From Hustle to Holy: How I Reclaimed My Inner Compass

Sarah-Frances McCormick | Divine Connection | June 18th, 2025

Three years ago, I had a panic attack so intense I thought I was dying. My heart was racing, my chest tightening, and all I could think was, Is this really it?

Mary Oliver's words rang in my ears:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Would I spend the rest of mine performing, producing, and pretending everything was fine?

I had everything I was told to want—stability, success, a good job, a beautiful family. But something at the soul level was missing. I felt like a ghost in my own life. I was moving through the motions of a story that looked good from the outside but felt hollow within. Like I’d betrayed some deeper truth—and now it was demanding to be heard.

That moment cracked something open. And what poured in at first was discomfort.

But that discomfort has since transformed into peace.

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The Age of Hustle

Before that day, I had mastered the art of high-functioning disconnect. I was an overachiever. A chronic over-thinker. A woman addicted to gold stars and external validation. I had a high-level corporate job, earned two master’s degrees from Duke, and had a partner who loved me unconditionally. I was, by all accounts, "successful."

But I was also deeply anxious. I often felt like I was living from the neck up, stuck in a loop of performing, perfecting, and producing. My days were packed—driven by a belief that constant motion was the key to success, and by a quiet fear that slowing down might force me to actually feel. And yet, despite all the busyness, I felt profoundly unfulfilled. I had lost touch with my body, my intuition, and that mysterious pulse I used to feel as a child—the one that whispered, There is more to life than this.

I silenced that whisper for years. Until my body, my soul, and maybe even the universe intervened.

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The Cracking Open

A few days after the panic attack, I found myself wandering through Lake Johnson, a nearby park. I had forced myself to take my lunch break outside instead of eating at my desk. My chest carried the guilt of taking time for myself, and I worried I’d have another panic attack then and there.

To calm my body, I closed my eyes and took five slow, deep belly breaths. When I reopened them, something had shifted. The golden leaves, the shimmering lake, the crisp autumn breeze—they felt alive. It was as if I was seeing the world for the first time.

Time stretched. In contrast to my usual hyper-vigilant, outcome-driven mind, I felt suspended in stillness. My sense of self began to dissolve. I was still me, but I was also the wind, the water, the trees. It was as if the entire world exhaled, and I became part of that breath. The colors vibrated. The air pulsed. A stillness opened that felt more real than anything I’d ever known.

After a few minutes of pure bliss, my phone buzzed—corporate life calling me back to duty. Reading the email snapped me out of it. I tried to return to that state, but I couldn’t. Everything had returned to “normal,” but something inside me had changed.

I couldn’t unsee what I’d seen. I couldn’t unfeel what I’d felt. I couldn’t unknow what I now knew.

That glimpse of connection became the catalyst for my search.

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Resisting the Call

I did what any skeptical, achievement-oriented woman would do: equal parts desperate, curious, and afraid of what I had experienced—I Googled it.

"Mystical experience." "Altered state of consciousness." "Spiritual awakening or dissociation?"

I wanted the experience to be real—but my logic, education, and inner skeptic made that hard to accept. I had grown up in the church but had grown more agnostic over time. I thought it would be nice to believe in something more—but I needed proof. I craved certainty.

But as I’ve come to learn, certainty is rarely part of the Divine equation. In fact, it may be the opposite of faith.

(Which, ironically, makes me think of how many people are absolutely certain their understanding of God—Source, Energy, whatever you want to call it—is the only correct one.)

Anyway, I told myself it was a neurological glitch. A trick of the light. A byproduct of burnout. But the memory of that peace lingered. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

And then, something strange started happening.

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Learning to Listen

I started noticing synchronicities—those meaningful coincidences that seem to defy logic. Little “winks” from the universe began showing up everywhere.

I’d journal something and then hear the exact phrase in a song. I’d read a line in a book that mirrored a conversation I’d had ten minutes earlier. I’d be thinking about a question, and then a sign would appear with the answer.

It felt like the universe had a clever sense of humor—and a direct line to my thoughts.

At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of it all. But then I discovered that even Albert Einstein described quantum entanglement as “spooky action at a distance.” That phrase stuck with me—because spooky was exactly how all this was starting to feel. Spooky, but also sacred. Interestingly, Carl Jung—the psychologist who coined the term 'synchronicity'—once collaborated with physicist Wolfgang Pauli to explore whether there might be a deeper, invisible order connecting all things. While it’s not something science can measure, the resonance between synchronicities and entanglement stirred something in me:a sense that perhaps the universe is far more interconnected, intelligent, and intentional than we’ve been taught to believe.

One morning, panicked about a dentist appointment (a lifelong phobia), I called my mom. I was convinced I’d get bad news, five cavities, and a $10,000 bill. She told me to stay hopeful. I repeated it like a mantra walking into the office: Have hope. Have hope. Have hope.

Moments later, a new hygienist walked in, smiling: “Good morning, Sarah-Frances. My name is Hope, and I’ll be taking great care of you today.”

These moments kept unfolding—sometimes multiple times a day—each one nudging me out of skepticism and back into wonder.

Could something greater have been guiding me?
Could it be that our rational minds—bound by only five senses—aren’t equipped to explain the infinite?

I decided to stop dismissing it. I knew what life was like as a doubter. Why not give belief a try for one year?

Turns out, I had nothing to lose—and everything to gain.

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The Compass Within

My life has changed radically in the last six months, since I made the decision to trust—or at least remain open to—Divine connection. Since then, I’ve found the courage to write publicly on Substack. I’ve started building a coaching business designed to help women reconnect with their inner compass and live with greater clarity, confidence, and ease.

For the first time, I feel awake. Alive. Aligned. No longer living on autopilot.

Even better, I trust that I’m being led. The fear of the unknown has begun to fade, slowly replaced by a relationship with the Mystery itself.

I no longer view my dreams as something I have to push into place. I see them as something I get to co-create with a Presence far wiser than my plans. I still have goals. I still use strategy. But now, they’re held in open hands.

When skepticism arises, I remind myself that Divine connection isn’t about escaping reality. It’s about meeting it with reverence—not certainty. It’s about trusting that the whisper inside me—the one I used to dismiss as my imagination—might just be the voice of God.

And I believe we all have that whisper inside us. The question is: can we be still enough to hear it? Brave enough to follow it?

I’ve found that whisper to be my compass, my lifeline, and the way back to my most authentic self.

So this is my invitation to you:

Don’t believe blindly. Believe bravely.

Trust the whisper you keep trying to ignore.

Follow the pull you’ve been taught to doubt.

You might just find your own compass—steady, sacred, and waiting inside you.

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This essay was published as part of our monthly series on Divine Connection: The Sacred Thread That Binds. Read the Full Publication

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Sarah Frances McCormick is a contributing writer for The Sacred Business Writer’s Collective focused on helping women reconnect with their inner compass and trust the sacred whispers within. You can follow her on Substack here.

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