Lovely Human,

I often catch myself, mid-sentence, finishing somebody else's thought for them. I do it constantly. Most of us do. That is what a full cup sounds like.

We hear the first quarter of a problem and our brain has already written the answer, the rebuttal, the framework, the case study, the email we will send afterwards.

There is a 2,500-year-old text living inside my head this week and I have been paying attention to who practices it.

“The part of you that knows is not the part doing the work. The part of you that is empty is.”

What would happen if you stopped pretending to have an answer and gave the room thirty seconds of silence instead?

I sit as an Advisor for a Saudi sovereign entity. The monthly agenda deck is always the kind that has a strong McKinsey odor.

However this week the CEO logged on with no deck. He is behind schedule on everything planned for Q1 and Q2. After what seemed like forever moment of silence since the deck normally controlled everything, everyone exhaled, leaned in, and we did the best ninety minutes of building and strategic work this advisory team has done all year.

How often do you show up this way? Let a room be that quiet? How often do you let yourself be that empty just not knowing?

Right now, wherever you are standing, what the moment needs from you is not what you already know. The moment needs the part of you that is empty.

Here is what emptying looks like in practice this week.

Pick one belief you held about your industry in January and ask if it is still true. Pick one tool, ritual, or report you keep doing because you always did and stop doing it for thirty days. Pick one meeting where you usually have the answer and walk in and say “I do not know, let us figure it out together.”

The leaders I quietly admire right now are not the ones who learned the fastest this year. They are the ones who emptied the most to make space.

Their cup now has room in it. Whatever comes next, they will be able to hold it.

What is in your cup that needs to go this month to create some emptiness?

P.S Speaking about silent rooms, I rarely ever hear from anyone about whether this newsletter is a joy to read or not ( it comes from a place of pure love of learning and my crazy childhood desire to have a tv show like Sunday Mornings with Charles Osgood…I know) . It seemed the Universe was listening and sent me this message this month from one of you. Thank you. It took my breath away.

The part of you that knows needs to be empty to be heard.

Mastery is not always knowing more. It can mean holding less.

Answers that arrive before the question is finished is an expensive habit.

Religious Focus this month- Taoism

We explore a unusual religion each month not to convert anyone to change believe , but to open up our vision board on how we all of us process joy, suffering, peace and this incredible journey called life.

Sun Yan flew from Shanghai to Singapore on a Tuesday morning. She was 47 years old and three weeks into knowing that her industry would not exist in its current form by 2028. She had read about Master Wu Han in a small profile in a Mandarin Daoist quarterly. The piece called him “the last person in Singapore who still teaches gongfu cha the way his grandfather did.” She booked the flight before she finished the article.

The teahouse sat above a stationery shop on Joo Chiat Road. No sign. A wooden staircase. A single doorway with a curtain. She climbed up and there was Wu Han, seventy-eight years old in a thin linen shirt, kneeling at a low table set with a clay teapot, a small bamboo brush, and six terracotta cups so small they fit inside the curve of her palm.

He poured her tea without looking up.

“Sit,” he said. “Drink. Then we will talk.”

She drank. He poured again. She drank. He poured a third time. By the fourth cup she had questions stacked behind her teeth like coins waiting to fall out of a slot.

“Master Wu,” she said. “I came to ask you about my career.”

“Drink another cup,” he said.

She drank.

“Master Wu,” she said. “Everything I built my career on is dissolving. I do not know what comes next.”

“Drink another cup.”

She drank. The tea was strong. Her tongue felt warm.

“Master Wu, please. I have a presentation to my board in seven days. I do not know what to tell them.”

Wu Han set down the teapot. He looked at her for the first time. His face had the particular stillness of someone who has spent fifty years watching water move through clay.

“Pour me a cup,” he said.

She picked up the pot. She lifted it over his terracotta cup and poured. The cup was already half full from the last round. She poured carefully, watching the level rise. The cup filled to the brim. She kept pouring. The tea overflowed onto the lacquered tray. She kept pouring. He said nothing. She kept pouring until the pot was empty and there was a small lake of tea around his cup.

“Master Wu,” she finally said. Her voice was small. “Your cup was full. I should have emptied it first.”

Wu Han smiled. He picked up a cloth and slowly wiped the tray.

“This is what you came for,” he said. “You did not need to fly here. You needed to do the pouring.”

He pointed at his cup, glistening, overfull, useless.

“Sun Yan. You walked in here with your career and your title and your industry and your eighteen months and your presentation and your board. All of these things are in your cup. None of them can hold what is coming.”

He set the cloth down.

Sun Yan sat very still.

“Master Wu,” she said. “What do I do?”

“Empty,” he said. “Then ask the next question with a cup that can hold the answer.”

She flew back to Shanghai that night with her notebook still closed.

Two weeks later she gave a different presentation than the one she had planned. She started with three words. I do not know.

The room exhaled.

Guiding question:

Where in your life have you been during into a cup already full?