Episode 20: Why Clarity Feels Harder Than It Should: When Answers Delay the Decision
The Recap: Distillation vs. Accumulation
Clarity often feels harder than it should because we try to solve a discernment season with accumulation. We gather more input, seek more perspective, and add more information, but in certain seasons, more effort only blurs the path. True significance requires us to stop looking for answers outside of ourselves and start standing at the "Still" to recognize what is already present.
The Theme: The Distiller’s Responsibility
In whiskey making, the "Still" is the working space where heat is applied and decisions are made before outcomes are visible.
The Heads, Hearts, and Tails: Every run produces different parts—the unstable heads, the steady hearts, and the heavy tails.
The Presence: The distiller’s work isn't about action yet; it’s about staying engaged long enough for clarity to take shape.
The Cut: Alignment requires the courage to make deliberate cuts, deciding which voices belong at the center and which must be removed to protect the heart of what is being formed.
1. The Pour: What is Surface Level?
In this season of your leadership, where are you tempted to add more "insight" or "strategy" just to steady your intuition?
Are you asking for more information because you need it, or because you are trying to avoid the responsibility that clarity brings?
2. The Heat: What is Activating?
Identify the "Heads" in your current season—those options or voices that carry a lot of energy and intensity but feel unstable or unaligned.
Instead of rushing to resolve the tension, what happens if you stay "at the still" long enough to notice what keeps surfacing?
3. The Still: What is Being Refined?
Discernment asks a different question: Not "What else do I need?" but "What is already here that matters most?"
What parts of your leadership are "Tails"—refined but heavy habits that are diluting your current purpose and need to be left behind?
4. The Finish: What Lingers?
The "Hearts" are what the distiller protects—the steady, balanced character true to the mission.
If you stop measuring clarity by certainty and start recognizing it by coherence, what is the one "Heart" choice that preserves your integrity?
The right advice cannot replace the distiller; it can only serve them. Clarity isn’t found by outrunning the process, but by staying at the still until the heart emerges.