Dear Friend,
When I first started working with Joe and Mark, my co-founders at HALEN, I remember telling my friends, only half joking, that this project seemed to be guided by angels.
There has been something undeniably strange about the timing and synchronicities surrounding this company from the very beginning. These moments that are difficult to explain cleanly without sounding either deeply spiritual or mildly unwell.
Get this.
Two weeks ago, we were updating our pitch deck and landed on the slide about dream collaborators. The people we would involve in HALEN if we could wave a wand and choose anyone. Joe added a new image to the deck. Our absolute dream person.
The next week, he attended an event that he got a last minute invitation for, and no joke - that exact person walked into the room.
Now, this was not one of those giant conferences where A-list celebrities keynote and everyone in media, wellness, tech, and venture capital are packed into the same fluorescent ballroom eating tiny tuna tartare cones. It was relatively intimate. And somehow the two of them ended up in a real conversation. One with actual resonance. Enough resonance that we are now exploring ways to work together.
When Joe texted Mark and me the photo afterward, the three of us collectively lost our minds in the group chat.
Because this sort of thing keeps happening.
(Naturally, I immediately suggested we add Michelle Obama to the deck next and see what happens.)
At dinner last week, I was telling our friend and co-conspirator - I mean colleague - Janie about all of this. About the strange frequency of these moments, and how each of us seems to carry a very particular kind of conviction around HALEN.
About what happened at Joe’s event. About how we’ll have an idea on Tuesday and Mark will speak about it with a potential investor on Wednesday as though it already exists in the world and everyone else is simply catching up to it.
My version feels different. Less bold. More like this odd sense of steadiness I keep noticing in myself. Projects in the past have made me panic at the first real obstacle. This one doesn’t. Even when things become uncomfortably uncertain, I keep having the feeling that we’ll find a way forward. Or maybe that the way forward is already moving toward us long before we know exactly where to look for it.
Janie listened for a moment and then said, “In Kabbalah, this is what would be called: certainty beyond logic.”
And Friend, I practically lunged across the dinner table for my phone to write that down before the phrase disappeared back into the atmosphere from which it apparently arrived.
Because yes.
That was it.
That was the feeling I had been trying to articulate.
Joe didn’t put that image into the deck because he thought, “Wouldn’t that be nice?” He put it there from some deeper internal certainty that this person belonged in the orbit of the company before reality had offered any evidence to support the idea.
And somehow, reality responded.
That night, I pulled my notes app back up “Kabbalah: certainty beyond logic” and started to dig in.
Its teaching says that certainty itself has creative power.
Consequentially, this is not positive thinking or wishful hoping - it specifies that its actual certainty. The idea is that reality exists in a state of potential until certainty collapses it into actuality. Your certainty doesn’t just change your perception; it participates in what becomes real.
And this isn’t unique to Kabbalah. Christian scripture talks about ‘faith moving mountains’ - not as metaphor, but as mechanism. Buddhist traditions teach that ‘intention shapes reality,’ that the mind precedes all things. Islamic mysticism speaks of tawakkul - a trust so complete it borders on knowledge.
Different languages for something similar: certainty creates a channel. A pathway. An opening for something to move from possible to actual, depending on the quality of belief they bring to it.
Which is beautiful.
And also slightly concerning.
Because somewhere around hour three of contemplating “certainty beyond logic,” my brain very reasonably countered with:
“Okay, but isn’t this also how cult leaders think?”
Important question.
Because Elizabeth Holmes probably also felt pretty certain beyond logic. Every founder (or lover for that matter!) who drove their company (or relationship) off a cliff FELT guided. From the inside, conviction could feel identical whether you’re building something real or living in a la-la-land.
So where exactly is the line between deep knowing and self-deception?
Between vision and fantasy? Between faith and delusion?
…whether its in work,
intimate relationship,
with a future,
or sense of self.
I have been sitting with that distinction all week, and here’s what I’ve come to.
To truly be discerning, we must ask ourselves this one core question:
