Let The Silence Do Its Work

And The Power Of Human Adaptation

There’s a strange magic that happens when we practice.

With music, for example, I’ll sit down at the piano or guitar and stumble through a piece again and again. Some days it feels clumsy, while others are smoother. Then I’ll step away, sleep, and when I come back, the impossible suddenly feels natural. My fingers flow more easily. Something has shifted, not because of brute effort in the moment, but because my body and mind adapted while I wasn’t looking.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle

This process is familiar in weightlifting: you push the muscle to the point of breakdown, then growth happens during recovery. But I’ve come to see it as a universal principle of life. Practice is half the story. The other half is stepping away long enough for your system to catch up and build something more substantial than before.

For years, I thought success meant relentless work. As an entrepreneur building companies like SheCodes, I was constantly in motion, always doing. It got me far, but it also left little space for recovery. Only later, after taking breaks, traveling, or even just sleeping more, did I realize how much adaptation happens in the quiet. My company grew, but I grew most when I allowed myself to pause.

Now, as I dive into new skills such as music production, photography, writing, or languages, I notice the same pattern. The hours of practice matter, but what transforms me are the gaps in between. Time off the instrument is when my ear sharpens. Time away from the camera is when my eye begins to see. Time disconnected from work is when the bigger vision reveals itself.

Adaptation is not just about skill - it’s about capacity. An idea often arrives just out of reach, shimmering in the distance. We chase it, stumble toward it, return to it again and again. Each time, our capacity stretches to meet it. This is how music takes form, how businesses are born, how people evolve.

I’ve come to believe this cycle (practice, pause, adapt) isn’t only a personal process. It’s life itself, expressing its will through us. Ideas don’t really belong to us; they pass through us. Our job is to listen, to practice, to stretch ourselves enough to hold them. And then to let the silence do its work.

We adapt because life asks us to. And if we choose to participate, the result is more than progress on a skill or a business; it’s our small part in the ongoing creation of something greater than ourselves.

Matt Delac