Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal Post in two sentences:

I sat at my desk with no idea what to write, and a WordPress time capsule led me from an old post about self-doubt to Steven Pressfield, Maria Popova and a poem asking me to pay attention. The experience reminded me that the dissatisfaction, resistance and uncertainty we experience as entrepreneurs may be part of an ongoing conversation with the work that is trying to emerge.

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At 5:35 this afternoon, I sat at my desk, aware that I had not yet written a post today. Today was also a drought day as far as reading goes…no notes were made in my journal, no ideas popped up. Well there was one. I read an interesting post today on Facebook by Dr. Howard Luks on “Enough” and at the time, thought I could write about the fact that small habits compound as do small problems. However I didn’t ‘feel’ that piece this afternoon and felt stuck now trying to think of something to write. I didn’t feel particularly inspired. I knew only that I am committed to writing daily, I just didn’t know what yet.

I clicked on the dashboard opened a new post and saw I had a message from WordPress. When I clicked it was offering me and opportunity to crack open the content time capsule:

Revisit your posts from this day, August 5.

There was a post from August 5, 2025, but I chose to go further back to August 5, 2023. The post was called Self-Doubt Has a Positive Message Within. It began with the Steven Pressfield quote:

The more important a call to action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel about answering it. But to yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.

Pressfield believes that the more important the work is to who we are becoming, the more resistance we may feel towards doing it. He also says that yielding to that resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are capable of becoming.

Three years ago, I wrote about how much that idea had helped me. I had spent years trying to rid myself of self-doubt. I read books about confidence, courage and taking action. I believed that if I did enough work on myself, I would eventually arrive at a place where self-doubt could no longer reach me.

Guess what?

Self-doubt is still here.

Inside that 2023 post was a link to an article by Maria Popova: How to Get Out of Your Own Way and Unblock the “Spiritual Electricity” of Creative Flow. I clicked on it. Before I reached the article, a poem appeared: Spell Against Indifference, written by Maria Popova.

The poem speaks of rain falling cool, bottomless and prehistoric. It asks us to remember that we are still here with our love songs and our wars, our space telescopes and our table tennis. Then it brings our attention to half of a robin’s egg shimmering in the wet grass, blue as a newborn star and fragile as a world.

I copied the poem into my journal.

Think about the sequence.

I sat at my desk, filled with self-doubt and uncertain about what to write. WordPress invited me into a time capsule. I chose a post I had written three years ago about the positive message within self-doubt. That post returned me to Pressfield’s thoughts about resistance. A link inside the post led me to Maria Popova’s exploration of creative flow. Before reading that exploration, I encountered a spell against indifference—a poem asking me to pay attention.

There are conversations taking place all the time.

There are the obvious conversations: the ones we have with clients, colleagues, friends, partners and strangers online. There are the conversations happening in the news, in WhatsApp groups, in meetings, in comment sections and inside the increasingly crowded spaces where everyone has something to say.

There is another conversation taking place too, and it is much easier to drown out.

It comes through something we wrote three years ago and have forgotten. It appears inside a book we suddenly feel moved to pick up again. It waits inside a link we once included for another reader. It speaks through a sentence that refuses to leave us alone, a question that keeps returning, an idea we have tried to dismiss, or a poem offering the visual of half of a robin’s egg in the wet grass.

What if creativity depends, at least partly, on our willingness to hear that conversation?

We speak often about showing up.

Sit at the desk. Make the call. Open the document. Do the work. Keep going when you don’t feel like it. I have given myself that instruction many, many times.

I have always understood showing up as a commitment to produce. This afternoon reminded me that showing up puts us in a headspace where we have no other choice…where we must surrender…not move and just listen.

Had I decided that my self-doubt meant I had nothing worth saying, I might have left my desk. Had I dismissed the WordPress prompt, I would not have reopened the 2023 post. Had I skimmed past the link, I would not have returned to Maria Popova. Had I been too intent on finding something useful to write, I might not have copied the poem.

The conversation required my presence before it could have my attention.

This matters to me as a writer. I think it matters just as much to me as an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs are surrounded by instructions about what we should be doing. We are told to become more visible, build an audience, create content, develop offers, study the market, learn the latest platform, strengthen our positioning, increase our revenue and scale what works. Some of that advice is useful. Some of it may even be necessary.

It is also loud.

The noise can make it difficult to hear the conversation we are having with our own work.

That conversation may be telling us that the offer no longer fits, that the business has outgrown the identity we created for it, that the work we keep trying to sell is no longer the work we feel called to do, or that the idea we keep doubting deserves more attention than the sensible one we have been trying to force.

The signals seldom arrive as a complete business plan. They come as discomfort, restlessness, resistance, curiosity, dissatisfaction and ideas that keep coming back.

We are often encouraged to treat dissatisfaction
as a problem.

Perhaps we need to be more grateful. Perhaps we lack discipline. Perhaps we are overthinking again. Perhaps we should settle down, choose something and stick with it.

Sometimes that may be true. Dissatisfaction can come from comparison, exhaustion, impatience or the belief that somewhere else must be better. We still have to examine it.

There is also the dissatisfaction described by choreographer Martha Graham. Speaking to Agnes de Mille about the creative life, Graham said that no artist is ever fully pleased.

There is “a blessed unrest” that keeps us moving and makes us more alive.

What if entrepreneurs experience their own version of that blessed unrest?

What if some of our dissatisfaction comes from sensing that there is more in us, more in the work, or another expression of the business trying to emerge? What if the resistance becomes stronger because answering that call may require us to release an identity, disappoint expectations, risk being misunderstood or begin again as a novice?

That kind of dissatisfaction can feel terrible. It can also be divine.

Self-doubt then becomes part of the conversation.

It may be asking us to stop. It may also be revealing how much the decision matters to us. Pressfield’s perspective is that resistance responds most fiercely to the work carrying the greatest potential for our growth.

I cannot say that every difficult idea is important or that every bout of self-doubt confirms we are onto something brilliant. That would be far too easy. We have to listen carefully enough to distinguish fear from warning, impatience from emergence, and distraction from a genuine call towards something more.

That listening takes time. It also requires a certain tolerance for uncertainty because we may have to stay with the question, and give ourselves enough time, before we discover what it might be asking of us.

This afternoon, I sat at my desk believing I had nothing to write. Three years earlier, I had left myself a message about self-doubt. Inside that message was another message about creative flow. Waiting there was a poem asking me to resist indifference and pay attention to the fragile evidence that we are still here.

Maybe our work is always speaking to us. Maybe our past selves are still participating in the conversation. Maybe the divine dissatisfaction we keep trying to silence is asking us to become available to the work we were born to do.

Strategic reflection prompt

What are you most dissatisfied with at the moment? Perhaps there is a conversation there waiting to happen. Surrender your need for an immediate answer, allow yourself to journal freely, and see what surfaces.

About Giselle

Most costly decisions begin with an inaccurate understanding of the situation.

I’m Giselle Hudson – writer and Pre-Decision Diagnostic Advisor. Most advisors offer solutions before carefully diagnosing the situation. I diagnose first — looking for what isn’t completely visible yet. Once we identify that, everything else becomes clearer, and confident, right action can follow.

Through my daily Strategic Alignment Journal, I explore leadership, decision-making, and the patterns that shape organizations, helping leaders make sense of complexity before committing significant time, money, or resources.

What’s the one thing about your business that frustrates you most — the thing that, despite your best efforts, you can’t seem to resolve?