Why Most People Never Build a Body of Work
You feel it: the pull to create something original, to teach from lived experience, and speak in a voice that feels like your own. That instinct is the beginning of a body of work. The problem is we tend to imagine a body of work as something we build after we’ve become who we’re meant to be. We mistake it for proof of arrival—when in truth, it’s how we get there.
A body of work emerges from years of attention, devotion, and the discipline to make what you find material. It unfolds through two practices: living awake, and making something of what you find.
Most wellness professionals are doing their best at the first—attempting to live awake, always seeking deeper truth. The real challenge is this: are you giving shape and form to what’s moving through you—or letting it disappear?
To Begin Now or Wait?
The biggest mistake wellness professionals make when it comes to building a body of work is not beginning right now.
Instead, they wait until they feel ready, until they’ve arrived at some imagined destination, then tell themselves they’ll build it backwards. This is why most never build one at all: because that version of the process is an illusion.
Readiness doesn’t come before the work—it comes through it. You learn and grow through it. When you build as you go, something else happens: you see more clearly, capture more accurately, and begin to gather real evidence.
Your body of work becomes a mirror. It reflects you back to yourself. It shows you who you are, what you’re here to do, and keeps you aligned with how it's actually unfolding. And eventually, you see that your life never unfolds the way you imagined. Which means if you’re waiting to arrive before you begin, you may never begin at all.
Waiting to Be Ready Is How the Work Dies With You
The moment you begin attempting to live consciously—making choices from the inside out, tracking the shape of your thoughts, understanding your patterns, seeing the impact of your actions—you are already living your life’s work.
The problem is, most of it never leaves your body. This is especially true in the world of wellness and transformation, where we are rich in inner life but poor in external trace. We’re excellent seekers—we read voraciously, explore new modalities and actively integrate our findings. We’re steeped in nuance, allured by complexity, and fluent in depth. And it’s for the very reason that I believe we should be the most active at expressing our experience.
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And yet, we’re often the most hesitant—still waiting to “arrive,” still tangled in doubt. We're waiting to be more certain, complete, and ready. But in the world of transformation, there is no arrival. A body of work is not the result of certainty. It’s the residue of a life lived with attention, and the discipline to make concrete what you find.
Through Expression, You Become More of What You Are
One of the quiet gifts of writing a regular newsletter is that every issue asks me to report from inside myself. What’s going on for me? What am I working out?
It’s a rare and grounding thing to see yourself mirrored in something you’ve made real. Because I express regularly, the pieces stack over time into evidence of who I am—and the process helps me become more of myself.
This also happens for people in The Program when they do the daily visibility practice. After months of daily video, you begin to see more than what you're saying—you start to feel the frequency you’re living in; the reality of your being in the world.
This is what most people miss: expression, at its core, is about transmission. It’s about putting your data into the field and leaving more parts of yourself behind when you go.
If you seek, wrestle with ideas, or if you’ve been quietly building an internal cosmology just to stay alive—that is your body of work.The only question is whether you’re giving it form. And if not—you should ask yourself why.
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