More Than Enough

25 Jun, 2026

13 years ago I lost my voice on stage. It happened to be my first gig after jumping full time into my own music. Up to that point, I had always struggled with my voice. But losing it that day, on what felt like the inaugural performance of my big new chapter, felt devastating.
 I spent next 13 years learning from that one experience.

The lessons I've learned are not only about my physical voice. They're about my big-v Voice — about how to be who I am in the world. I'm going to share these lessons with you here as best I can... After I lost my voice on stage that day, I jumped head first into an intense, daily study of the human voice. That quickly led me to a deep study of breath — how it moves through the body and how it carries a person's voice from inside them, out into the world.

Initially, I jumped into this work in order to prevent whatever happened to me on the stage that day. I was afraid. I never wanted to feel that helplessness again.
 But over the course of this journey, my voice, breath, and body have taught me much deeper lessons — about what it means to live and move and be in the world. These lessons have completely changed my life. Four lessons in particular feel worth sharing. 


Lesson One

In my 20s and early 30s, while singing on stage, I would give more than I had. I finished every concert feeling spent — in physical and emotional debt.
 When I was young, I would bounce back within a few days. But as I entered my 30s, a few days turned into a week or more. And I found myself constantly in pain around my voice, my jaw, and my throat.

When I began studying the voice, my goal was to learn techniques that would allow me to spend the same amount, without the injury. I learned hundreds of techniques. But as I learned, I began to sense an underlying question that was not just "how do I have a healthy voice?"

Deep down, I was asking, "what is wrong with me?" "Why am I not enough?" I realized that my relationship with my voice was based on frustration. "You let me down." "I can't trust you."

As I started to explore this, it led me to something happening in my own body.

I would take these daily walks (I still do) where I would practice speaking while observing what was happening in my body as I spoke. I noticed that as I was speaking, I was taking in as little breath as I could — as if there was not enough air to go around.

The breath is the vehicle for the voice. I began to learn that the problem was not that I was using my voice too much as I had believed for years. The problem was not my voice at all. Even more profoundly, I learned that the problem wasn't me.

I had tried weeks of silence for vocal rest. I "spent" less and less and less of my voice. It didn't help. I only found myself feeling more and more stingy about my voice. I felt myself holding myself back from the people I loved the most. And on one of these daily walks, I realized: the problem was not that I was spending too much... the problem, was that I was receiving too little.

I began to explore breathing more. Taking deeper breaths. Receiving what felt at the time like a ridiculous amount of air before speaking. 
This led me to another area of stinginess in my life: time. 
 I learned that a part of me didn't believe there was enough time, even for a full breath before speaking or singing. So not only was I not allowing myself a full breath before giving myself to others, but I was not allowing myself two full seconds of time to be able to take that breath.
 I began to see that my giving in life was always preceded by a worry — that there was not enough.

Because of my tenacity and loyalty, I would push through and give more than I had to give. On the stage, that day, 13 years ago, my body had had enough. Enough pushing, enough over-spending, enough over-giving and under-receiving.
 I began to explore on these walks the possibility that there might be plenty of time, and plenty of air, as silly as that might sound. I began taking huge breaths before every sentence I spoke on these walks. And as I did this, I watched as my body shifted.

Picture a garden hose — the water is coming out slowly. Now put your thumb over the end to create a smaller opening — the water shoots out forcefully. You didn't increase the amount of water, just the pressure. This is one way to deal with not enough. You squeeze. You get the most that you can out of the little that you have. The quality feels like a smaller opening. Pressure.

This can happen in any area of life, not only singing. And if you really pay attention, you'll notice that as this happens, in any area of life, you can feel that pushing quality in your body.

The body lets us know. We're out of balance. (Thank you, body.)

As I began to let more time and more breath flow through my body, my jaw and throat and my self began to open. The pain started to go away.

Our bodies are equipped with sophisticated warning signals which light up any time we go out of balance. Once we're back in balance, those lights turn off. When a signal has been on for as long as we can remember, it's surprising when it turns off — because it never occurred to us that that light was not meant to be always lit. 
 On my walks, I began to experience the surprising lack of pain in my throat and my jaw. But — this is the most amazing part — I still had a voice. (Thank you.) And not only did I still have a voice, but the voice that was emerging was fuller and more "me" than the voice I had become familiar with for so long. Transformation can be scary — especially when the thing transforming is your own voice.

But I was ready, because the pain had become too great, and the loss of my voice was too strong a signal for me to ignore any longer. So on these walks, as a new voice emerged, I embraced it with gratitude.

Lesson one is that there is always plenty of time and space to breathe. We only require the courage to slow down and receive it. And when we do, we find our voice.

Lesson two

As I continued these daily explorations, I began to leave a perpetual state of physical and emotional debt.

And even though at this point I was only able to find this new freedom alone on my walks — I was not able to bring it into my connection with other people — I found that every day the learning happening on my walks alone was opening me enough to where after one night of sleep, I would wake up restored. And I could try again from zero. No longer perpetually in debt. When we start on the road to recovery, it takes a while to get back to square-one. If we've been over-giving and under-receiving for a long time, then there's a lot of debt. It has to be paid down and caught up. But over time, as we allow ourselves to receive, we'll eventually get back to zero — where every morning is new. And several years ago, I reached that point.

It was a wonderful realization — that no matter what happened during the day with my voice. A good night of sleep could put me back at square one. I learned, once again, that this was true in all areas of my life — in my relationship with my wife, in my thought life, in anxiety, in worry, in my physical health... so many times during the day, when I would feel like something was hopeless, I would remember, "maybe I just need a good night of sleep," and I would let it go for a few hours, go to bed, wake up in the morning, and sure enough everything would feel different. And I could start again.

I can't tell you how many times, before this realization, I would think during the day, "oh, no, I'm getting sick," and the next day wake up very sick, and how many times after this realization, I thought the same thing, and then decided, "maybe all you need is a good night of sleep," and then given myself that good night of sleep, and woken up the next day feeling fine.

So many of our problems — especially the chronic ones — are due to our own worry and all the things that happen in our body when we worry... which paradoxically bring about the very things we're worried about.

When a singer is worried they'll lose their voice, that worry can trigger protective responses in the body. Those responses cause voice loss.

I'm learning that this is true in most areas of life. And at the same time, I want to acknowledge that the solution feels nearly impossible.

Even though it sounds simple, the solution is trust... faith. (It's a different way to think about faith than the way I learned growing up. 
But it sure does make sense. This kind of faith takes practice. It's not easy. But it is effective, and real.)

Lesson two is that every day can be a new beginning. Sometimes all we need is a good night of sleep.

Lesson Three

As I continued on my journey, I began to find an even more exciting possibility: Not only could I make space to receive more, but I could also stop pushing so hard.

When the body takes enough breath, when the throat and the jaw open, the breath becomes a wave that effortlessly carries the voice out of the body and into the world... IF we let it — and that's a big if.

Many of us judge ourselves and our voice (and Voice) a thousand different ways which translate to contorting and squeezing and ultimately limiting our own voice. All this effort costs us. 
 But it's possible to not only recover each time that we over-give — it's also possible that giving doesn't have to cost us in the first place. 
 And as I continued exploring the breath, the body, and the voice on my daily walks, I started to realize that my speaking and singing were no longer depleting me.
 This was a huge revelation for me, because it pointed to more than just being able to recover all I spent each day. It pointed to the possibility of not having to spend all I had every day.
 I could share, I could speak. I could sing. I could give myself, and it not cost me everything I had that day. And immediately, I had a new question: what will I do with all the excess time, breath, and energy if spending and giving it all isn't the only way to handle it?

The old paradigm was: you have what you're given so that you can make it useful to others. "Go make yourself useful." "Leave it all on the field."

This new paradigm pointed to an entirely different way of living where giving doesn't deplete, and receiving isn't only for the purpose of giving... which left an excess to enjoy.

Lesson three is that life is not just about making yourself useful – life is for a living. And that is enough.

I learned that every one of these huge breaths I was receiving was not for the sole purpose of turning it around and making it productive in the world for other people — it's primary purpose was to give me life. And I could just take an enormous, wonderful breath from an infinite supply of it, enjoy it, and let it go — having not produced one single thing.

Enjoyment is not a prize to be earned at the end of a productive day. 
Enjoyment is a gift to be received as the foundation for anything else we happen to do.


Lesson Four

As I continue this journey, I am learning a fourth lesson. There is a way to use our voice — in speaking, singing, and in living — that not only does not cost us, but which feeds us.

When someone allows their voice to emerge freely, they become an open channel for what is deeply felt to be expressed, freely and honestly, in the world as vibration. We call this vibration sound or voice. 
 This vibration affects everything around us. It ultimately helps create the world we live in.

When this channel is open, the vibration of the voice literally massages the body it moves through. The entire process is healing.

Here is the process of a healthy voice:
 A person has the impulse to say something. They open their body and receive breath. The breath flows through freely and deeply. It helps open the body more. The diaphragm moves down, and as it does it gives the vital organs of the body a gentle massage. This massage heals and prevents disease. The original impulse to say something follows the breath from deep in the body — it rides the breath like a wave through the body as it passes the vocal folds. The vocal folds lightly vibrate, in tune with the impulse that wants to be expressed. This tiny vibration, which starts at the volume of the wings of a bee, moves through the body which resonates and amplifies that tiny vibration into something the whole body can feel and enjoy. As the body vibrates to the tune of the original inspiration, the vibration, leaves the body as sound — as voice — and moves in the world. It changes the world to the tune of the original impulse to say something. But it also changes the body through which it flows. Everything changes in tune with the original impulse to say something, to the extent that the body allows the signal to be free to flow.

Lesson four is that when we let go and allow our voice to be free, not only does it not cost us, but it deeply nourishes us and the world around us.

This fourth lesson has changed everything for me. 13 years after that terrifying moment on stage, I am learning one of the most profound lessons of my life:

It is impossible for me to lose my voice.

When I trust this process — when I act from a foundation of trust — the very act of sharing my voice replenishes it.

The act of giving and receiving are inseparable. We breathe in, we breathe out. Always equal. Always in balance. From our first breath to our last.
 The battle was never against running out. It was against the faulty belief — that we ever could.

It's our faulty belief that gets in the way. That's the work — to change our mind, not the ocean. There is more than enough. We're standing in the ocean. The work is not to control it or ration it. It's to receive it. To enjoy it. And let it flow.

It's taken me 13 years to even begin to learn these lessons. But they've changed my life, and continue to do so. 🌊