I'm going to share something that over the years I've come to know to be true.

And that's that generally the answers that we look forward tend to fall between the extremes.

So for example, you have two people, one person is adamant that option A is right.

It's a no-brainer. That'll take you to the promised land.

But on the other side, the other person's saying, no, it's option B, and it's not even close. Option B is the way to go. And well, generally speaking, the answer we're looking for falls somewhere right in the middle. That's where the winning formula lives.

Not always, but most of the time.

The other stuff, the detail, the A's, B's and C's, the stuff that gets the flash that we spend

most of our time talking about, it's unnecessary noise and nuance.

To win is to trust your instinct.

It's being comfortable with your authenticity as the foundation.

And then once you have that, you can choose to sprinkle the other stuff on top as flavoring.

But I want to talk about this idea because I've fallen into the trap, and I think others do too,

of looking for answers in the wrong places, of trying so hard to replicate success to meet

other people's guidelines. We're so busy asking what the other people want to hear,

that we're not asking ourselves, hey, what do I want to say? And in the process,

we lose what's most valuable. We end up rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Imagine if Malcolm Gladwell only wrote about what was trending on Twitter, or what was popular.

It's like, no, he writes about what he's interested in.

That's why he's so fun to read. His curiosity and passion always comes through.

Or if J.K. Rowling spent her time researching, what works, what sells books, what do I need to buy, what's been done before

me before she created Harry Potter. We probably wouldn't have it. Her brilliant imagination

wouldn't have been shared with the world because, let's be real, wizards and boarding school

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