Lessons from the Undercurrent

Three things that leaders need to hear right now...

Photo by Ryan Moreno on Unsplash

Last week, I facilitated a sacred leadership training. And as it always does, the undercurrent of the training held fruitful things to be gathered.

There are the outcomes you know are part of the teaching. And then there’s this world of learning in the undercurrent, revealing the deeper, ongoing work of leadership. Honestly, leaning into those undercurrent lessons is one of my favorite parts of leading trainings and ongoing mentorship work. And as the informal curriculum arises, it's a great place for check-ins and maybe even call-ins.

Here I am sharing three of those leadership lessons that might be the check-in and or call-in you need right now (cause I sure did!).

Lesson 1: Good enough is more than enough to change lives

The text we work with in this training has changed thousands of lives. It is also, to be honest, simply an adequately written book.

The message is strong. The organization is serviceable. The prose will not win awards. And none of that has stopped it from reaching people in their most stuck moments and moving them through.

The author didn’t wait until they thought the writing was worthy of the message. They wrote it. They released it. And because they did, the work lives, and it can land in the hands that need it.

When I think about my own manuscripts, almost completed but waiting for the “right” structure or positioning to emerge. The notebooks that are full of content waiting “for the right group” to be taught. The half-finished essays I’ve been refining for months because I’m not quite sure I’ve said everything I need to say. I think about the newsletters I’ve rewritten three times, even though the first version was true…and good enough.

When I get honest, I know all that effort isn’t about mastering my craft. It’s my inner tone policing, the protector I took on to be respectable to the establishment and to hide my wild heretical mysticism from those who might cast me out again. Yep…that’s what keeps me from flowing with good enough.

For some, it might be more of the imposter protector. Or the fear of not knowing enough. And just like in my own creative process, these patterns show up in sessions again and again, often dressed up as a value or standard, but are really just a form of withholding and holding back. Control cosplaying as process.

Perfectionism in production is how we protect our reputation while curtailing authentic expression and having the people who need our work waiting. And sacred leaders, I am talking to the people who carry real transmission, real medicine, are often the worst offenders. Because the stakes feel higher and the inner critic knows it, we create all types of strategies to keep us from letting the work move easily into expression and form.

Here’s what we get to remember: adequate expression of a strong message can change lives. Masterworks are not required. Our courage is.

The question isn’t whether your work is ready. It’s whether you are willing to stop using readiness as a reason to hold back. If something you’ve made is good enough to be true, it’s good enough to go. And this is where I am going to be leaning in as well. I have released some of the brakes, but there is more here for me to repattern. I am stepping into a 21-day practice to unravel the inner tone policing and reclaim more of my voice. Re-attuning what enough is feels like a new era of liberation!

Lesson 2: You are never too advanced to tend to the basics

This lesson can feel confronting, but leaders who abandon the basics eventually lose the thread of their own inner knowing, and you cannot offer others what you've stopped tending in yourself.

Advanced dancers don’t graduate away from fundamentals. They often work down a level. They work the basics with more precision, more depth, more deliberate attention than beginners, because they understand something beginners don’t yet: the basics are not the foundation you build on. They are the building.

This is true for leaders, too. And I see it happen to leaders at every level, after training, after launching, after momentum, they come into mentorship confused that they can’t keep producing the same results, that something has gone sideways, or that they feel off and not deeply connected. And when I ask about core practice, you know, the unglamorous, unsexy, foundational work, the answer is almost always a version of, ‘I kind of let that go.’ Or: ‘I’m doing it, but I’m just going through the motions.’ (Of course, they have all the reasons why.)

And sometimes there’s a subtler story underneath their reasons. It’s a sneaky belief that they’ve grown past needing to tend their foundation at the expanded advanced level. That the basics are for earlier-stage people. That their level of development means they can run on something higher, kinda like saying you don’t need water, only champagne.

Here’s the problem with that story of being beyond the basics: the more you grow your inner authority, the more you release external structures, dogma, and control, so the more your inner architecture is what is holding you. The foundation isn’t less important when you’re more advanced. It’s load-bearing in a way it never was before.

Neglecting it at that stage isn’t just risky; it’s detrimental. It’s like expecting a cross-country drive from a car you’ve never oiled, never tuned, and never properly fueled, and being surprised when it won’t move.

This moment, with the collective chaos, the personal transitions, the pressure coming from every direction, is not the moment to rely on your “gifts” to carry what practice is meant to hold.

So here is our call-in to get back to basics. And notice where it’s time to develop those basics more fully or go deeper into building a foundation that truly holds the fullness of your purpose.

Lesson 3: Who you are matters more than the modality

What I notice in most humans is how out of awareness they are of who they are being, while focusing so intently on what they are supposed to be doing. And this shows up big time with this third leadership lesson.

So, going straight to it: the next certification isn’t going to give you what you think it will. Neither will the next methodology, the next container, the next training. It’s not that those things lack value or aren’t worth your time. They can be genuinely clarifying, genuinely supportive. But they cannot do the essential thing of you becoming YOU. They can provide some structure and give you something to push against or lean into as you excavate and discover yourself. They might even give you something to stand on while you find your footing.

But confidence can’t take root in an empty shell. No modality can transmit what only you can transmit. I say the portal matters more than the blueprint.

You, your particular nervous system, your living relationship with power, your real embodied knowing of yourself, are the irreplaceable ingredients in every transformation you facilitate. The modality is the vehicle. You are what’s driving. And if you are not doing genuine inner work, not awareness-level knowing, but real, active, sensorial gnosis, then any method you touch is just a set of instructions. Technically correct but alchemically inert. And the longer you practice the steps without the fuller aspects of you present, the more evident this will become. And this is usually when we sign up for another certification.

The question I want you to sit with is, are you becoming THE ONE? The one who leads the transformation you came to lead. The one who is developing a right relationship with your authority and power. The one who is remembering and recognizing their essential place in this human family and why we need your truth. Not the one with the most tools, the most credentials, or the most sophisticated framework. The one who becomes the portal, who lives as transmission itself. No modality can give you that. Only you can grow into it. And this is the part that so many healers, coaches, and facilitators are missing right now.

These three lessons from the undercurrent are invitations into the next level of your work. This is a call to go deeper. Which one landed the most for you?

This article is part of that deepening for me: recommitting to letting creation move out the door in its “good enough” state. I’m also weaving the third lesson back into the 21-day practice of reclaiming my voice.

These undercurrents also point to what I'm building for you: essentialized foundational tools and advanced practices for leaders; so you know who you are, create from your essence, and trust yourself to lead more powerfully than ever before.

So if any of this is landing, if you recognize yourself in the waiting, the perfectionism, the drifting from basics, or the searching for the modality that will finally make you feel ready, tell me. Tell me where you are and what you’re ready to recommit to.

Let’s not do this alone.