Put Your Cards on the Table. It Makes Life So Much Easier.
Aug 15, 2026
This week I’m packing up my apartment getting ready to say goodbye to Boise.
It’s been wild. Emotional, intensely busy.
And while I was standing there, hands on my hips, looking at everything I’ve accumulated over the years and deciding what stays and goes, I realized…
This is actually a lot like the work of life.
Not moving, literally. But,
Learning to separate everything that’s influencing us so we can see clearly enough to choose.
Because we put ourselves through a lot of suffering when we experience complicated situations as one solid absolute thing:
“I have to take care of my parents, there’s no one else.”
“I’m exhausted all the time.”
“I can’t leave. I want to, but I can’t…”
“I have to do it, there’s no two ways about it.”
Or…
“This move is so overwhelming, I don’t know where to start.”
But the truth is, there could be ten different ingredients inside just one individual issue.
I was working with a client recently who was trying to make an important decision.
Ruth runs a very successful company. She’s a very accomplished woman, and wants to move her business into a new sphere — but she was so stuck in the needs and “shoulds” of her life, that she has been paralysed, and this paralysis has stopped her from pursuing what she really wants to do.
So we started separating the pieces:
The practical realities.
Other people’s needs.
Responsibilities.
Fear.
What she had been conditioned to do since she was a little girl.
The automatic pilot she is on in her life.
What she genuinely wants.
What she thinks she should do.
Many things influenced the decision that she couldn’t see when we first started.
I asked her to put her cards on the table, so she could make a conscious decision.
So she could see clearly enough to support her to move in the direction she wants to go.
And can build a new phase of life for her family without sacrificing her own needs and desires.
This is something I care deeply about in my work.
You see, it’s easy to tell ourselves that if something feels difficult, resentful, exhausting, or conflicted, the situation itself must be the problem…
But that’s rarely the case.
Complex feelings don’t tell you what decision to make. They give you information.
And that information needs to be separated, listened to, and understood.
And when you learn how to do this — when you learn how to put your cards on the table — you might discover:
That responsibility isn’t actually the problem. You’ve simply taken it all on your shoulders.
You’ve never really fully allowed anyone to help you.
Your body has been communicating to you, but you’ve been overriding it for years.
A role you took on a long time ago no longer belongs to you, or underneath all the complexity, you simply don’t want the same things anymore.
You might even look at every card and consciously choose this “more difficult” path because what it serves matters deeply to you.
That’s discernment.
Separate the ingredients so you can see what is actually at stake.
Because once everything isn’t fused into one overwhelming response, You have something you didn’t have before — choice.
And the goal isn’t always to make a different decision. Sometimes you’ll make exactly the same one. The difference is that you are fully in the room while you make it.
Love and Blessings,
Naomi
P.S This is a small example of how I work privately with clients. We make visible what’s influencing the way you’re living, deciding, and relating, especially the things that are difficult to see from inside your own patterns.
P.P.S If you’re not ready for private work but want to begin seeing some of the patterns influencing the way you live and make decisions, my EVOLVE Assessment is a beautiful place to start.
People have said it’s “illuminating,” “crazy accurate,” and “deeply revealing.”
You can take the EVOLVE Assessment here
