Going with the Flow, when you want to know the How

This is Empathy Elevated - your weekly guide and shortcut to mastering emotional intelligence through the power of empathy. Last week, I wrote Feedback is Not a Feature

I remember sitting in Professor C’s class many years ago, scribbling on a notepad, not the notes I should have been taking, but the numbers for expenses coming up.

Financing time away during an unpaid summer internship could add up quickly. Even used textbooks seemed to be coming up every semester.

The worries of the HOW I would pay for the near future-what-ifs- pulled me from the present that needed my focus. The how would not be solved in those few minutes before the top of the hour, yet I felt this immense pressure in the lecture hall to resolve my next steps.

Maybe it’s that I am an overplanner Virgo. The stereotype persists for a reason. Maybe it’s that planning has meant survival in the past, even if it really wasn’t a tiger chasing me.

I had a similar pang of alert hit me many years later, this summer, as I was faced with the question of HOW I would devise the numbers needed by the end of the quarter and fiscal year.

But this time, instead of ruminating and trying to crunch it as I hunched over my desk, I took a different approach—one that wasn’t focused on the how, but the flow.

Panic Doesn’t Solve for X

It’s many years later. Instead of a notepad, I iterate as my cursor blinks on my Teams channel. I start jotting down my scribble in clean text through the keys.

But it now hits different. Accepting that I do not always have a clear answer for what to do is uncomfortable, but okay.

I panic for a moment, start to leave the present, but stop.

Discomfort is part of the process.

Then, I ignore it. Not because the challenge of thinking is not there. Not because I am procrastinating, but because I know that by not putting my energy into a challenge I cannot possibly solve in a moment of my mind racing, logic is applied.

It’s allowing my subconscious to settle in with the news, and giving my mind time to shift and my body time to feel different.

You ever have the experience where the resolution for a challenging piece of code, or what to say in a hard conversation, pops into your head when you are driving or in the shower?

You are removed from the challenge. That’s when the breakthrough comes.

For the numbers I briefly panicked about in mid-July, I presented a polished plan on how we get to them this past Friday. Tomorrow, I present to the higher-ups to showcase the numbers devised, in a way no other team in the company has done.

The numbers were not devised in panic, but in a moment when my mind could think, away from the alarm of the initial shock. I trusted the answers would come. I could not control when exactly, but I could choose to stay grounded in trusting they would

But how do you trust it will happen?

Trust Without Proof

When you go to bed, most of us go with the expectation that we’ll wake up the next morning. We trust it.

When the New Year hits, we trust the Earth has gone around the sun one more time. We know it is in an orbit, held in place, but it keeps moving. We trust it will stay, and the Earth will not be flung out to the far reaches of the solar system tomorrow.

Our existence is a small microcosm of all of the greater whole. Things keep moving, whether we stay in a state of rumination or not.

The HOW will show up.

Think of the challenges you have faced. Who or what showed up for you?

If nothing did and you pulled through alone, did you?

If you are reading this, you are here, can read or listen to this post, and are having a dedicated moment.

Finding this moment of self-awareness, centering, and trusting the flow is how you keep moving, even when you do not know the immediate answer.

The How Was Already on Its Way

I did not have the answer that day sitting in Professor C’s class. Later that day at the canteen, I must have wasted my money on the sandwich I could barely eat, with the ball of anxiety in my pit. Later that evening, with intense focus, I still hadn’t worked it out.

The unpaid summer internship did not come to pass; I got a paid one. The cost of tuition 7 months later was in part covered by a grant that plopped into my lap. Things worked out in my favor, and the worst-case scenarios didn’t happen.

The pattern held again this summer. Last Friday, my plan didn’t come together because I forced it into existence at my desk in July. It came together because I stopped demanding it to show up on command like a mobile order on my phone.

Tuesday this week, I present those numbers to the higher-ups. Not the panicked version from mid-July. The devised one.

The how always shows up. Not on your schedule. On its own.

AI can certainly help (as it did in my solution), since it can compress the work, but it cannot compress the incubation period your mind needs.

Your job isn’t to solve it in the room where the panic lives. Your job is to notice the panic, let it move through you, and trust the orbit is still holding.

That’s the flow.

The Inference Engine

For August, just released is The Feedback Readiness Audit: A Four-Component Diagnostic for Whether Your Feedback Has Anywhere to Land — picks up where this post has left off:

• A scored audit across the four elements that decide whether feedback lands: trust, honesty, safety, and clarity

• Named health readings for each, so you know exactly which piece of infrastructure is missing, not just that something’s off

• One field tool for decoding vague feedback before you act on it

EMPATHY ELEVATED IN ACTION

Emotional Intelligence → The next time your mind starts racing toward a problem you can’t solve in the moment, notice the panic instead of following it. That noticing is the skill.

Stoicism → You can’t control when the answer arrives, only whether you stay grounded while you wait for it. Practice releasing the timeline, not the effort.

Human–AI Thought → The breakthrough that hits you in the shower, not at the keyboard, is proof your mind needs incubation time no tool can shortcut. Protect that space instead of trying to prompt your way past it.

📖 I’m reading Think Again by Adam Grant, to challenge my initial assumptions. I found the history of how BlackBerry went from the top of the market to well…not, because they didn't think again.

🎙️I hosted Aadil Maan on Empathy Elevated for a lively discussion about how being a TPM (Technical Program Manager) is continuing to evolve, what AI can and can’t do, and his personal story of his time at Blackberry.