What the Spreadsheet Cannot Ask

There is a quiet moment, between the end of one year and the determined beginning of the next, when the air feels thin with possibility. It’s in this space that I find myself thinking not about what is visible, but about what is felt.

History remembers the kings who consulted seers. The generals who paused for oracles. The dynasties that kept mystics close as essential counsel. They did not seek reassurance. They sought foresight, a glimpse into the currents moving beneath the still surface of the apparent world. Some call it the astral realm, others the unseen. They understood, in their bones, that true authority required navigating both the seen and the unseen.

Today, we are those kings and generals of our own domains. But we are buried in data, suspended by analytics, surrounded by advisors of every stripe. We possess more raw information than any emperor in the scrolls of history. And yet.

The modern court has no seat for the seer. The intuitive, the mystic, is too often shunned from the meeting room, an idea deemed less than ideal to the rational eye.

But I have sat in those rooms. Not at the board table, but beside it. In my travels, I have been sought by men who run countries and multi-million-dollar enterprises. Through their eyes, I was often first seen as a presence meant to grace their world, to offer a certain kind of romance.

It was not the romance they needed.

It was only after my detachment that I was able to see they were often searching for meaning and fulfillment. This, after a lifetime of neglecting an inner emotional undertow because they could command markets, navigate geopolitical strife, and decipher the most complex situations by night. Yet, not discern the quiet turmoil within their own spirits. Meaning became their lighthouses, though they never could name the hollow space that opened beneath the weight of successes.

The fragmentation of our deferrals always catches up, one way or another. The subtle dissonance between the impeccable decision and the inner chill is not a flaw but a signal.

The dissonance is not failure, it is the warning system of the inner seer, alerting us to what the metrics cannot register. These powerful men were, in their way, reaching for the oracle.

They were learning, sometimes clumsily, always urgently, that the most crucial seat on their Inner Council was not for another analyst. It was for the intuitive intelligence they had been taught to silence during their ascent, the part that feels, that senses, that knows in whispers.

This is the quiet, unspoken work of integration, the reclamation of the seer within. Not to override data, but to complete it. To answer the question the spreadsheet can never ask: At what cost?

What we casually call a midlife crisis is often the first successful negotiation with the self.

The essential work of this new year, then, is not merely to architect plans, but to restore that inner council. To create a deliberate space to sense the unspoken currents, in your team, in your industry, in your own heart.

Because leadership has never been about commanding only the visible. It has always, in its most enduring form, been about the courage to consult the quietly known within.

This is the work I now do deliberately, creating space where the inner council can be restored without spectacle, without collapse, and without abandoning the rigor that built the outer life.

Where, in your world, is the seer asking to be heard?

For those exploring this work more deeply, my latest eBook, How to Stop Carrying Water for Your Past, is available here. You may also subscribe to receive my private writings and reflections here.