I TRIED SOMETHING DIFFERENT WITH A CLIENT THIS WEEK.

09.17.26

I was working with a client this week who couldn't make a decision.

For 90 minutes, we talked about what was happening in her life.

She wasn't lacking intelligence.

She wasn't lacking options.

And she certainly wasn't lacking people willing to tell her what she should do.

She was simply too close to it.

Every direction she looked came with another consideration.

If I do this, then this happens.

But if I do that, what about this?

What will this person think?

What if I'm wrong?

What if I regret it?

What if I make the decision and discover I should have stayed exactly where I was?

The more we talked, the more obvious something became to me.

She didn't need another answer. She needed somewhere different to stand.

So I asked her to stop trying to figure it out.

Instead, I asked her to go to the ending.

Not the ending she wanted.

The ending her current choices were already creating.

If absolutely nothing changes, where does this take you?

That question changed the conversation.

Because there are things that are incredibly difficult to see when we're standing in the middle of them that become painfully obvious when we look backward.

Think about your own life.

A relationship that ended.

A job you eventually left.

A friendship that ran its course.

A decision you postponed.

Something you tolerated far longer than you wish you had.

How many times have you looked back and thought:

I knew.

Maybe you didn't know exactly how it would end.

But you knew something.

And that has had me thinking about a question I can't seem to leave alone:

Why do we wait for the ending to see what was true all along?

Maybe I was always going to become obsessed with that question.

I've spent more than 10 years as a medium.

I've sat with people grieving someone they love. I've listened to the things they wish they'd said, the time they thought they had, the conversations they would give anything to have one more time.

And I've spent thousands of hours communicating with people whose lives are already over.

For years, I thought that work was largely about death.

I'm beginning to understand that it has taught me far more about life.

Death changes the vantage point.

Things that seemed enormously important become very small.

Things we thought we had plenty of time for suddenly become the things that mattered most.

The unsaid thing matters.

The unused time matters.

The love matters.

The chances we didn't take matter.

And the truth becomes much harder to negotiate with when there is no longer time to change it.

That's the part I can't stop thinking about.

What if we didn't have to wait until something was over to gain the perspective the ending gives us?

What if we could bring some of that perspective backward?

Into a marriage while we're still in it.

Into our work while there are still choices to make.

Into our relationships while the person is still here.

Into our bodies while we still have time.

Into our lives while they're still being lived.

I've spent most of my career helping people see things they couldn't see from where they were standing.

Until recently, I didn't have language for exactly what I was doing.

I think I do now.

I'm calling it Borrowed Hindsight.

It's the practice of accessing some of the clarity we usually get after something has happened while there is still time to do something with what we see.

Because hindsight is incredibly useful.

Except for one problem.

It usually arrives too late.

After the years have passed.

After the opportunity is gone.

After the relationship has ended.

After the words weren't said.

After our bodies have changed.

After someone we love is no longer here.

After we finally admit:

I knew.

And I've become interested in the space between those two moments:

The moment you knew.

and

The moment you finally did something about it.

I'm calling that The Hindsight Gap.

Sometimes it's a week.

Sometimes it's twenty years.

And an extraordinary amount of life can disappear inside that gap.

I don't think we talk about that enough.

And I want to.

Because I don't believe the purpose of perspective is simply to understand your life better.

I think the purpose of perspective is to change what you do next.

On Saturday, October 3, I'm going to teach this work for the first time at The Healing House.

The date wasn't accidental.

October 3 is exactly 90 days before the new year.

And I'm not interested in spending that day talking about what you want to accomplish next year.

I'm interested in a much harder question:

What could be different by January 1 because you were willing to see it on October 3?

We're going to take something happening in your life right now and follow it forward.

We're going to look at where your current choices are actually taking you.

At what you already know.

At what waiting is costing you.

And then we're going to bring all of that information back to today.

Because there is another ending available.

And this time, you get to participate in creating it.

I'll tell you more about Change the Ending in my next email.

For tonight, I want you to sit with one question:

If nothing changes, where does the life you're living right now take you?

Don't fix anything yet.

Just look.

Nicole

P.S. The question that started all of this for me was even bigger:

What if awakening didn't require catastrophe?

That's where we're going next.