SPARK Sovereignty.

The Practice of Returning

I want to tell you about a Zoom call I'm still sitting with.

I was excited going in. This was a reconnection with someone I greatly admire — a colleague whose work I respect deeply, whose opinion of me matters perhaps more than it should. I didn't define my expectations walking in, which I now recognize as my first miss. What I did have was a knowing in my belly. A quiet signal, even before she picked up, that I was out of my league.

She answered eating. Not focused on our shared space. And something shifted.

I could feel myself get physically smaller. My words went soft and scattered. I watched myself not make sense of the story I was trying to tell — not crisp, not clean. My face flushed. Somewhere underneath the conversation, a voice: “She thinks I'm a moron.”

All of a sudden, I felt like an eight-year-old playing dress up.

Here's what I want you to notice, though — because this is the part I'm still learning from: I didn't leave. Not entirely. Even in the undertow of that discomfort, something in me was also watching. Aware. I focused on my breath. I reminded myself that she operates as a Cheetah — we've been exploring animal archetypes in the LAB, and at least I had that foothold. “Too bad I didn't think about that before the call”, I thought, and almost laughed at myself. When will I say uncle and prepare with energetic intentionality for these meetings?

It wasn't graceful. It wasn't steady in the way I like to imagine myself feeling grounded. But I stayed in the conversation. I used the tools. I noticed the drift and held on.

What is true and what is real about that call — I'm still sorting out. The story my nervous system wrote in the moment may not be the full picture. That question itself, I've come to understand, is part of the practice.

Here is what sovereignty is not: Confidence. Certainty. Having the right words arrive at the right moment. It is not the absence of the flush, the smallness, the eight-year-old feeling.

Sovereignty is the capacity to notice when you've left yourself — when someone else's energy has quietly pulled you from your own center — and know the way back. The returning is the work. Not the arriving.

And sometimes, if we're honest, there is no returning. Sometimes we go down with the ship and sort through the wreckage afterward. Not long ago, a trusted colleague watched me fumble through a conversation and told me, with love, that I was getting lost in my underwear. She wasn't wrong. There were no tools deployed that day. No breath, no curiosity, no humor. Just the mess. That's the baseline. That's where this practice begins.

The returning looks different every time.

A few weeks ago, I was preparing to reach out to partners — asking for help promoting something I believe in deeply. Asking for help, for me, is harder than giving it. I could feel the weight in my chest before I'd written a single word. The pull toward extrinsic values was real: What will they think of me? Will I seem small? What if they say “no”? And then something shifted. This isn't about me. I imagined holding a megaphone — not for myself, but for the people whose lives are genuinely changing inside our community. The moment I took my ego out of the equation, the words came. Mission bigger than discomfort. Return.

Then there was a moment inside a recent Metrics Makers session — a year-long commitment our LAB members make to measurably transform one energy tank. One of our members shared a humble commitment: one glass of water a day. My instinct fired immediately: that's not enough. I said so, offered the formula, and was gently corrected. And she was right. The goal for that session wasn't hydration. The goal was identity — becoming the kind of person who chooses herself. I said out loud to the group: "I was wrong." Return.

Two very different triggers. The same muscle — noticing the drift, choosing to come back.

In that same session, another member admitted it would have been so much easier to choose to clean out her inbox. She didn't. That's sovereignty too — not grand, not dramatic. Just the quiet decision to stay tethered to what actually matters, even when the easier choice is right there, warm and waiting.

We are each, in our own way, practicing this. The notice. The breath. The return. And the beautiful, humbling truth is that we practice it better together than alone — which is exactly why spaces like SPARK 360 and the LAB exist. Not to teach you sovereignty as a concept. To give you a container in which to practice it, fall down in it, and find your way back — with people who are doing the same.

What are you allowed to do — even if no one else gives you permission?

I'm still asking myself that question. I suspect I will be for a long time.

SPARK 360 is a six-session foundational program designed to help you understand your human operating system — your five energy sources and how to manage them with intention. Cohort 1 is underway. Cohorts 2 & 3 begin June 18. Learn more at DRIVENpros.com.

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