Difficult decisions often involve four distinct voices: desire, fear, obligation, and the deeper self.

The loudest inner voice is not necessarily the wisest; each voice offers insight and potential distortion.

Separating competing inner voices can reveal what each one knows, fears, protects, and values.

Discernment may not reveal the whole path, but it can provide enough clarity to take the next faithful step.

Not long ago, I faced what seemed like a defining career decision. Thirty-five years earlier, I had made a choice that changed the course of my professional life: I left a highly sought-after executive role at a large corporation to start my own business. At the time, a chorus of voices pushed back—many of them not my own. “Are you crazy? You’re walking away from the security, status, excitement, and financial rewards of being a senior vice president?” That was my mother’s voice, but other voices, including some within me, were just as loud and persuasive. Heck, I even had a corner office in a modern downtown skyscraper and a plant in the corner next to a huge window overlooking the city. In the end, I took the leap, and it became one of the best decisions of my life. But it was not an easy one.

Fast-forward to 2025, and it was time for another consequential choice that seemed about as important as the one I just described. This time it had to do with the shifting nature of the firm we had founded and built over those years, and my relationship with it. Hard as it may seem to realize for all of us, nothing lasts forever, and my business partners and I were getting to a point in our careers that called for a change. What would that change........

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