126: The Ocean Is Not Coming To You
A gentle truth about the calling you've been waiting to answer.
We were in Rio de Janeiro last week. Fresh air, salt water, a different sky. My body needed all of it.
One morning I went out alone. I walked all the way to the end of the beach where the rocks are, where the serious surfers go. It was around 6:00am.
I just stood there, this quiet sense of awe filling my chest … these humans choosing to get in that water before most of the city had even opened their eyes, paddling hard toward those big waves right there by the rocks, over and over again, with so much courage and so much joy.
If you’ve ever been on a board, you know that feeling of floating. For me that’s the body sensation of surrender, the water carries you up and down, lightly, gently, you have zero control and somehow that feels like peace.
But floating doesn’t catch waves.
To catch a wave you have to move. Paddle as hard and fast as you can, match the force of the ocean with everything you have in that moment. And what I kept noticing was… they don’t wait to fully see the wave before they go (actually they can’t) .
They feel it first. Something in their body reads what their eyes can’t yet confirm, and they commit completely to that feeling.
Sometimes the wave carries them. Sometimes it doesn’t. But when it does… when a human being and the ocean become one for those few seconds… it’s pure beauty. They flow!
The surfer I kept coming back to caught 2 big waves in those 15-20 minutes I was there. But before each one, there were false starts … he would feel something, paddle with everything he had, give it all... and the wave just didn’t carry him.
Every single time, without any frustration I could see, he quietly paddled back to his spot, turned to face the ocean, and waited.
His body language said one thing: another one is coming.
Not as a hope. As a certainty that lived somewhere deeper than thought.
A phrase from one of my teachers came to me standing there … when life knocks on your door, don’t be wearing pajamas.
That’s exactly what I was watching.
Someone who was ready. Not tense, not forcing, ready.
Relaxed and completely engaged at the same time. The posture of someone who has no doubt the ocean is not withholding from them. It’s just moving. And their job is to stay present enough to feel it.
He had also paddled hard probably 10 to 15 times that morning without catching anything. That’s not failure. That’s training. That’s how the body learns to read the water. Every false start is the body getting more fluent in the language of the ocean.
Standing there I thought about an earlier season of my life when I was so hungry to make things happen that I spent most of my energy paddling into nothing. Not because I wasn’t capable. Because I hadn’t really found my lineup yet.
I was in the water, working, trying, caring deeply, but I was in the wrong place, chasing waves that weren’t mine, exhausted before the right one arrived.
And then there were times I was barely in the water at all. Standing close enough to feel the pull of it but not close enough to actually be in the dance. Waiting to feel more ready. Waiting for a clearer sign. Waiting for something outside of me to confirm what I already knew inside.
The sign was always the longing itself. The thing that kept coming back no matter how many times I set it aside. That quiet persistent pull, that was the wave announcing itself. I just hadn’t learned yet to call it by its name.
I want to ask you something, and I’d love for you to feel into it rather than think about it.
Where are you in relation to your wave?
Some of you are on the shore.
You can see the water from where you stand. You’ve felt called to something, a project, a business, a creative dream you’ve carried for years. It lives in your chest and it refuses to leave, no matter how many times life has pulled your attention elsewhere. You’re waiting for the right moment, the perfect conditions, the day you finally feel ready enough.
I want to be very gentle here, but the ocean will not come to you on the shore.
And that desire that keeps returning, the one that won’t leave you alone, that is already the sign. You’ve been waiting for something that has been calling your name all along.
Some of you are already deep in the water but you’ve drifted too far out.
You got in. You tried. More than once. And somewhere in the trying it got complicated, too many directions, too many pivots, too much searching for the wave that feels guaranteed before you commit. You’re working hard but something feels scattered.
The energy is going out but it’s not landing anywhere that builds.
You're not doing it wrong. You're just still negotiating with yourself about whether this is really yours.
Surfers have a name for where that man was sitting so calmly, so ready.
It’s called the lineup.
A specific place in the water, past where the waves break, but close enough to feel them coming and reach them when they do.
Not too far in. Not too far out.
You don’t think your way to the lineup. You feel your way there.
And I want to offer you this… the lineup is not a strategy.
It’s not a better plan or a clearer offer or one more course before you begin.
The lineup is an internal yes.
It’s the moment you stop negotiating with yourself about whether this thing is really yours, whether the timing is right, whether you’re enough for it.
It’s you planting yourself in front of the one thing you know you’re here for and saying: I am here. This is mine. I am not leaving.
That’s it. That’s the whole first step.
Not paddling hard yet. Not catching the wave yet.
Just… naming it. Owning it.
Showing up in front of it consistently with your whole self, relaxed and ready, the way that surfer sat in front of the ocean at 6:00 in the morning knowing with everything in his body that the wave was coming.
Because once that yes is real, once it lives in your body and not just in your thoughts, everything starts to orient around it. The false starts stop feeling like failure. The waiting stops feeling like stagnation. You know where you are and you know why you’re there.
You give the step. The universe gives the ground. Not the other way around.
The ocean will always be there. The waves will always come and go. They don’t stop for anyone and they don’t withhold from anyone.
So what is the thing you’ve been feeling for a long time but haven’t fully said yes to yet?
That is your lineup. And now is always a good time to find it.
With love,
Carolina
Happenings
Quarterly Workshop: Leverage Substack’s 5 Best Growth Features To Build a Thriving Publication In 2026
If you are a paid member of our community, this Monday March 2nd at noon EST we have something special for you. Jari Roomer , Co-Founder of Write. Build. Scale., is joining us live to share his Substack expertise, specifically the 5 best growth features to build a thriving publication in 2026.
You will walk away with real clarity on what to focus on right now to actually move the needle forward.
Substack has been a huge part of our own growth and we chose it intentionally as a tool to build a strong foundation for our business. Many of our clients use it as part of their audience building strategy too. If you want to make the most of your publication and use it to support your business, you don’t want to miss this one.
Who We Are Celebrating This Week:
Miss Brooke from Healers Unite
I want to take a moment to celebrate Brooke and the work she is bringing to the world.
Brooke is building something called Healers Unite, and if you are a healer, or if your work supports healers in any way, I want you to pay attention.
She saw a gap: healers are not burning out because they lack dedication or gift. They are burning out because they have been left without the infrastructure that every other care-based profession takes for granted.
Healers have largely been left to navigate everything on their own.
Brooke decided to build what was missing instead of accepting that.
Healers Unite is a professional cooperative, shared administrative support, collective purchasing power, and real tools that make healing practices sustainable over time. Not inspiration without structure. Actual infrastructure for people doing sacred work in the world.
I deeply believe we are not meant to build alone. Brooke lives that truth in everything she is creating.
If you are a healer or you support healers, go find her on Substack. Together we go further is not just a nice idea in her work. It is the entire foundation.
Celebrating you, Brooke. Your courage, your clarity, and your willingness to let this come through you.
Things I’d Like to Share
Joy is Strategy
Joy is Strategy is a great essay I had the pleasure of reading this week and I want to share it with you because I believe it relates to flow. It felt so connected to the class I was teaching this week on the same topic. The participants and I came to a conclusion together that felt really true in our bodies, flow only happens when you are yourself, when you accept your uniqueness with all your heart. I think this essay is about exactly that. Cherrie wrote beautifully, using lessons from Olympic champions to illustrate her point
If it doesn't make you glow, grow or flow, choose yourself and go
I also want to share this essay by Eleni Rizopoulou — The Glorious Fail. And yes, this is the second essay I am sharing about Alysa Liu, because clearly she is teaching something to the world that the world needs to hear right now. Eleni uses her story to say something I believe more people need to sit with.
The real burnout epidemic is not about working too hard, it is about doing work that doesn't make you glow, grow, or flow.
Work that has no aliveness in it. Work that asks you to perform a version of yourself that was never really yours. Eleni says it so clearly: flow is not ease, it is alignment, what happens when skill meets genuine ownership, when the performance and the person are the same thing.
This is the wake up call. Finding your joy, your bliss, becoming fully yourself, this is not a luxury or a spiritual extra. It is the foundation of a healthy, alive, sustainable life.
P.S. If you are feeling called to work together, a great place to start is the Harmony Map assessment. It will reveal your breakthrough frequency — the one pattern your business idea or your next chapter is already asking you to look at. Think of it as finding out exactly where you are in the water, and what it will take to find your lineup. Take the Harmony Map →