Listen! The Universe Has Been Trying to Reach You

There are moments in everyday life when the universe seems to reveal something deeper about how our awareness works quietly. 

Think about a moment when you were going through a normal day, cooking, working, doing your usual routine, then suddenly, without any clear reason, a thought flashes through your mind. Something quiet and simple. Just something that needs attention. Sometimes you notice it. Maybe you ignore it, and as usual, life goes on. Instances like the need to refill the gas when it hasn't given you any warnings yet, or settling the electricity bills. Then, a few days later, that exact thing comes up and demands your attention. Usually, you don’t feel surprised about it, although you might not be adequately prepared for it, but just because something had already alerted you, quietly and without making a big deal out of it. Most of us have experienced this. A thought that comes before the event. An inner signal that shows up before it happens in real life. We often call it coincidence, instinct, or intuition. Then we move on. But what if it is something more intentional? A kind of communication that is so quiet, so much a part of everyday life, that we do not recognise it for what it truly is?  Interestingly, in our workplaces, in our homes, on our phones, and in our interactions with others, these signals press on us messages that could alter our lives or even prevent unforeseen disasters. But often, we do not recognize this wisdom, which is a deeper layer of insight beneath everyday life. It helps us understand how different systems and structures, both formal and informal, are quietly shaping what happens around us.

Personally, I have come to hold close these sayings… “listen more, talk less”. It is a philosophy for living. It is an invitation to tune in to a frequency that has been broadcasting on your behalf long before you were aware of it. Because here is what I have come to believe… “the universe is always speaking. Always!” But here is the thing, are you tuned in enough to catch it? I believe this is one of the most understated ways that the spiritual realm speaks to us in our everyday lives. Not always in dreams or dramatic visions, though those happen too, but in the soft, almost domestic nudges that bring things into our awareness just before they demand our attention.

In Christianity, we speak of the prophetic as a specific gift. But I want to suggest that what I am describing is a version of that gift that belongs to every human being. We all carry within us a capacity to know not through logic alone, but through a deeper, more intimate attentiveness to the world around us.

The problem is that we rarely slow down enough to catch it.

We are too busy talking. Too busy planning. Too busy filling every silence with noise, every gap with activity. And so, the messages pile up, unread, in the inbox of our spirits. We miss the nudges. We miss the knocks. And then we are caught off guard by things that, had we been listening, we would have seen coming. This is about becoming present. Listening is not the absence of action; it is the prerequisite for right action. It is what allows you to act in alignment with what is actually happening, rather than what you assume is happening.

Now permit me to share something I heard when I deliberately listened to stories I came across, even as I scrolled through social media.

A popular Nigerian actress, I literally fell in love with her in 2024, through Arese Ugwu’s series on the smart money tribe. A woman who, from the outside, appeared to be winning. She was celebrated. Her career was flourishing. But behind the public image was a private battle with fibroids that was affecting her ability to conceive. This is the kind of pain that does not make it into the highlight reel. It is the ache you carry to every set, every award, every red carpet. She waited. She hoped. And eventually, she shared the news of her pregnancy, a testimony that moved many people, because they had not known she was carrying that weight all along.

And then there is Oheneyere Gifty Anti, a woman I truly admire. She got married at 45 and had her child at 47. She has spoken candidly about what people said during those years of waiting. The comments. The questions. The unsolicited opinions that people feel entitled to offer when a woman is unmarried, or childless, or both. But she held on. And her life has since become a reference point; a story people reach for when they need to encourage someone in the middle of their own wait.

The Message I Received

When both of these stories found their way to me in a short space of time, I knew it was not a coincidence. The universe was speaking. And the message was addressed to me.

Because I have been guilty of exactly what these women refused to do. I have been waiting for the perfect conditions before allowing myself to step fully into certain areas of my life. Waiting for a particular thing to be in place before I permit myself to shine in the spaces where I already have something to offer. There are parts of me, gifts, ideas, work, a voice that I have been holding back because some other part of my life does not yet look the way I want it to look.

And the stories of these women arrived like a gentle but firm correction…  “They did not have it all figured out either. Their deepest desires had not yet been fulfilled. And still they showed up.”

They showed up for their work. They showed up for their families. They showed up for the people who needed what only they could give. They refused to hold the rest of their life’s hostage to the one thing that was still unresolved.

And I felt something shift in me when I understood that.

Two Things I Want to Leave with You

The first is this: keep listening. At every point in your life, stay attuned to what is being communicated to you from your Creator, from the universe, from that quiet inner knowing that speaks before logic catches up. In the stories that keep crossing your path. In the pattern, you notice when you slow down enough to look. Do not rush past these moments. Lean in. And when you hear, act.

The second is this: do not put your life on hold. The thing you are waiting for, the relationship, the healing, the resolution, the arrival, it may still be on its way. And that is real, and the waiting is real, and the longing is real. But the rest of your life is also real. The work you have to do. The people who need your presence. The gifts that belong to this season, not the next one. Do not make them wait while you wait.

The women I mentioned did not arrive at their testimonies by accident. They arrived there because they kept moving. They kept living. They kept being fully who they were, even when what they most wanted had not yet come.

And when it did come, it found them in motion.

So, listen. And while you are listening, keep going.

Don't pause your life until you figure it all out. Live fully, honestly, presently, while you receive every word life keeps whispering to you.