When Inner Work Changes the Way You Make Business Decisions

What happens when outside advice sounds certain, but your inner knowing is pointing you in a different direction?

For many heart-led entrepreneurs, inner work is already an important part of life. We understand that what happens within us affects the choices we make, the way we live and the work we bring into the world.

We may trust our intuition, work with energy, meditate, journal or have other practices that help us turn inwards and reconnect with ourselves. Yet when a difficult business decision appears, it can be surprisingly easy to forget everything we know and go searching outside ourselves for the answer.

Before long, we are comparing our business with what everyone else is doing, looking for the correct strategy and listening to whoever sounds most certain about what should happen next. There is always someone on the internet who appears to have the answer, usually accompanied by a five-step process and an impressive collection of testimonials.

The trouble is, the louder the outside world becomes, the harder it can be to hear our own answers beneath it.

Perhaps you have noticed this too. You trust your inner knowing in many areas of life, yet business decisions can somehow feel as though they belong to a completely different world.

But if inner work is central to how you live, why leave it outside the door when making decisions about your business?

When someone else’s certainty becomes louder than your own knowing

I have paid a lot of money for business advice over the years. Once I had made that investment, I felt I needed to follow the advice properly, even when my heart and body were screaming that something did not fit.

I assumed the expert must know better than I did. They had the confidence, the method and the impressive results, while I was the one looking for help. Surely I simply needed to trust the process and do as I was told?

So I followed along. Sometimes rather blindly. Yikes!

The advice itself was not necessarily bad. I learnt a great deal from the people I worked with, including things I still use today. The problem was that I sometimes gave their advice more authority than my own values, experience and inner response.

Paying for advice can make that especially difficult. When something does not feel right, it is easy to wonder whether we have followed the method closely enough, whether we need to try harder or whether our resistance is simply fear. After all, nobody wants to admit that the advice they paid a lot of money for may not be right for them.

Meanwhile, something inside may be quietly, or perhaps not so quietly, saying no.

I do not regret those paths. Without them, I might never have learnt the difference between receiving outside support and handing someone else authority over my business.

Bringing all your own pieces back to you

For me, inner work means turning inwards. I find a quiet place where I can block out the world, tune in to my body, quiet my mind, ask questions and listen for the answers.

Depending on what I want to understand, release or change, I might use Quanta Freedom Healing, a Shamanic Journey, guided meditations, breathwork or muscle testing. These are the practices that work for me. You may return to yourself in a completely different way. The particular practice matters less than creating the space to hear what is true for you.

That space can be especially important in business and marketing. There is always a new strategy to follow, a shiny tool to try or someone confidently explaining what everybody must do next. Before long, we can find ourselves making decisions through other people’s values without even realising it.

Inner work helps me bring all my own pieces back to me. My values, judgement, bodily knowing, experience, curiosity and freedom to choose all come back into the room.

It is not only about releasing the beliefs and expectations that no longer belong. It is also about reclaiming the parts of ourselves that may have become lost or hidden while we were busy trying to become the business owner somebody else told us we should be.

Seeing every path does not mean following them all

I love exploring ideas. I enjoy collecting different viewpoints, experimenting and disappearing down an interesting rabbit hole to see where it leads. One idea can quickly become six open tabs and an entirely new line of enquiry. That curiosity is part of who I am, and inner work has not changed it.

I was once introduced to the image of an eagle rising high above the landscape. From that height, it can see the different paths, perspectives and possibilities below. Living here, with kites and buzzards regularly circling overhead, it is an easy image for me to imagine.

I picture myself rising above the outside noise and looking across the whole landscape. I can explore the different paths without feeling that I must immediately choose one or follow them all. Then I can come back down and decide which direction I believe in and want to take.

Trusting ourselves does not mean closing ourselves off from other people’s knowledge. We can listen, learn, experiment and collect different perspectives. My thinking mind is wonderful for exploring all the possibilities, but it is not always the best part of me to decide which path is mine.

Inner work brings me back to myself so I can make that choice.

Not every uncomfortable feeling means the same thing

An uncomfortable feeling does not always mean that a direction is wrong. Sometimes it is a genuine no. At other times, the direction is right, but it has brought an old fear, belief or piece of programming to the surface.

I have developed my own way of recognising the difference. I listen, write down what comes through and use muscle testing to ask whether I should follow the guidance. If the answer remains yes but I still feel worried, resistant or need more clarity, I go back inwards and ask what needs my attention before I continue.

You will have your own way of recognising what feels true. What matters is being able to pause and listen, rather than automatically pushing through the feeling or walking away.

The direction can arrive before the plan

Sometimes inner work gives us a clear direction before we know exactly how we are going to make it happen. Once we find a way forward that feels right, there may be a sense of expansiveness or excitement in the body. The decision feels clear, even though the practical plan is still taking shape.

An inner yes rarely arrives carrying a neatly organised action plan.

There may still be practical questions to answer, pieces to work out and adjustments to make along the way. In my experience, the information I need may arrive immediately, or it may appear days or weeks later through something I read, a conversation or a person who unexpectedly crosses my path. I have experienced enough of these synchronicities to trust that the timing is not always mine to control.

Self-trust does not always give you certainty about the outcome. It gives you enough certainty to make the decision.

Once the decision has been made, surrender can become part of the process. Instead of trying to force the entire plan into place with the thinking mind, we can take the next practical step and remain open to what reveals itself after that.

The business review that refused to take two days

When I returned from Ireland after my son’s wedding, I planned to review my business. I thought it would take a couple of days. I would look at my offers, website and plans, decide what I wanted to do next and finish with a lovely tidy list.

My business review had other ideas.

Two months later, it was still unfolding.

What began as a quick look at the practical parts of my business became a much deeper process. I reconsidered how I wanted to work, recognised that ongoing social media management no longer felt right and began talking directly with heart-led business owners about what was happening inside their businesses.

Those conversations contained so much gold. I began noticing repeated needs, questions and possibilities. Gradually, I could see the connection between what people needed, the work I enjoyed and how I could use my experience differently.

A clearer direction for my business began to emerge, but it took the time it took. I do not believe I would have reached the same place if I had forced myself to complete the review according to my original two-day timetable.

Surrender did not mean sitting around doing nothing and waiting for the answer to float through the window. I reflected, listened, asked questions and took practical action. What I surrendered was my assumption that I already knew how long the process should take and what the answer should look like.

Inner change may lead to a truer business

During one of my recent Business Conversations, I spoke with someone who had spent years creating ideas and then dismantling them because none felt completely hers. Eventually, she stopped trying to make each new idea work and gave herself time to recognise what she truly believed and what she wanted her work to stand for.

She had not lost her ambition. She had become more discerning about what she wanted to create, what felt genuinely hers and the way she was willing to grow.

Personal evolution does not necessarily make us want a smaller business. It may make us less willing to build one around work we have outgrown, values we no longer share or somebody else’s idea of success.

Sometimes we do not want less. We want something truer.

Come back to yourself before deciding

When business becomes busy or uncertain, it is easy to treat inner work as something we will return to once everything has settled. Yet that may be the very time we need it most.

Before searching for another answer or buying another solution, it may help to pause. Have outside opinions become louder than our own knowing? Is the business still being shaped by our values, or by beliefs and expectations we absorbed without consciously choosing them?

We do not have to keep pushing until our body or circumstances force us to stop. We can turn inwards sooner, listen to what is asking for our attention and allow that inner clarity to become part of the practical decisions we make.

We may not see the whole plan. We may not know exactly how everything will unfold. But we can trust ourselves enough to recognise the next direction that feels true.

Sometimes that is all the clarity we need to know which path is ours.