After a near month-long hiatus, I’m back on Soul’d podcast with life updates and some new insights regarding the Soul’d trajectory. I want to organize this episode around this one main question: What did my recent experience teach me about how expansion actually works?
Part 1: Where I Am Now
Prior to this blog, the assumption was that the Soul’d trajectory ends in convergence – where your stewardship finally meets Life’s stewardship. Reality catches up to your coherence and you’re finally living in a new reality. I’m here to tell you: yes, reality does catch up to your coherence, but not in the way you expect, and always for the purposes of clearing out the versions of you that will hold you back in any new reality.
There comes a point in the Holding Pattern where things need to change toward what is true, based on what is internally coherent for you, and this manifests externally like the ground is crumbling beneath you. Perhaps deadlines appear on the horizon. Perhaps old relationships, contract, situations, etc. come to an abrupt end. There’s change and lots of it. But because you’re holding steady, you’re observing it. You’re witnessing the crumble of an old life and wondering where it will take you next. It’s important to understand that everyone’s experience will be different and it’s entirely based on what they need to let go of from the past, where they need to release control in the present and how they need to move differently in the future.
In my own experience, I was asked to do the hard thing, face my fears, have courage, and stay strong. As many of you know, I had a move coming up. I had spent the better part of the summer searching for a home for me and my two boys. The move was hectic, and if I’m going to be honest, every single day contained uncertainty and obstacles and me thinking, “WTF,” from sun up to sun down. It was so chaotic, that on the day we actually moved out, we had nowhere to go and had to put our belongings in storage. We stayed in a hotel for time, then an airbnb, then with family. We didn’t actually move into a new home until 10 days after we moved out of our former one. Without going into the drama and the details, there were a lot of “fly by the seat of my pants” decisions that I had to make that didn’t necessarily feel good, because they stretched me in ways I didn’t want to be stretched, but at the end of the day, they got me to where I had to be.
This entire experience, to me, was the epitome of surviving. And because of that, I was profoundly confused. How could I have been on a journey of internal coherence and at one point stabilized on my trajectory just to have to endure what felt like a total collapse?
And it’s because that world of mine had to collapse. That version of me that carried that world – those dynamics, those relationships, certain behaviors, certain beliefs – had to collapse completely so that all that remained was true coherence, rooted in reality. Meaning every area of my life and myself – the good, the bad, the ugly, the “anything but that” – had to be seen in its full honesty and accepted. This is true coherence. This is wholeness. I had to fully embody what I had only understood intellectually.
So, while I was in the holding pattern, I was still holding a reality that held many untruths. And once my stewardship in that reality met its edge, I had to let go of what was no longer going to move my life forward anymore. Again, that’s relationships, behaviors, dynamics, habits, even routines and structures. I revisited everything. It was painful but essential. Because I learned something fundamental to the entire Soul’d trajectory: What if the next stage is less of: “receiving what you’ve been waiting for” and more of: learning how to participate in expansion without returning to force?
If that’s the inquiry that starts to developing during what felt like a collapse, then perhaps it’s not collapse at all. It’s something called: Emergence. Because here’s the truth: I didn’t collapse. I stayed Christina. I didn’t abandon myself. I didn’t revert to old ways of being. I stayed with myself. I emerged so that I could expand coherently.
Part 2: What I Learned from Emergence
Now, I’m going to do an entire episode next week on what emergence is and the mechanics behind it, but today I want to get to where I am in the unfolding of Emergence. The context of this will help to understand the significance of Emergence and why it changes everything for you.
Because this experience taught me a lot about how my Stewardship and Life’s Stewardship actually interacts.
What I’ve come to realize is that Stewardship doesn’t start and stop with the vision for Soul’d. The concept of Soul’d can be expansive in and of itself. In fact, I’m starting to see that that’s the entire point of it. If you’re becoming the most expansive version of yourself, you need to be expanding.
Stewardship asks you: How do I responsibly tend to what is mine? With the Soul’d approach, you’re also asking yourself: What action can I take without violating myself? And, at what pace can I sustainably participate? And, how do I actually build from my essence as the generative source of the life I’m building?
