That Thing You Still Can't Get Clear On

When you have plenty of information but still don't know what's actually going on

Executive Energy Journal |  Issue #75 | Niina Gullstén

Welcome to The Executive Energy Journal, where we explore a side of leadership few talk about—the subtle energy we have, live in, and how it impacts clarity, decision-making, and performance.

How EEJ works

What’s measurable: what research and observable mechanisms support
What’s unknown: where evidence ends, and interpretation begins
What I do pragmatically anyway: the simplest reliable practice I use with clients
Your role: take what is useful and leave the rest

Maybe a colleague has changed towards you. Nothing dramatic has happened, and if someone asked you for evidence that something was wrong, you wouldn't have much to give them. But meetings feel different, and you keep wondering whether you're picking up a real change, their stress about something completely unrelated to you, or your own concern about where you stand.

Maybe it's your relationship. Your partner's explanation for something is entirely plausible, but for some reason the issue won't settle. 

Or perhaps you're thinking about leaving a job. You've done the sensible analysis. You know what you would gain and what you would lose, and you know the financial implications. But a decision just feels almost impossible.

There are countless versions of this problem: a recurring problem that you have already discussed, journalled about, coached yourself around or otherwise tried to solve.

Sometimes the question is very specific: Should I stay or go? Can I trust this person? Do I take the opportunity?

Sometimes it is simply: What is going on here?

1. When more thinking gives you more thinking

The obvious response to uncertainty is to gather information and think.

Often that works. If you don't understand why sales dropped, you look at the numbers. If you're considering a job, you find out more about the role. If someone's behaviour is confusing you, you ask them what they meant.

But sometimes you already have the information that should have made things clearer and it hasn't.

One reason is that we don't process our lives through conscious reasoning alone. We notice patterns, inconsistencies and interpersonal cues without consciously registering every detail, and our bodies are part of that information system. A very recent 2026 review of decision-making research argues that adaptive decisions involve not only reward and conscious valuation, but also bodily self-awareness, including interoception and our sense of agency. In other words, the information relevant to a decision isn't necessarily confined to the reasons we can consciously list.

Some people also experience information intuitively or energetically: a change in atmosphere, a sense of contraction or expansion, a strong impression that something matters, or simply a knowing that is difficult to trace back to an identifiable source. Some of this may be explainable through mechanisms such as rapid pattern recognition, interoception and sensitivity to interpersonal cues. Other experiences people describe as intuitive or energetic remain much harder to explain scientifically.

For practical purposes, however, another problem is often more relevant: having a perception doesn't automatically tell you what the perception means.

You may accurately notice that your boss's energy changes around you and incorrectly conclude that they're unhappy with your performance.

You may feel your whole body contract when you imagine accepting a new role and conclude that you don't want it, when what you're actually responding to is one particular condition attached to it.

You may keep sensing that something is wrong in a relationship. Perhaps something is. But that still doesn't tell you what.

This is where thinking can become surprisingly unhelpful. Once you've decided what a perception means, you start analysing the interpretation rather than the original information.

If the story is my boss wants me out, every subsequent interaction gets examined through that possibility. If the story is I'm afraid of success, you can spend months trying to overcome resistance that might actually be telling you something useful.

The analysis can be intelligent even when it began from the wrong place.

2. What changes when someone else can see with you

There is a reason we often gain clarity while talking to another person even when they haven't told us anything we didn't already know: we're no longer trying to observe the situation entirely from inside it.

There is also growing research interest in what happens between two people during this kind of interaction, rather than treating conversation as nothing more than an exchange of words. A 2025 systematic review of studies measuring two people’s brain activity simultaneously during clinical encounters found interpersonal neural synchrony across all 11 included studies. The field is still small and far from settled, but the broader point is interesting: an interaction contains measurable interpersonal dynamics that are not captured by its verbal content alone.

This is also where the way I work becomes useful.

If you bring me a situation you can't make sense of, I'll listen to the actual story: what happened, what people said, what you know and what you don't know. I use evidence-based practices such as strengths-based coaching and solution-focused questioning to help examine the situation, assumptions and available perspectives.

