On Discernment, Trusting Ourselves, and Becoming Who We Are Meant to Be

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” — Khalil Gibran

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we come to know ourselves. Not just intellectually, but emotionally, spiritually. How we begin to notice what feels like ours and what we’ve inherited. How we begin to differentiate between the voice that was trained to keep us safe and the one that’s whispering toward abundance and expansion. There’s something sacred about learning to trust yourself. And not just in the easy, self-affirming moments, but in the ones that shake you. In the moments where you’re not sure what the “right” answer is, where your gut and your fear feel like they’re wrestling. In those moments, discernment becomes a practice. In those moments, discernment becomes a way of listening to your inner compass without letting it be drowned out by the noise of everyone else’s expectations.

So what is discernment, really?
By definition, Webster’s calls it “the quality of being able to comprehend what is obscure.”
I would also say: discernment is the ability to perceive with depth and clarity. To sit with what’s not immediately visible or obvious, and still sense the truth of it. It’s less about having all the answers and more about learning to feel your way through the fog. Discernment is different than judgment. Judgment shuts things down. It corners you. It demands you pick a side: right or wrong, good or bad, black or white. And as someone who holds a lot of trauma from, I have hard to unlearn black and white thinking in order to grow my discernment. When we allow ourselves to sit in the gray area, then discernment invites us to stay curious. It says, let’s pause here and really feel this through. Let’s not abandon ourselves for the comfort of a quick answer. It no longer allows you to choose between right and wrong, rather it asks you to tune into what is true for you, in this moment, with the information, intuition, and values you carry. Discernment asks us to feel our way through a choice rather than force it. It invites us to be slow, spacious, and honest with ourselves. And most of all, it teaches us that just because something is difficult or unfamiliar doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

It often begins with that quiet, unsettling feeling—when something in us whispers “hmmm…this doesn’t feel right.” Even if we can’t explain it yet. Even if everyone around us is saying otherwise. That discomfort, that intuition, is not to be dismissed. It’s the body remembering what alignment feels like, and sensing when we’ve drifted from it.

As a child, when I was shut down from being “too talkative”, I started sitting and observing the adults around me, watching how they moved, how they spoke, how they treated others. I noticed very early how often people would say one thing and do another. They would preach kindness but treat houseless folks with disrespect. They would talk about truth but avoid the hard conversations. I didn’t always have the words for it then, but I felt it in my body—that quiet dissonance, the feeling of “i don’t think this is right.” That was my first education in discernment: the feeling I had.

And after all these years, I had to ask myself: when did I lose my sense of discernment? And the best answer I have is somewhere in my move to the United States, being a child who was bullied, wanting to feel loved, and having the feeling of being left out. Not fear of missing out, but fear of being left out when I was not included in spaces due to: class, ethnic background, religion, and similar lived experiences.

Gibran’s words continue to remind me that understanding doesn’t arrive wrapped in certainty. It often arrives cracked open, through the discomfort of questioning, the ache of transition, the slow breaking of old frameworks that once kept us safe. I had to learn to let go of my fears (something I work on every day)—fears of being wrong, of being left behind, of not being loved, of not being enough—just to be able to hear myself again. Discernment, then, is less about perfect clarity and more about staying present as those old shells fall away.

And the question that becomes most present for me is:
What does it take to truly align with values that honor us in ways that are ethical and moral?
What kind of courage does that require? What kind of discernment? Because when we start walking in the direction of our purpose, EVEN if we’re not totally sure what that purpose is yet, we begin to open our lives to deeper possibility. Not because everything suddenly becomes clear, but because we’ve chosen to stop betraying ourselves in the name of certainty.

It’s not always glamorous work. Sometimes it means choosing rest when the world says hustle. Sometimes it means asking harder questions of your friendships, your work, your rituals. It means saying “I don’t know yet,” and trusting that not knowing is still a form of knowing. Sometimes its sitting with yourself and asking, why didn’t something sit well with me? and expanding your world in what could be the reason. It’s asking yourself where does your ethical and moral compass point and why?

And that’s why it’s necessary. Because in a world that profits off of our confusion, our disorientation, our constant outsourcing of wisdom—choosing to listen inward is an act of liberation.

But this does not mean we do it alone. In fact, the more rooted we are in our own values, the more we can show up in community. The more we can be spacious with others. Because when you’re not constantly wondering whether you’re “doing it right,” you can actually be present. You can listen without defensiveness. You can love without condition. You can change your mind. You can grow.

Every time we pause to ask: Is this mine? Does this align with who I want to be and how I want to show up? What parts of this were handed to me, and what parts did I choose? Am I moving from love or fear? from ego or humility? Is this path widening or shrinking my sense of self? Is this choice honoring the dignity of others? Does this decision reflect the kind of world I want to help build?—we build the muscle of discernment. And over time, that muscle doesn’t just help us make decisions. It helps us create lives that feel like home.

So in a world where we are continuously fighting individualism and understanding care for ourselves and others, here’s to the slow, quiet, often unglamorous work of tuning in. To someone who remembers that they are loved. To someone who walks away when something doesn’t feel right. To someone who know they will always be enough in the right spaces. To trusting the nudges. To becoming someone you can count on.

And to remembering that you already are.