Stillness: The Power Move We Were Never Taught

You crave clarity.

You crave confidence.

You crave peace—not the vacation kind, but the kind that lives in your bones.

And yet…

You fill your calendar, chase deadlines, and sprint through life like it’s a fire drill. Even your "self-care" has a checkbox next to it. Yoga. Peloton. Meal prep. Done. Done. Done.

But when was the last time you truly… sat in stillness?

Not with a guided app, not with a podcast in your ears. I’m talking about the raw, awkward kind—the kind that forces you to meet your own breath without a buffer. The kind that feels less like a moment of zen and more like sitting naked in front of a mirror you’ve spent years avoiding.

Stillness, Brave Soul, is not soft.

Stillness is not passive.

Stillness is the gateway drug to your truth.

The Truth About Silence (And Why It Feels So Loud)

When I left my corporate career—60-hour weeks, international teams, constant problem-solving—I didn’t expect the quiet to feel like panic.

No more pings. No more meetings. No more proving.

At first, the silence was deafening. My nervous system didn’t know what to do without urgency. I wasn’t resting—I was unraveling. That unraveling was my initiation back to Self.

Because silence doesn’t just sit there. It speaks. It shows you the parts of yourself you’ve buried under performance. It reveals the grief you’ve postponed, the dreams you’ve archived, and the truth of what’s actually not working.

And let’s be honest: sitting in silence can be scary.

Stillness can feel like falling into a void. For women who have built careers, identities, and entire lives around motion and momentum, pausing can feel less like peace and more like freefall.

But here’s the plot twist:

The very thing you’ve been avoiding? That silence? That stillness?

It holds the answers your brain has been trying to spreadsheet its way into.

Why High-Achieving Women Struggle With Stillness

If you're in tech or finance, mid-career, and managing people (and likely a household too), you’ve been conditioned to earn your rest.

To sit still without a meeting? Lazy.
To turn your phone off for more than 15 minutes? Irresponsible.
To not know the next move? Weak.

So instead, you stay in motion. You execute. You overdeliver. You outshine.

And you quietly wonder: Why am I still stuck? Still exhausted? Still unfulfilled?

Because, Brave One, you’ve been taught that power lives in doing. But real power? The sustainable, magnetic, respect-commanding kind?

It lives in being.

It lives in knowing who you are when everything goes quiet.

Stillness threatens the identity of the “capable one.” The one who holds it all together. The one who always has a plan. When we slow down, we face the parts of us that feel unworthy, unseen, or unsure—and that feels dangerous to a nervous system built on productivity-as-proof-of-worth.

We live in a world that is addicted to noise—notifications, deadlines, opinions, distractions. But that noise is costing us. The pause, the stillness, the quiet… that’s where recalibration begins. That’s where mind, body, and soul start to sync again.

And yes—it’s a practice. One that builds over time. One that gets easier. One that starts with discomfort and ends in remembering.

Real Power Isn’t Loud. It’s Rooted.

Here’s what I’ve seen after decades of coaching, mentorship

and leadership:

The most powerful transformations I’ve witnessed don’t come from louder voices.

They come from deeper presence.

Women who once second-guessed every move began showing up in meeting rooms with anchored presence. Not because they arrived that way—but because stillness became their daily practice. Their strategy. Their recalibration tool.

Let me tell you a story from the final chapter of my corporate life.

I remember sitting in a division meeting—camera on, eyes glazed. I had stopped speaking up, stopped asking questions, stopped offering the strategic insights I was known for. My manager noticed. She pulled me aside and said, “You’ve been quiet. Do you know your peers and leadership listen when you speak? That you’re highly respected for the depth of knowledge and thought leadership you bring?”

And I told her the truth: “I think I’m exhausted. It feels like what I say doesn’t matter. I feel beaten, battered, bruised, and disrespected. I understand our leaders have to toe the company line—but when that line disrespects not only me but my team, I don’t have the energy to speak up anymore.”

That moment of silence—my own withdrawal—was not weakness. It was truth breaking through the noise. It was stillness speaking for me when my voice had nothing left to give.

That’s when I knew something had to shift.

The Inner Power of Stillness: What Your Energy Says Before You Speak

You don’t have to say a word to influence a room.

According to the HeartMath Institute, the electromagnetic field of your heart—your energetic signature—can be detected several feet outside your body. That means people feel you before they hear you. They pick up on your alignment, your congruence, your clarity.

Stillness calibrates that energy.

It’s what lets a woman walk into a meeting room, say less, and command more.

When you’re aligned, your presence does the talking.

This is the power of silence in leadership.

How to Begin: 3 Ways to Practice Stillness (Even If You’re “Too Busy”)

Practicing stillness doesn’t require a retreat or a perfect schedule. It requires a decision.

1. The 3-Minute Presence Pause

Choose one transition moment in your day—between meetings, school drop-off, or before logging off. Close your eyes. Feel your feet. Breathe.

Not to relax. Just to be.

This is about keeping still, not fixing. Just listening.

You’re not doing this to solve anything. You’re doing it to remember who’s actually running the show (hint: it’s not your to-do list).

2. Silent Commute Challenge

No podcasts. No calls. No music. Just you and the road (or sidewalk). Let your mind wander. Notice what thoughts rise. These aren’t distractions. They’re data.

This is one of the most simple but profound ways to cultivate stillness and develop a curious mind.

3. The “Not Now” Rule

When you feel the urge to overrespond, overcommit, or overexplain, pause. Say "Not now." Give yourself 10 minutes. Real power often lives in the pause before the reaction.

Sitting in stillness, even briefly, rewires urgency into wisdom.

The Leadership Shift No One Talks About

The shift from reactive to intuitive leadership doesn’t happen in meeting rooms.

It happens in silence.

In those in-between moments where you stop outsourcing wisdom and start listening to your own.

This is the shift from leading like you’ve been told to leading as you were designed to.

This is how you go from invisible to impactful.
From stuck to magnetic.
From surviving to sovereign.

What would happen if you gave yourself five minutes of silence today—no fixing, no performing, just being?

Let it be uncomfortable.
Let it be terrifying.
Let it be real.

Then come back and tell me what you noticed.

Stillness is not a luxury.
It’s your new power source.

Let’s reclaim it.

Craving deeper insight into leadership that doesn’t drain you? Explore this next:

➡️ The Broken Rung: Why Women Still Feel Stuck in Their Careers — Explore how systemic blind spots and self-silencing collide—and how to reclaim your momentum and voice.

➡️ Aligned Leadership Unlocked — Discover the six foundational pillars that elevate leadership from performative to powerful, without burning out.A grounded, bold breakdown of how energy alignment—not more effort—is the new metric of success.