What next? This is a question we’ve all been asking ourselves over the past year. And not in a good way. It’s as if we’re bracing ourselves for the next disaster to strike when we throw our hands up in the air and ask: “Whatever next?”

Have we been asking the wrong question? Nope, we’ve just been asking it the wrong way. Mike Dooley says that 2020 has taught him to ask himself at every juncture: How else can I see this? What’s now possible?

Nick Williams says that the right way to frame the question is: “What wants to exist in this world, through you, next? The answer could be about a next chapter calling you – maybe going on an epic journey, writing a book or moving to a new town. It could be about something huge . . . winning the Nobel Prize; finding an instant cure for Covid.

For many of us it would be none of the above. What, then, wants to exist in the world through you? The answer has to do with how you express who you are in everything you usually do – the way you show up in the world each day.

Madisyn Taylor explains it in a way I can really hear. She says that just as you deliberately decorate your home, you can consciously choose to decorate your life with your particular energy. Your life offers you the chance to express yourself within various contexts. Whether you intend to or not, you make a statement as you move through the world.

For example, Madisyn says that you shift the energy one way when you enter a room dressed elegantly and simply and another way when you show up in bright, cheerful colours and a floppy hat. One is not better than the other.

“The words we speak and the tone in which we say them are the music we choose to play in the world . . . Some of us fill the space with passionate arias, others with healing hymns. Again, one is not better than the other,” she says.

Expressing your true self is akin to knowing how to show up with your brilliance. Nick Williams says that your brilliance isn’t something you have to manufacture, but is part of who you naturally are.

“It is part of the calling that is etched upon your heart. But because it is so natural to you, it’s something you often have trouble seeing for yourself. You need someone else to hold up a mirror and help you see yourself without the usual distortions.”

Nick says that you don’t have to be in a place of adversity to start looking for someone to hold up the mirror, but you do need to hear that inner voice nudging you to show up with more of the essential you.

Granted, girlfriend, the nudging inner voice is not the only one you’re going to hear. There will be many other voices inside your head or even people in your life that will say discouraging things. You might listen to them because they frame the words in a way that promises to keep you safe.

Madisyn calls these voices, internal and external, ‘threshold spirits’, because they express all the doubts and fear that rise up when you linger on the threshold of a door that has opened up for you. Doors open when the time is right to enter a new space. Your progress depends on whether or not you’re willing to keep moving into new spaces as your true self.

There is no wrong door. If it opens to your touch, it’s your door – good or bad. We’ve all listened to way too many fables telling us that choosing the ‘right’ door is crucial; that you might be burnt when touching the ‘wrong’ door.

So what? Have you never been burnt? Traversing the loss, upheaval and uncertainty of the past year, you’re probably burning right now. Ask yourself: How else can I see this? How can I shift from this? How can I grow from this? What’s now possible? What’s next?

Of course there is a ‘next’ for you, girlfriend. As Richard Bach says: “Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.”