I don't assume that what I experience as energetic perception is the same phenomenon the studies are measuring. There's no evidence for that. In practice, though, while I'm listening to what you're saying, I'm also paying attention intuitively and energetically.

I pay attention to anything that becomes salient while you're talking. Perhaps there is a shift when you mention something that seemed like a minor detail. Perhaps your words are saying one thing while what you're conveying energetically seems to say something else. Perhaps something simply stands out strongly enough that I want to ask about it.

I'll tell you what I notice. If it resonates with you or seems worth investigating, we follow it.

Suppose you're telling me about a job you can't decide whether to leave. You give me five very convincing reasons why staying is probably sensible, but every time you talk about actually remaining there, I notice a strong change in your energy.

I might simply point that out and ask what you notice.

Perhaps you immediately realise, I've known for months that I'm finished here. I've just been trying to make staying work.

But perhaps that's not what happens at all.

Maybe when we explore the shift, you realise that you don't actually want to leave the work. You want to stop working with one particular person. Or you want more authority. Or the part of the job you cannot tolerate is something you had assumed was non-negotiable without ever checking.

The point isn't that I energetically detect the answer.

I notice information that may be useful, bring it into the conversation and we investigate it together. Sometimes the client recognises something they have known or felt all along but hadn't consciously registered. Sometimes an entirely new insight emerges. Sometimes what looked significant turns out not to be.

“She picked up very fast what the key issue/issues were and that way found the right tools for me.”
— 1:1 client

3. You don't need to know which part of you is right

People who perceive a lot can easily end up trying to determine which internal signal deserves authority.

Is this intuition or fear?

Am I picking something up from them or reacting to my own history?

Is this an energetic perception, unconscious pattern recognition, an emotional response, or simply a thought I've repeated often enough that it now feels true?

Those can be useful questions, but you don't always have to answer them before you can move forward.

You can start with something much simpler: What am I actually noticing?

A perception can be taken seriously without being treated as truth. An interpretation can be examined without being either defended or discarded. Observable facts, reasoning, bodily information, intuition and energetic perception can all be brought into the same inquiry.

That is much closer to how I understand discernment.

It isn't choosing intuition over analysis. It is becoming more precise about the information you actually have, including information that may not have made it into your conscious analysis yet.

4. What is the thing you can't get clear on?

You probably don't need to search very hard for it.

It may be something you think about while driving or making coffee, something you keep discussing with the same friend. Something you've decided three times and then undecided. Something that keeps producing a low-level this isn't right, even though you can't explain why.

It doesn't have to be professional. The same process applies to relationships, family dynamics, decisions, conflicts, recurring patterns and situations that simply refuse to make sense.

And you don't have to arrive with a well-formulated coaching goal.

In fact, I don't really know what the problem is is a perfectly good place to begin.

Bring me the thing you can't get clear on

I'm opening private sessions for exactly this kind of situation: something you have already thought about, perhaps extensively, but still can't see clearly enough to know what is happening or what to do next.

Bring the situation as it is. You don't need to diagnose it beforehand, decide whether what you're sensing is “really” intuition, or make it sound coherent.

We'll look at what you know, what you're noticing and what may have been hiding in plain sight, until the situation becomes clearer.

If you have something like this, send me a DM or email at [email protected] and tell me briefly what you're dealing with. A sentence or two is enough.

Until next Sunday,

Niina

References

• Zapparoli, L., Mattavelli, G., Gorrino, I., Devoto, F., Rizzi, R., Grecucci, A., & Salvato, G. (2026). Large-scale neural systems linking bodily self-awareness and valuation in decision-making. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 106908. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2026.106908
• Adel, L., Moses, L., Irvine, E., Greenway, K. T., Dumas, G., & Lifshitz, M. (2025). A systematic review of hyperscanning in clinical encounters. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 176, 106248. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106248
• Craig, A. D. (2002). How do you feel? Interoception: The sense of the physiological condition of the body. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3, 655–666.