The Power of Showing Up

For many years I’ve dreamed of going into a studio and recording my own podcast. I certainly have the material for one. And to be completely honest, I started it a year ago, having no idea where it would go as it all felt so immense and overwhelming to navigate. I had a pretty clear idea of my focus and how I wanted to expand it over time. So I started. Like most of us, we want to know when we start something new that its going to work out. My biggest fear was that it wouldn’t land for people, it would flop, or that my day job would take up too much time that I would be in overwhelm about continuing it. The list of fears and self doubt went on and on. “Would anyone want to hear this?” “How vulnerable am I willing to be?” “Will this help people?” “Is this going to fail after all this time and energy doing this?” My perfectionism also continues to be a challenge.I scheduled time to go into my friend’s studio, and his suggestion was to just practice turning everything on, sitting in front of the mic and speaking. I have been public speaking for 20 years now, but sitting behind a microphone just you and the quiet space is a new feeling. It requires a different settling in of your voice and your presence. When I was a young child, I always wanted to be in the spotlight, on stages and football fields twirling for the halftime show. I lived in a very small west Texas town of 4,000 people, and I loved to see my reflection in the front glass door, twirling my heart out to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. I knew every word. I would ask my mom and stepfather to sit and watch me show them the dance and twirling sequence I had put together, and then I would gather the neighborhood kids to teach them all how to twirl. (Whether they wanted to or not!) I remember going into the mall in Lubbock, Texas where they had little recording studios where you could choose an instrumental of a song, sing and record it, and your end product was your voice on a cassette tape. My mom had many cassette tapes of my sister, Amber, and I singing. It made me feel like a rock star then, and I took it very seriously. Over the years, having been on numerous podcasts and video, I’m no stranger to a microphone. But there is something inspiring and exciting about creating and imagining it yourself, just you, your computer, the microphone, your art, and the sound studio. It is one of my favorite things.So a year ago I started learning how to use editing software, navigating the buttons and the flow of my voice. After some time doing this, I fell completely into my joy. I feel completely alive when I am in the studio because I lose sense of time, it feels completely natural and purposeful. It feels like the thing I’m meant to be doing.One of the realizations I’ve had in this process, although I have stopped and started so many times, is that we don’t create just to make money. We give our gifts away because they are not ours to keep. We create for the joy and love of creating. And in giving away our gifts, we impact the world but we also impact ourselves. Once I let go of the idea that my podcast had to show proof of success or that it needed to monetize in a certain way for me to not feel like a failure, when it truly became about service and the art of creating, the pressure dropped. The joy became palpable, and the experience has become much more freeing. The Illusion of CertaintyWe want to know before we jump in how things are going to work out. We want to know what's next. We want to know the ending before we take the step, that the net is going to appear, and the light will reveal the pathway. Often in life, we don’t get that. We may be given hints, insights, and signs along the way that we are going the best, right way, but most of the time, it requires trust. It is in the courageous leap that the net appears. It is in the unknown, dark cave we travel through with that headlamp lighting our path just only a foot before us, that we discover so many powerful gifts, twists and turns along the way. The learning is in the journey getting there. The journey is so much more important than the final destination. How else would you grow and see what you’re made of and what you’re becoming? And so in this audio clip from my yet to be, unreleased podcast, I dive a bit deeper into the first step of starting again, starting a new thing: the power of showing up. Start there. I hope you enjoy it. Get full access to Savanna's Substack at savannanoelle.substack.com/subscribe