Why You Can't Get Clarity (It's Not What You Think)
If you've been walking around saying I just want clarity, this is for you.
You can feel that there's something more.
A pull.
A next chapter.
A version of you and your work that's close, but not quite available yet.
You've probably journaled about it. Done the gratitude practice. You've maybe even bought the course that promised to help you find your purpose in five steps.
And the clarity still hasn't come.
Here's what I've learned, in my own life and in six years of coaching women at exactly this threshold: you don't have a clarity problem. You have a capacity problem.
I’ll show you what I mean.
The girl who couldn't name what she wanted
Let me tell you a story I have zero memory of, but every cell in my body recognized the moment I heard it.
A few months ago, while helping my mom clear out our family home of forty years, my brother held up a cassette tape. The Cocktail soundtrack. And then he told me that in 1988, I dragged our entire family through Eaton's department store on a mission.
I needed something. I knew I needed it. I could feel it. The problem was, I had no idea what it was.
All I knew was that kids at school kept singing Kokomo at recess, and something about that song created a pull I couldn't explain or ignore. So eight-year-old me walked up to a man in the music section and asked for "Kokomo."
He had no idea what I meant. I had no other words to describe it. Perhaps my tone deaf singing?
But here’s the thing, he didn't hand me some random tape and send me on my way. He stayed in the question with me, showing me options, until together we figured out what I was actually looking for…. The Cocktail sound track, obviously.
I see that little girl everywhere now. In every woman who tells me: I know there's something more. I can feel it. I just can't quite get there.
Clarity is created, not found
Here's the part nobody tells you.
When the pull shows up and there's no room inside you to hold it, it doesn't feel like inspiration. It feels like frustration. Fear. An almost unbearable itch to get certain. So we get busy. We jump on someone else's strategy to feel like we're moving forward.
But the vision isn't hiding from you. Your system doesn't have room for it yet.
The judging parts, the managing parts devoted to doing, the parts that got burned the last time they were visible: every one of them is silently consuming the capacity a real vision needs to land. You can't perceive what you don't have room to hold.
Which means the clarity was never missing. The room for it was.
In the full essay, I go deeper into what this looked like in my own life this past year (including the dissatisfaction that gratitude practices couldn't touch), what the man in the music section actually did that most people don't, and the moment my clients almost always have when the vision finally reveals itself. Hint: it's rarely shock. It's duh.
Read the full essay on Substack
And if something in this landed in your body, my free private audio series Nothing Is Wrong With You is the beginning of exactly this work.
If you made it to the end of a story about a chubby eight-year-old on a cassette-tape mission through a long-gone Canadian department store, I have a feeling you're my kind of person.
With love,
Andrea
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Andrea Tessier is a Master Life Coach and Level 2 Internal Family Systems (IFS) Practitioner who helps leaders and visionaries trust themselves and lead from inner authority. Her work bridges psychology and soul, blending IFS with intuitive, embodied mentorship to support clarity, self-trust, and self-led living.
Learn more at: https://www.andreatessier.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@andreatessier
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreatessiercoaching