When Showing Up Fully Still Isn't Enough
I hope your heart gets bigger in the time it takes for your dreams to deliver” - Matt Corby
I shared a version of this in my July newsletter and the responses caught me off guard. So many of you wrote back to say you'd been there too. That you'd walked into a hard room, given it everything, and still walked out unsure if it was enough.
That kind of response tells me this belongs somewhere more permanent. So here it is.
There's something nobody prepares you for. The moment when you show up fully, lead with empathy, choose your words carefully, and it still doesn't land the way you hoped.
I had one of those moments recently.
I had one of those moments recently.
Outside of retreats, I lead a nonprofit I founded six years ago, centered on community engagement. We've grown a neighborhood festival into one of the largest in our city, and this year, growth came with growing pains. So I stood in front of my community ready to own the mistakes and reassure everyone that things would be better.
I had a whole case ready. That things worth building take time to perfect. That anything alive will evolve, and evolution is messy. Rome wasn't built in a day.
All of it true. And none of it what the moment asked of me.
People didn't need my plan yet. They needed to be heard.
The Harder You Push, The Deeper People Dig
Psychologists call it belief perseverance. Our tendency to hold our beliefs more tightly when someone tries to change them. The instinct to correct, to explain, to win the room, is often the very thing that loses it.
I know this. And I still walked in ready to make my case.
The work isn't persuasion. The work is presence. The breath before you respond. Choosing curiosity over defense. Staying in the conversation even when every part of you wants to shut down, because staying open is the only thing that invites anyone else to do the same.
We live in a culture that treats life like a race. If you rest, you’re losing ground. I used to think of rest as a "pause" button on my progress.
The Question Worth Asking
We measure success by outcomes. Did it work? Did they come around? Did it go the way I planned?
But I keep coming back to a quieter question: did I show up as the person I want to be?
You can't always control the room. What you can control is the one or two things that actually matter in the moment, and trusting that those things count, even when the outcome doesn't reflect it yet.
That's not nothing. That's everything.
