I found myself inside an emotion I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t despair. It wasn’t fear. It was something new.
I wasn’t in touch with it. I had been avoiding it. My business has been in a season I didn’t expect — a long, humbling one. For a year and a half, I’ve been telling myself to stay open, stay trusting, stay generous. And still, nothing had shifted the way I thought it would.
While listening to an activation with Sarah McCrum, she invited us to notice what emotions were present. That’s when it surfaced.
I kept wondering what I was feeling. I tried different names.
Hopelessness came close, but it didn’t quite land.
Helplessness, too familiar, but it wouldn’t settle.
Then the thought arrived, simple and flat:
Nothing I do makes a difference.
It hit like a dull bite.
And that’s when the word finally surfaced.
I felt futile.
Nothing I was doing was moving the needle. My efforts were in vain. It felt like watching a door slowly close while I was still inside the room.
Fear followed. And when fear comes, my mind doesn’t walk — it ricochets. My jaw tightened. Thoughts bounced hard and fast, trying to outrun the ground beneath them.
I shared this with Sarah.
She didn’t try to fix it.
She didn’t offer a strategy.
She invited me to stay.
Stay with the feeling of futility.
When I didn’t follow the story — that it was over, that I had failed — and instead stayed with the energy itself, something else appeared. A drumbeat in my belly. Deep. Loud. Persistent. Like something knocking from the inside.
She invited me to keep staying. To see where it wanted to go.
That was the edge.
Everything in me wanted to tighten, analyze, and do something useful with it. Relaxing with it felt exposed. Unprotected. Like standing in the weather without a coat, teeth slightly chattering, waiting.
But this much I know: when I learn how to be with something, really be with it, it moves on its own. It doesn’t need my help. And when it moves, something new arrives.
Futility didn’t ask me to fix anything.
It asked me to stay.
Where in your life are you trying to fix or outrun a feeling that might be asking you to stay?
If this resonates, I’d love to have a conversation with you.
Book a time here.