Being essence-led doesn’t mean you figure out your calling, put all of your eggs into that basket, and call it a day. That’s not a coherent relationship with reality, and furthermore, nor is it a coherent relationship with your essence.
You are a multifaceted human being, with a variety of unique strengths and skills, that can be applied and expressed in a multitude of ways. You have the capacity and the privilege to make a massive impact in the world… to people, places, institutions, communities, belief systems, worldviews and more. Your essence cannot be confined to a singular message or mission or method that serves only a small percentage of your greater impact.
We cannot confine your essence to a box. Your essence longs to be expressed far beyond that. Perhaps as a parent, as a teacher, as a coach, as a mentor, as a friend, as all of the ways you long to show up in the world. Your essence is like the Universe, and even the Universe is constantly expanding.
We are collectively starting to realize that our lives must become structurally less dependent on singular outcomes. People change. Jobs end. Marriages dissolve. Relationships shift. Contracts have bounds. We are starting to see the value in options.
And as I was emerging from what felt like a collapse, I realized that it only felt like a collapse because the only viable paths I had available to me were not ideal. It didn’t feel good. I had very little leverage, and if options create leverage, then leverage creates structural freedom. I came out of this experience knowing that I would need to create more places, more bridges, more opportunities for which options could emerge. I had to essentially rebuild my relationship with reality by continually extending my points of contact with reality in order to create leverage within my own life.
Because at the end of the day, I’m not trying to control other people’s responses. I’m building a structure in which no single response gets to control me. That’s leverage, and I think historically I’ve had an uneasy relationship with that word because leverage can sound transactional or manipulative. But structural leverage isn’t power over someone. It’s having enough viable options that you don’t have to violate yourself to preserve one.
One client? You have to keep the client. Five clients? You can lose one. One source of income? You have to protect it. Four income streams? One can fluctuate. One business that must succeed? Every slow month becomes existential.
We’ve been building our businesses by focusing on one predominant claim about our business. That one message. That one mission. That one method. That is only a part of who we are. There is no shame in expressing our essence through work that still serves the larger whole. There’s a reverence in that. My essence being expressed through my business is one thing. My essence being expressed through my business offerings, plus part-time employment, plus fractional work, plus project revenue, plus existing clients? And suddenly I’m more free because I have more options, more freedom of movement, more flexibility. That’s the point of entrepreneurship. It’s not just to hire yourself and work for yourself with one stream of income available. That still keeps you in the category of something comparable to a job. Yes, you may work your own hours and have more time-freedom, but what happens when you lose your largest client? What happens when your content isn’t hitting like it used to? What happens when you are misunderstood and cancel culture comes for you? The richest people in the world are building wealth through multiple income streams. We should too.
Because if you’re anything like me, and you have felt like you’re becoming Hercules while solo parenting, managing a home, building a business, maintaining relationships, and caring for yourself, then I need to ask yourself this: Have I built enough structural support around myself that remaining whole doesn’t continually require heroic effort?
You shouldn’t need extraordinary nervous-system capacity every week just to maintain your boundaries. Eventually the structure should help you hold them. Money helps. Savings help. Multiple income sources help. Relationships help. Childcare helps. Systems help. Skills help. Reputation helps. Audience helps. Recurring revenue helps. A professional network helps. Those things aren’t separate from an essence-led life. They’re infrastructure for one.
And this actually changes what the industry calls “capacity.” Maybe capacity isn’t merely: How much can I hold without fragmenting? Maybe mature capacity includes: How well have I constructed my life so I don’t have to personally hold everything? That’s stewardship again.
The missing piece is this: the practical side of Soul’d isn’t just listen to your signal, protect your essence, steward what’s yours. It’s also: Build a life capable of supporting the person you’re becoming. Because essence without structure can remain true and still be materially fragile.
Soul’d is now asking: How do you construct enough support around what is true that you no longer have to betray it every time reality gets expensive?
