Is the “trust recession” really what we think it is?
There’s a conversation going around the coaching and practitioner world right now about why people have gotten warier about who
You Can’t Be Handed Your Direction. You Find It by Moving.
Have you ever hired someone to help you get clear on your next direction, and found that even their most confident answer never quite fit?
That’s because you can’t tell whether a direction is right for you until you start moving in it.
Your direction isn’t something another person can figure out and hand you in one sitting. Finding it is a matter of discerning what fits you. And it’s not only whether someone else’s suggestion fits. It’s whether each step fits as you take it.
What happens when you outsource the answer
Say you book a session with someone known for helping people get clear on their direction quickly. They tell you what your work should look like, what to lead with, what to drop.
Maybe something about it doesn’t quite sit right, but you go with it anyway, because they’re the expert and an answer is what you came for. Or maybe you’re just relieved to finally have a plan, so you don’t stop to check whether it actually fits you.
Either way, you start building around it. A few months later you’re backtracking, realizing it never quite matched how you actually work and what you actually want.
Or it goes the other way. Nothing about it sits right, but you can’t say exactly what’s off, so you never really act on it. Months pass and you’re no clearer than before the session, only more aware that the answer you paid for didn’t answer anything.
The answer they provided felt complete because it ended the discomfort of not knowing. That relief is real, and easy to mistake for fit.
Why the answer never quite fits
The part that tells you whether a direction is right for you doesn’t exist yet while you’re sitting in that session. It comes from what happens once you move: what works when you try it, what gets clearer once you’re in it, what turns out you don’t need to do at all.
A confident answer can’t contain any of that, because none of it has happened yet.
This is why a session like that doesn’t settle anything, even when the person you hired is very good at what they do. You went in asking for a direction you could be sure of, and the thing that would make you sure of it only comes from moving. You come away with an answer, and still none of the certainty you were actually looking for
Starting from your own sense instead
So if your direction can’t be given to you like this, how do you actually find it?
You find it the other way around. It starts with the sense you already have about things, the pull toward something or away from it that shows up before you can explain why. That sense has been there the whole time. Most people just haven’t had a clear way to tell what it’s saying.
The first thing I do with a client is build your ability to recognize your own sense of what fits and what doesn’t. This is what my data analysis process is for.
We go back through real situations, professional and personal, where you had a sense about something, toward it or away from it. We look at what you noticed, what you did with it, and how it turned out.
What becomes visible is a track record you didn’t know you had. Most people find their own sense has been far more accurate than they ever gave it credit for.
Part of this is getting familiar with what that sense actually feels like in your body, so you can catch it in the moment instead of only spotting it in hindsight.
Once you can recognize your own sense clearly and know what it’s telling you, a confident answer from someone else stops being the only thing you have to go on. You have your own evidence to weigh it against.
Getting specific about where your work goes next
Recognizing your own sense tells you what fits you and what doesn’t. It doesn’t yet tell you exactly where your work goes next. That’s the next thing we get specific about.
We get specific about the level of problem you’re built to solve at this point in your work, the kind of people you do your best work with, and the form your work takes when it’s built around what’s most distinctive about it.
We draw all of that from the same situations we already mapped, the ones where your own sense and your results lined up. So it’s grounded in what’s actually happened, not guesswork.
Your astrology and Human Design charts can come in here too, as confirmation of how you’re built to operate. Often they put a name to things you’ve already sensed about yourself but never treated as important, or never fully let yourself lean into.
Together, these give you a first step that’s a real fit for you, specifically. You got there through your own sense of what fits, rather than someone else’s answer. This is what I refer to as goodness-of-fit.
You learn the rest by moving
Once you have that first step, you take it. Taking it doesn’t have to mean overhauling everything at once. It can be one piece of work in the new direction, or trying it out in a small way first.
Moving is where the rest of the information comes in. You find out what works and what doesn’t once you’re doing it. You see what keeps you interested and what drains you, what comes easily and what’s a grind the whole way, even when it looked right on paper.
None of that is something anyone could have told you up front. You learn it by making real changes and seeing what happens.
Each move gives you more to go on, and you adjust from there. The direction gets a little more specific and a little more clearly yours each time.
Why fit matters more for some people
Some people are affected by goodness-of-fit more than others.
Fit includes things like the types of problems, the level of challenge, the approach you use, and the way you work. When those line up, they don’t just do okay. That’s when they do their best work, and it comes easily.
When fit is low, the same work takes far more effort and the results drop, even though they’re fully capable of more.
If that’s you, a direction that isn’t a fit costs more than the months you put into it. While you’re pushing something that doesn’t fit, you’re more drained and less clear, and that makes the direction that is a good fit even harder to find.
And there’s an even bigger cost. The work that’s actually yours to do, the thing only you can see and contribute, doesn’t get made, and the people who needed exactly that never get it.
Once you can recognize your own sense of what fits, and let your direction take shape through what you learn as you move, other people’s answers stop being the thing that decides for you. You can take in what they say and still know where you stand. And trust that the answers will keep coming as you keep moving.
Working on this together
What I just described is a piece of what we do in the first part of my mentorship, offered on its own as a short series of sessions focused on your direction.
I work with experienced consultants, advisors, and practitioners who sense their work needs to move, and who want to find that direction themselves rather than have it handed to them. Many have already followed a direction that turned out not to be theirs, or held back from one that didn’t sit right, and can’t always tell their own sense of things apart from someone else’s confident answer.
In the focused round of sessions, we build your ability to recognize your own sense of what fits, look at where it’s already been pointing you, and get concrete about your direction from there, so it comes from you instead of from someone else’s answer.
You come away with a specific next step that’s actually yours, and a clearer sense of how to tell what fits you that keeps working for you after. It’s the same work as the first part of my 6 to 12 month one-to-one mentorship, run on its own.
This focused round of sessions can be completed in two to three months if you’re ready to move, or we can pace them out longer, up to eight to ten months, if you want more time or budget flexibility.
It’s currently $5K, and will be going up to $6K. A flexible payment plan is available.
If this sounds like what you’re looking for, send me a private message on Messenger or email michelle@michelledowker.com. We’ll have a conversation to see if this is the right fit for where you are and where you’re headed.
Click here for more details about my mentorship and this smaller series of sessions focused on your direction.
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