Turn Signals and Re-Routing
Intuition is a wise whisper. Re-routing is listening to it on purpose.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 82%
Stahl's term for the small intuitive whispers that a path isn't yours is turn signals. They arrive early and get ignored because acting on them means undoing everything you built. Re-routing is the deliberate practice of going inward, attending to those signals, and then asking the forward question: if this isn't for me, then what is? The outward half is conversation — she calls conversations a superhighway for clarity, and prescribes finding 20 people in your core skill set and asking how they feel about what they do. She also keeps unstructured conversational availability, phone away, because you never know who you're talking to.
Origin
Stahl's company is called Wise Whisper because she believes intuition is a wise whisper. Her own turn signals accumulated for years — feeling exhausted by five-hour lectures at King's College while classmates wanted more at happy hour, wondering if she was too sensitive for the career, and finally the core-value violation she could only read in hindsight.
Core principles
- 01Turn signals are the small whispers that a path isn't yours — they arrive long before you're willing to act.
- 02Intuition is a wise whisper, not a shout; it gets missed because it's quiet, not because it's absent.
- 03Re-routing is the process of going inward and paying attention to the turn signals.
- 04It's inconvenient to dislike your plan, so people sit with it instead of undoing it.
- 05Conversations are a superhighway for clarity — the outward half of re-routing.
- 06If this isn't for me, then what is? is the question re-routing unlocks.
How to run it
- 1
Catch the whispers
Notice the small moments: feeling at capacity, feeling exhausted where peers are energised, wondering if you're too sensitive for this. Record them instead of dismissing them.
Pro tip After five-hour lectures, Stahl wanted to talk about Britney Spears while classmates wanted more world affairs at happy hour. That mismatch was the signal.
Watch out It's really inconvenient not to like your plan, because then you have to undo everything — or you just sit with it, which a lot of people do.
- 2
Check the signals against your core values
The biggest turn signal is a core-value violation. Ask which values the path requires you to trade away.
Watch out You'll likely only be able to read this one in hindsight unless you've already done the core-values work.
- 3
Ask the forward question
Once you're willing to listen, ask: well, if this isn't for me, then what is? This is the moment attention becomes re-routing.
- 4
Have targeted conversations
Find 20 people working in your core skill set and ask them how they feel about what they do. Stahl says the information about what's next is inevitable.
- 5
Keep open conversational energy
Set an intention to be available for conversation in unplanned places — grocery store, bathroom line. Put the phone away when out.
Pro tip You don't need scripted starters. The intention alone — 'my intention is to have open energy for conversations' — is the mechanism.
In the wild
At her first DC networking event, Stahl spent the ride talking to the cab driver. The Marine she came with asked why she was wasting time on him. The driver turned out to have driven for the Clintons.
→ He got her a meeting at the White House. Stahl also credits a random bathroom-line conversation with her four-year national spokesperson role at SoFi.
Stahl felt exhausted absorbing the passion and disconnect of 300-person King's College lectures, wondered if she was too sensitive, and found the political world two-dimensional for her multifaceted personality. She wasn't willing to face it yet.
→ The signals compounded until the Pentagon — arming deployments, losing people to insider attacks — forced the U-turn she'd been warned about for years.
Common mistakes
Sitting with the signal instead of acting
Because undoing a plan is expensive, people register the whisper and then just sit with it. Stahl admits she did exactly this for years, and calls it what a lot of people do.
Waiting for conversations to be strategic
Stahl's biggest breaks came from a cab driver and a bathroom line. Filtering conversations by apparent status closes the channel that clarity actually arrives through.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone whose career is flatlining, plateaued, or quietly not interesting anymore.
Not ideal for
Momentary dissatisfaction that hasn't repeated — a single bad week isn't a turn signal.
From the transcript
“Re-routing is the process of going inward, paying attention to the turn signals, the little moments, the little whispers that you get from your intuition.”
“My company, even though it's branded as my name, it's actually called Wise Whisper and I think it's because intuition is a wise whisper.”
“Conversations are a superhighway for clarity.”
“It's really inconvenient not to like your plan, because then you have to undo everything, or you just sit with it, which a lot of…”
From the episode
Ashley Stahl: The Road to Self-Discovery, Uncover Your Core Skills and Values for Career Success
Ashley Stahl