Stewardship in One Sentence
I recently conversed with a friend about how running a business requires you to enter a relationship with power. She asked me how that journey had gone for me. I replied that if I could sum up what it's meant to steward a business over the last six years in a single sentence, it would be:
Choosing to be skillful, knowing it won’t be seen.
Of course, there are myriad other facets to being a CEO.
But THIS is the proverbial bridge that, if avoided, will ensure your business is not in service to Life but to your own wounding.
When you have the immense privilege and power of running your own business, with that comes great responsibility.
Most of us were not taught the true essence of responsibility nor how to be in relationship with it.
As a result, we spend our lives oscillating between the overwhelmed, exhausted martyr perceived as the good person and the non-committal escapist seen as the freedom seeker.
Read that again ⚡️
One of the greatest responsibilities of stewarding a company is being trusted and entrusted — with yourself, your team, your clients, your audience, and Life itself.
This frequency exists in an octave beyond the hollow recognition we've become accustomed to chasing.
There is a profound unseen symbiosis to this energy.
Your commitment to showing up for Life, to the best of your ability, invites trust.. You are broken open by the majesty of being entrusted. And in return, your commitment has no choice but to turn into devotion. Infinite Devotion—regardless of recognition or sight.
This has nothing to do with followers on social media, likes on a post, or profit numbers.
There will not be rooms of people giving you standing ovations.
You will not be classically rewarded for this.
There will be countless unseen moments in which you can choose to do what’s easy or right—free of recognition.
This is the essence of stewardship.
Doing everything in your power to show up in a good way for what you have been entrusted with. Staying deeply attuned to when you have fallen into burdensome obligation or are heading towards negligent disregard
In stewardship, these energies are no longer viable options. They are welcomed as part of your sacred humanity but are there to be released or transformed.
You privately process and transform what belongs to you so you can show up from responsiveness. You do everything in your power to be an antidote—a creator, not a destroyer, of worlds. You allow yourself to be wildly misperceived and judged. You create space to be people’s villains, even when you’re acting as a superhero would. You withhold more than anyone will ever know. You repeatedly say no to the low-hanging fruit, knowing a simple yes would bring immense superficial riches yet lead you away from true value. You embrace radical self-responsibility and co-creatorship. You stay in communication with Life beyond preference.
You are kind without being fake.
Careful, without being fearful.
Clear, without being cruel.
Silent when you see everything.
Generous, within your capacity.
Humble when the world tells you to stay hungry.
And you don’t need nor expect acknowledgment for any of it.
That’s not why you’re doing it.
If this brings up the energy of martyrdom and burden, you have lost the essence of stewardship.
If this makes you want to run back to the land of hollow choices as far away as possible, you have lost the essence of stewardship.
If you see this as far too serious or not serious enough, you have lost the essence of stewardship.
This position is an honor.
Arising from one of the greatest privileges we have access to—choice.
As you move from concept to knowing…
From awareness to experience…
From experience to wisdom…
You are granted access to sight beyond explanation.
This isn’t attached to hollow recognition because it never could be.
These are the rare nutrients for something far more significant—feeding the real.
These nutrients are not for sale.
Why would they be?
They feed your work and your Life in a way nothing else could.
They liberate all the actions you thought were ‘the thing’ from their prisons of misperception.
They open the doorways to enjoying this wild and unpredictable adventure.
They are the juice that no one can explain, but everyone and everything that reveals itself in perfect timing responds to.
Without them, your business becomes nothing more than another pain-driven patch in the fabric of commerce—feeding a version of the world whose ending is imminent.
Stewardship: choosing to be skillful, knowing it won’t be seen.