes me pause now is realizing how many years I spent treating a knowing as a question.

Years I can never get back.

As if the answer was somewhere outside of me.

Then something changed.

Slowly, the language began to emerge. Eventually, I found words for what had been sitting quietly inside me for years. The moment I could articulate it, everything started making sense, because I finally named something that had been true for a very long time.

Around that same time, a client made an observation that’s stayed with me. After one of our coaching conversations, she remarked that something felt different. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Then she said, “You seem less focused on trying to do what great coaches do and more focused on being who you are right now.”

I didn’t fully understand what she meant at the time.

I think I do now.

For years, I was trying to become something. Trying to earn it. Trying to prove it. Trying to grow into it. But once I found the language, something shifted. I stopped trying so hard to become the person I was meant to be.

I could finally start being him.