A Companion Guide for Surviving Chaos
How to Keep Going When Your Voice Feels Lost
You might think that given all the content I produce, both for myself and for my clients, that I’ve somehow graduated from the chaos of the creative process. That I’ve transcended the doubt and disarray. That I sit down to write and something clear, potent, and original filters through my fingertips like magic. But you would be wrong.
Just this month, I had a day of complete hopelessness. Nothing was working. I was trapped by the double-edged sword of being overwhelmed by the process and underwhelmed by the results of everything I poured myself into. I try so hard. I care so much. And when it still doesn’t land the way I want it to? It’s deflating.
What most people don’t tell you is that the process of finding your voice requires you spend more time in mess, in chaos, and in feeling lost than you ever will in clarity. You spend far more time in the unknown than in the known because by nature, when you’re just starting out, the whole world of marketing and building a business is 99% unknown to you. Your job isn’t to know everything right away, it’s to just keep cracking away at that percentage.
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Most of this work—whether it's writing your next blog, creating your next program, or clarifying your message—is about learning to operate inside fog. You can’t see very far. You never feel “ready.” And clarity arrives after you take the step into the unknown, not before. So you must learn to move forward when the path is unclear and you don’t know threats ahead, and still trust that you will survive and find your way.
An example from my life:
Every month, my VA and I produce so much content together. And when it comes to something like the Monthly Muse, which is one of the most meaningful pieces I write, I never plan it too far in advance. I want it to emerge honestly, not artificially. And sometimes when I plan too tightly, it starts to feel forced and disconnected.
But because of that, the process is unpredictable. Sometimes I write it the month before. Sometimes the week before. And sometimes… I freak the f*ck out because I have no idea what I’m going to write the night before it’s supposed to go out.
But somehow, it always gets done. And not only does it get done, but it keeps getting better. Every single month. Why? Because I trust myself. I trust my VA. And I trust our process. Not because it’s at all predictable or clear, but because we’ve done it 17 times now—and that is enough data to suggest we’ll get the 18th done just fine, too.
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But here’s the thing about the Monthly Muse: prior to its establishment came a long, long list of first and failed attempts. Years’ worth of false starts. A lot of embarrassing f*ck ups. Many days of frustration and disappointment: beating my head against the wall, unable to see the right next step, wondering why I bother.
All of those had to occur in order for me to arrive where I am now, creating something that I’m consistently proud of and that actually reaches people in meaningful ways.
The problem is, most people quit before they get here.
People don’t quit this process because they’re not capable; none of us are capable to begin with. They quit because they are unprepared.
This work is hard—that’s why most people don’t do it. To stay committed to this abstract, immeasurable, ungraspable, fickle thing that wants to come through you, when no one cares and when you don’t even like what you are producing…this requires monumental trust in yourself.
Here is what you need to know:
It’s a healthy sign if you feel lost in your voice—this means you are being called to find it.
When it comes to your voice, you will spend a lot of time feeling lost. The day you stop feeling lost, is the day when you have found it. I fully suspect that, for me, that will be the day I die.
Chaos is required for your voice to form.
Your voice is a bridge between the limitless and the limited, between what’s floating in the ether of imagination and what becomes real, graspable, and felt in the world. Every time you write something, name something, or say something out loud that didn’t exist before, you are translating energy into form. And this process is inherently chaotic.
Your ideas don’t arrive in clear bullet points. They arrive in sensations, flashes, images, gut hunches, tangled thoughts, and half-formed sentences. It’s your job to shape them, to choose what stays and what goes. To take something raw and render it meaningful. To give that idea the best and fullest expression possible in the material world.
Of course it feels messy. It is messy. You are midwifing something into perception from the depths of the unseen. Your voice forms as a result of being inside this chaos. Not around it, not in spite of it, but through it. So if you expect order from the beginning, you’ll never make it through.
The work, therefore, is to stop resisting the mess. To stop thinking it means something has gone wrong. And the more you can get comfortable being in chaos—not fixing it, not controlling it, but walking with it—the more fluent your voice will become in speaking what only you can say. This is what it feels like to do work that matters. You are not failing, you are forming.
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You cannot shortcut your way into trust.
Trust is not a feeling you manufacture. It’s a muscle you build. You can’t mindset your way into it, you can’t NLP it into existence. No affirmation, visualization, or strategy will drop it into your bones that deep. Like any muscle, it gets built through repetition—through failing and finding your way back, over and over again.
You get stuck. You think it’s over. You question whether you’ve ever had anything worth saying. You want to quit. And then… somehow… you don’t. Something won’t let you give up, so you give it the good old college try again, and something clicks. Or maybe it doesn’t, but you still show up anyway.
Eventually, your nervous system starts to recognize this pattern. Not the pattern of perfect clarity, but the pattern of your own resilience, of your capacity to keep going. Once you have that, your trust is in bloom and there is no longer any reason or need to bail.
The problem is, we rob ourselves of the building blocks necessary to create that trust inside us. We do this by not taking action, not allowing failure, not letting ourselves feel lost. These are all fundamental requirements for building trust in the process.
We think trust should arrive first, that it’s the starting point. But trust is the reward.
It’s what forms when you’ve seen yourself get through the fog more times than you can count. It’s what builds when you’ve survived the cringey posts, the drafts you never publish, the ideas that go nowhere, the days you want to give up. It’s what grows when you realize: I’ve been here before, and I know how to find my way out.
So if you’re in it right now—if you feel like you’re flailing in a pile of half-formed thoughts and half-dead confidence—this is not your signal to stop. Instead, this is your rite of passage.
Which brings me to the final and most important point:
Just keep going.
That’s it. That’s the whole secret.
It won’t always feel like it’s working. You won’t always feel like you’re growing. There will be long stretches of time where it feels like nothing’s happening at all. Like you’re spinning in circles, saying the same things, wondering if this is still your path—or if it ever even was.
But that’s when continuing to show up matters most.
Because if you keep showing up—not perfectly, not brilliantly, but just honestly—then something will begin to take shape. A new layer of your voice will start to reveal itself. And even if no one notices right away, you will. You’ll hear yourself say something you didn’t know you knew. You’ll feel something click into place. You’ll read a line back and think—wait… that’s true.
And then you’ll realize: you're not lost anymore. You are just navigating a tricky path.