Part 3: What Changes Moving Forward
Right now, I am actively constructing the structure that supports this new reality that I find myself in. We’ve moved. We’re in a new home. The boys are at their same school. We have the same community. We have the same friends, routes and routines. But things are still very different now.
So my questions have continuously been:
What already emerged that now needs to become secure, repeatable and sustainable? Home. Routines. Boys. Nervous system. Boundaries. Existing income. Health. Community.
What does this new life still need that doesn’t exist yet? Reliable cash flow. Financial reserves. childcare optionality. diversified income. stronger professional network. recurring retainers. systems. eventually more scalable Soul’d infrastructure.
This is what I’m building now.
Emergence isn’t merely the moment the new thing appears. It’s actually the phase in which the new configuration has appeared enough that you can begin actively constructing the structure capable of sustaining it. This is where Stewardship is at its most effective, because you know what you’re responsible for. You know what you want. You know what you can do. You know how to move.
Because stewardship isn’t only tending the signal. It’s building support around it. Essence is an asset, and it requires infrastructure. You can’t continually extract from it. You can’t require your calling to simultaneously be your deepest expression, your creative outlet, your spiritual inquiry, your public contribution and your emergency cash generator while you’re under financial pressure. Eventually you’re mining the asset you’re supposedly protecting.
So during Emergence, you build for both linear outcomes and nonlinear outcomes for the purposes of convergence becoming possible. You can’t manufacture convergence. But you can create the conditions under which nonlinear outcomes become increasingly possible.
One email has a tiny possibility space. Fifty thoughtful relationships, years of published ideas, a podcast archive, professional credibility, past clients, six new pitches, twenty applications, a community, multiple offers, recurring clients, people who know what you do… Now you’ve created a field.
And here’s what can happen: Someone finds a two-year-old podcast and invites you to speak. A colleague knows someone who needs fractional help. A temporary employment role introduces you to somebody who eventually becomes a client. A person you’ve never met forwards an essay. One retainer leads to another. One relationship produces three.
That’s what I’d call nonlinear outcome in the framework – not supernatural causation, but an outcome whose pathway couldn’t reasonably have been specified from the initiating action.
Because as I said before: Nothing can converge with something it never encounters.
Which changes something that I’ve been talking about on the podcast for quite some time… the meaning of “letting Life respond.” This is important because otherwise that idea can drift dangerously close to passivity. And I can see how I was on the edge of that and how many listeners could have interpreted that phrase in that way.
“Let Life respond” doesn’t mean: Do one aligned thing and wait indefinitely for reality to reward your integrity. It means: Continually participate at the sustainable edge of what is yours, actively expand your field, allow your completed actions to ripple out, and relinquish ownership of which points respond and how they combine.
All of the methods within the Soul’d trajectory build a person who can safely expand their field without losing themselves inside it. That’s why this work matters.
Because once you do this, now you can widen the net without chasing. You can create options without becoming beholden to them. You can build leverage without using it as power over anyone. You can allow the ripple effect to happen without demanding immediate return. You can encounter nonlinear outcomes without pretending you manufactured them. And you can construct external support around your life so that your internal coherence no longer has to do all the load-bearing.
The greater lesson is this: Never allow your existing ecosystem to become the boundary of your ecosystem. Your essence wants to expand its relationship to the world. Let it.
And I want to leave you with this in case you are going through (or have gone through) a difficult season yourself:
“When God wants to make you successful, he doesn’t start by giving you comfort. He starts by taking it away. He will test your patience in ways you don’t understand. He will put you in situations where nothing makes sense. He will isolate you… not to hurt you, but to grow you. Because in silence, you hear him clearer. In struggle, you discover your strength. And in uncertainty, your faith gets built. He will challenge you, again and again, until the old version of you breaks and a stronger, wiser version of you is born. Because before he gives you the life you dream of, he builds the person who can actually handle it, protect it and not lose it. So if you’re going through a hard season right now, don’t see it as punishment, see it as preparation.”
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Begin with the foundation. Soul’d: Business That Begins Within is an essence-led framework for building a business that is rooted in coherence, not performance. Learn more: https://christinagiordano.com/get-guidance/the-e-book/