When the Signal Gets Weak

For the past week, I'd been preparing for a podcast interview.

Every day I reflected on the questions.

Every day I wrote.

Every day I revised.

I wanted my answers to come from my heart.

No matter how much I worked with them, they never quite landed.

By the morning of the interview, I still didn't know what I was going to say.

I could feel fear beginning to creep in.

So instead of trying harder, I returned to the practice I've been writing about.

I became quiet.

I trusted that I was perfectly guided and supported.

And I asked a different question.

What wants to be shared today?

I wasn't asking for the whole interview.

I was simply asking for a thread.

Then the internet went out.

Without Wi Fi, I had one bar of cellular service. Not enough to support a Zoom interview.

I grabbed my phone, my notebook, and my coffee and started driving, hoping to find a stronger signal before the interview began.

As I drove, it occurred to me that there were two signals I could lose that morning.

The internet was one.

My connection to the deepest, wisest, and most loving part of myself was the other.

Only one of them would determine how the morning unfolded.

Eventually I found enough signal to join the interview from my parked car.

The technology still glitched.

The audio cut in and out.

We restarted more than once.

Nothing unfolded according to plan.

But something inside me had already settled.

By the time I drove home, I realized I had spent the morning practicing exactly what I had hoped to share.

The answers didn't precede the conversation.

They emerged within it.

Looking back, I'm beginning to realize this isn't a connection we discover once.

It's a relationship we cultivate over time.

And over time, we begin to trust that the next thread will appear.

By the end of the morning, I had found the signal I was looking for.

It just wasn't the one I thought I needed.

Today's Principle

Preparation has its place.

But some of life's deepest wisdom only becomes visible through participation.

A Question to Carry

Where are you looking for your next answer?

Outside yourself...

or from the quiet place within that already knows the next thread?

What I'm Listening To

Today... my inner voice.