As I sat in my little office and watched the rain come down, I allowed myself to fully sit in that moment. So often, I might have noticed the rain, been annoyed by the weak internet connection, and wondered how it would impact our weekend plans.

Instead, I realized the gift that sat before me. Stillness.

I haven’t always appreciated being quiet.

I know I’m not the only one. Everything around us asks for our attention, but very little asks us for it fully. Our minds race between thoughts, responsibilities, questions, and ideas before any one of them has had the opportunity to truly land—let alone expand.

For those of us who've spent much of our lives responding to one Monday morning crisis after another, it can be difficult to give ourselves the space to simply think.

And yet, for those of us diligently working toward creating something of deeper value, stillness is the very thing that’s required.

Giving ourselves the permission to create requires allowing there to be room to breathe.

To watch. To listen. To soak it all in. To wait.

“ Our capacity to hold everything can hijack the very thing we’re trying to produce.

A life of meaning.
A life of value.
A life.

What does it all mean?

And unfortunately, we can’t shortcut our way to that answer.

To build a body of work that truly speaks to the depth you carry inside requires nurturing.
Years of work. Patience. Experience. Wisdom.

These are not things you acquire simply by reading a book.

Building a brand, increasing your productivity, and speaking with influence can have their place, but they aren’t the work. When we replace the time spent actually developing our work with ways to accelerate our growth, we fill the space until there isn’t any room for the work itself.

The world is full of ways to help you become more, but developing something of substance requires something different.

And the questions that follow suit.

What am I really trying to create?
What are we really here to do?
How can I truly serve?

And those are BIG questions.

They are not isolated to one type of person.
They are everyman questions.

When we lose sight of those questions, our reasoning becomes murkier.

We get lost in what everyone else is doing. Comparing ourselves to their perceived growth, success, charm, or abilities—and we lose the plot of our own lives.

We replace meaningful questions with tactical questions.

And as someone who built an entire career asking tactical questions, I understand the attraction. Because we then feel like we have a task. A set of steps. A way to get through the weeds. A plan.

Often the answers go from feeling ambiguous to strategic.
What was once an enigma can be solved in three easy steps.

We distract ourselves with the very things that we think will help us grow, stand out, and succeed in the market. We build networks, systems, tools, partnerships, opportunities, visibility, and brands.

And we become experts on becoming experts.

We start spending our time perfecting systems, rather than deepening our actual work.
We spend hours listening to other successful speakers instead of reading, examining, and exploring our own ideas.

We gain another’s perspective and lose our own.

It’s not that strategic questions shouldn’t be asked and systems ignored, but if they replace the focus of our work, they no longer serve a purpose.

And sometimes we vacillate between tactical problem-solving and deep internal examination.

Self-understanding matters. It's essential.

And there are very wise people out there who have mastered the art of asking purpose-driven questions: what is someone’s "why," what brings meaning and fulfillment, and how to embrace life authentically.

It’s when the need for self-understanding becomes another form of self-preoccupation.

Cycling around self-improvement markers, self-edification, and self-development until it becomes our primary focus.

We listen to others' advice, seek validation, and get pulled in a million directions.
We start building endlessly and inadvertently discover we’re pretty good at most of it.
We pivot, redirect, and take on things that were never ours to carry in the first place.

We become the most important versions of ourselves that ever existed.

And the work gets lost.
We get lost. The whole effing point gets buried.

We spend years figuring out who we are in this world and lose sight of what we set out to create. The deeper inquiry, the richer insights, and what makes our work meaningful—the fullness of its importance.

We risk making the work about ourselves when we never move beyond understanding to considering who our work serves, how it contributes, and what it leaves behind.

The integrity you bring.
The knowledge that you’ve gained.
The wisdom shaped by lessons learned.
The discernment from years of application.
The contribution you can now offer.

And maybe that’s been the work all along.​
​