Redefine authority. Don’t outsource yours.

We have an authority problem. Mostly, that we’ve outsourced our own inner authority to external “experts” and “authorities.”

Doctors.

Politicians.

Clergy.

Bosses.

Data.

I’m not suggesting that people in these roles are not helpful or good at what they do. (I’m also not suggesting that they ALL are.) I believe in expertise, experience, wisdom, and learning from others.

The problem is, somewhere along the way expertise became tangled up in systems of dominance. Authority became something externalized, something we were commanded to “look up” to. It became hierarchical—and worse, substitutional. It was meant to supplant our own self-knowledge

When that happens, and when we don’t develop our own inner authority—our own self-knowledge, intuition, and agency—we get exploited and manipulated.

It’s time to make ourselves the authority—literally, the authors—of our own lives. We have agency, intuition and instinct to develop self-awareness and self-knowledge. We can collect our own experiential data about what happens when we live life—just by paying attention to our intuition, instinct, and the world around us.

When we develop a strong compass based on our own integrity and self-knowledge—and ADD that to the knowledge of experts, rather than suppressing our own inner expertise in order to elevate someone else’s knowledge—that’s when we can evolve the conversation. Create better outcomes. Create healthier lives.

Don’t outsource your own authority. Write your own life; others can be contributing editors, but you get to author the plot. Write what you know: yourself.

What’s one way to develop your inner authority? Add your intuition to your intellect.

The Age of Reason has had a good run. 

Reason is good. Reason created some elegant methods for pursuing knowledge. We’ve solved some problems. We’ve discovered so much.

How’s that working out for us? Are we happier, healthier, more in love with life?

For many of us, there’s still something missing.

The Age of Intuition is re-emerging.

True to character, it has been gestating in the murky nether-regions of our soil and psyches, crafting an underground network of connection, meaning, and love as we’ve flailed above, trying not to need all of those things that aren’t susceptible to the slick schtick of reason.

We’ve become experts at consuming knowledge—it is more available to us than ever, we can consume it more quickly than ever.

But… then what?

When we add intuition to intellect, we’re using a broader spectrum of knowledge. Knowledge can grow into the fullness of wisdom.

Intuition IS knowledge.

It’s just a different pathway for acquiring knowledge than the singular cerebral way we’ve been taught over the past few hundred years.

Intuition is thinking differently—not thinking ABOUT things differently (though this will be a likely outcome), but literally using a different mechanism for thinking: intuition.

Interestingly, intuition is not behind a paywall.

Intuition is freely available to all.

Intuition gathers its own data, and still manages to be evidence-based.

Intuition bypasses “authority.”

Which is exactly why it has been maligned and relegated to the world of woo—it’s basically free power. 

Intuition isn’t going to fix all of your problems. But it will add depth to your knowledge, and help turn it into wisdom.

Intuition will help you understand yourself more deeply. It will help you understand others more fully.

Intuition will help you see the patterns that connect your personal experience to the world at large—and beyond.

Adding intuition to intellect is how we find our way back to healthy humanity—deep humans, deep connection, for a healthy planet, for all.