I think we’ve been asking the wrong person.

When we’re trying to figure out what’s next, our instinct is to look inward. We ask ourselves what we’re good at, where we add the most value, what we should build, and what the next chapter of our lives or careers should look like. Those are all important questions, but lately I’ve been wondering if we’re asking the wrong person.

We spend years trying to define ourselves. Meanwhile, the people around us have simply been experiencing us. They don’t describe us by the titles we’ve held or the résumés we’ve written. They describe us by the problems they trust us to solve, the conversations they invite us into, and the perspectives they consistently seek out.

I wonder how often we overlook those patterns because they feel so ordinary to us. The things that come naturally rarely feel remarkable from the inside. They’re simply the way we’ve always thought, worked, or shown up. Yet those same qualities are often the very reason someone reaches out, makes an introduction, or says, “You should really talk to…”

Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed something that I didn’t fully appreciate while it was happening. More and more people I had never met were reaching out because someone they trusted suggested we talk. At first, I treated every conversation as its own opportunity. Each company had a different challenge, each founder had a different story, and each discussion felt independent from the last.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized I had been looking at each conversation individually instead of stepping back to see the pattern they were creating together. Looking back, I wasn’t discovering something new at all. I was simply recognizing something that had been there for years.

I’m still learning from what that realization means… and it’s changed the questions I’ve started asking myself.

So, yes… Maybe we’ve been asking the wrong person. Maybe the people around us have been quietly answering the question all along. But how well are we listening?

“Your 50” is a 50-week reflection series about realigning, activating, and expressing what comes next.