3. Just because you can’t see anything doesn’t mean there isn’t some major action happening inside.
Internal work, or more aptly, internal shifts are profoundly altering and often completely invisible. It's both frustrating and like a cool secret weapon. We’re set up to need a yardstick to measure progress by—I bought this, did that, earned another promotion. What’s the thing you can show other people as evidence of your forward momentum? Sometimes there isn’t one. That doesn’t minimize the huge importance of those seismic shifts. Just because you can’t see anything doesn’t mean there isn’t some major action happening inside. Like growing a person.
4. Trust your body (gut).
Nature makes another person without any input from you (exceptions being good food, water and enough sleep, and the obvious contributions that get the whole thing going). If it feels good, it’s fine. Better than that. If it feels good, it is good. Feeling good means unequivocally, including the next day or the next week, which is why getting really drunk doesn't qualify (you might like it while it's happening, but you almost certainly regret some aspect of it afterwards, whether it be a headache or that amorphous hollow feeling).
When I left my job, my gut knew far better than my head which decisions feel the best (in fact it was my body that talked us into leaving in the first place), which people resonate as trustworthy and which path is the most promising. Bear in mind, this is often oppositional to the decisions that are the most practical, the people who are the most connected and the path that is the most obvious.
When I listen to my gut and not my mind it always leads me in a direction that feels good, even when there's nothing outward to show for it.