No One Knows What They're Doing (This Is A Good Thing)

Walking down the dark barren streets of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, there were tears of rage and dread carving rivers down my face — I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and I was terrified I had just categorically blown up my whole life.

It was January 2020 and I'd just left a vinyasa yoga flow at SkyTing, my personal life preserver during this time, and “She Used to Be Mine” from The Waitress crooned through my headphones.

I too felt messy. Lost. Broken. So independent that I was suffering. Imperfectly trying. Mixed up and lonely. Completely disconnected from myself, despite how hard I had tried.

After months of trying to convince myself I could make it work in the corporate culture of over working and under earning, I'd realized that my job was just wrong for me on maybe every single level possible. So wrong that I'd somehow managed developed what I described as an energetic allergy to the office itself.

Every time I drudged through the front doors, my whole body screamed "NO!" and would run the next obvious program — a panic attack. One time, I had one for an hour while I hid in the bathroom, perched on the lid of the toilet.

I needed to quit. But everything I’d learned screamed that quitting my job only 9-months in was the antithesis of what a successful, level-headed person would do.

And I, Ashley B Jones, queen of evaluation and champion of perseverance, was supposed to be both those things. But I wasn’t. I was lost. Broken. Completely disconnected from myself, despite how hard I had tried to follow the formula for success.

Gentle reader, I couldn't figure out where I'd went wrong, and I had absolutely no idea what to I was supposed to do next.

I was contemplating if I needed an exorcism, electroshock therapy, or maybe to join a Buddhist Monastery in the Himalayas because nothing was flowing and no answers were divinely intervening.

It felt like the harder I tried to find the “right path”, the more stuck I became. What I didn't know then was that this moment of complete uncertainty would teach me the most liberating truth of all: no one actually knows what they're doing. And that's not just okay — it's exactly how life’s designed to be.

The Answers Apparently Aren’t In The Pudding.

I dove headfirst into my spiritual practice, convinced it would save me. Reiki certifications. Dawn tarot readings. Evening astral travel sessions to meet my Spirit Guides. I devoured spiritual books like they were the last season of White Lotus, searching for answers.

The only answer I got? Trust yourself. Cool. Thanks. But how exactly?

I was an ENFP, Enneagram Four with a premium LinkedIn subscription and a graveyard of abandoned meditation apps on my phone. I'd made vision boards that would make a life coach weep. None of it was working.

So when my mom's voice scratched through the phone as I trudged to the subway post-yoga, her words shattered something in me.

"I don't know how to advise you right now, Ashley. This isn't how I chose to live my life. I don't know how to help you. I'm still lost and trying to figure it out, too."

Record scratch. Shrill internal shrieking. The squeak of wet flip-flops. The crunch of styrofoam existential cringe. My brain? Short circuiting.

Here's What I Discovered During My First Post-Grad Quarter-Life-Crisis:

No one actually has the answers on how to achieve success.

This was breaking news of the century. Bigger than the Taylor Swift-Kanye West smear campaign.

Growing up in the Bay Area of California, everyone seemed to have The Plan to Success perfectly mapped out: Get the grades that will make your grandmother weep with joy, go to a top-ranking college that will be the envy of your archenemies, have at least three extracurriculars and also be up to date on the latest Keeping up with the Kardashians, make the right choices (you’ll only know what they are once you make them), and you'll be successful.

The bar was extraordinarily high, and the cost of stepping out of line felt like it would result in the cruelest Game of Thrones Red Wedding plot twist (still not over it, tbh).

News articles upon news articles were written about the severe impact of unreachable expectations on youth mental health in the Silicon Valley. It turned out that the result of The Plan to Success was that the kids (myself included) were in fact not alright.

And from where I was perched, neither were the same adults and mentors who were spoon feeding The Plan.

It was that dreadful evening in 2019 when I officially realized the truth—everyone was well and truly just winging it.

My mom, my therapist, the Youtube Gurus and Instagram Light-workers that lived on my Instagram feed, Mr. Nelson (my 11th grade religion teacher)—they’d all made imperfect choices that, in hindsight, appear to be a well-thought out and executed plan.

Error 404: The perfect step-by-step guide to easeful living, financial abundance, and calm confidence does not exist. Cue the existential cringe.

Here's The Plot Twist That Changed My Life: The Fact That No One Knows What They're Doing Isn't A Curse – It's Liberation.

In 2019, I didn’t actually trust my intuition. I knew it would chatter at me when my ears would ring. I sort of new what it was saying but it all just sounds Shakesperian. But like my attempt to translate Macbeth in 7th grade, I had no idea how to translate my intuition and meaningfully apply it to my life.

The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t enough of a high achiever to figure out the code to the American Dream (I was) or that I was more irreparably broken than my first Tamagotchi after a spin in the wash (I wasn’t). The real problem was that I was looking for the answers on what to do and how to do it everywhere except the one place it lived: within myself.

Flabbergasted? You and me both.

Even better, my mind that was convincing me to continue to follow this plan and my brain that was triggering Def Con 1 every time I entered the office wasn’t actually trying to torture and ruin my vibes.

It was doing it’s job. Even more mind-boggling.

The human brain is designed to keep each of us. Even when you're miserable but surviving, the mind will choose that familiar misery over unknown potential happiness every single time regardless of what your intuition has to say. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't – even if that unknown devil is actually paradise in disguise.

Trusting Your Intuition Gives You Security in Uncertainty.

Two weeks after that phone call with my mom, I listened to my intuition and I finally quit that soul-crushing job. No backup plan. A bucket of nerves. No clue what the perfect next step would be. Just a decision to trust that inner voice that had been screaming at me all along.

But it felt right and I was beyond proud of myself.

Little did fun-employed Ashley know, she would serendipitously leave NYC the week before COVID lockdown would hit a month later, she would quarantine in the sun of California, and then move again a year later for the mountains of Colorado to embark on a new journey.

She couldn’t have predicted she would start her own business as an Intuitive Guide, Coach, Reader, and Healer or that she would ever feel as completely in love with her life and at home within herself as I do now.

Here's the thing about trusting yourself and your intuition – it works even when the whole world goes topsy turvy.

The only way forward to soul-aligned success is through experimentation. It’s through building an unbreakable and compassionate relationship with yourself. It’s through learning to trust who you are even when you have no idea where the path leads ahead. It’s through knowing that even when life doesn't work out exactly as you imagined it, it's working out in ways you can't even fathom yet.

Your intuition isn't just some feeling in your chest you get right before your sister calls – it's your personal GPS through the chaos of life to pure happiness. And unlike all those well-meaning advice-givers, it knows exactly where you need to go.

The secret isn't in finding or even crafting the perfect life plan. It's in being brave enough to trust yourself when there isn't one.

Welcome to your real adventure. The one where not knowing and trusting yourself is the whole point.