There are very few things in life you can count on. People will leave and identities will shed like old skin. The world will change around you. Money will come and go, happiness will ebb and flow. Life will happen, and as it does, almost nothing will stay the same. But you do have one thing that will never abandon you: your voice.

One of the first things I had to give up in this work was caring what other people thought. Not in a flippant, surface-level, “I don’t give a shit” kind of way. I mean in the deeper, cellular sense of unhooking myself from external validation, of refusing to let other people’s opinions, reactions, or silence determine what, or whether I create.

I’ve never been what you’d call “disciplined.” I’ve struggled with structure my whole life. I can’t be rigid, and I rebel against systems. But one of the most profound transformations of my journey has been becoming someone who is devoted to their life’s work. When devotion came along, everything felt different.

Inside me there are at least two voices—no doubt more, but let’s start there. One is loud, sharp, and extremely opinionated. She’d make a great lawyer—fast, ruthless, never unsure of herself. That’s my ego. The other is strange and ephemeral. It floats somewhere around my mind, occasionally landing right between my eyes like a nagging thought. It doesn’t tell me what to do. It just gestures quietly, like: That way. That’s the voice of my gifts.

Most wellness and transformation professionals wander around acting like their life is made up of a random string of events with no connection to each other. They act as if they just decided to be a coach, a therapist, a healer, or a guide, as if they weren’t driven to it by a life full of experience and conditioning. They don’t see that their work was as inevitable as a river flowing downhill, shaped by every rock, curve, and invisible force acting upon it. And when they come to me for help, the first thing I tell them is, that’s not how it works. 

If you’re the kind of person whose brain is constantly firing off new ideas, I get it. It’s exciting. It’s intoxicating. It’s also a nightmare when you actually need to do something with them. Instead of feeling inspired, you feel stuck. Pulled in a thousand directions. Unsure where to start. You want to move forward, but the sheer volume of ideas keeps you paralyzed.