Now that I no longer awaken to the sound of a jarring alarm clock, I've learned to welcome the early morning hours.

Because that is the time when I can hear my inner voice most clearly.

Sometimes it is just a knowing. A realization that cuts through the noise to reveal how I truly feel about something or someone.

It picks apart puzzling dilemmas and offers creative solutions.

It is at the time before I have fully awakened and left the world of dreams, that messages from some deep place percolate to the surface.

It is a peaceful time. It is easy to be sensitive to the rhythms of the body, the sounds of the quiet inner voice.

Shortly, the shrill ring of the telephone will shatter the stillness and redirect my energy to external concerns. My attention will then belong to the client on the other end of the line.

But for these few precious minutes, I savor the calm.

We function best when we make time to be both active and still. The demands of being making a living, raising a family, draw us toward motion and activity. But my observation is that we nourish ourselves and become more productive when we include the contributions of our inner voice.

Upon awakening, while still dwelling in that netherworld between consciousness and unconsciousness, the neatly packaged solution to some petty problem floats up into my mind. Whole articles with their sentences quietly arranged in perfect rows hang in the air.

A perfect turn of a phrase, the solution to a knotty problem with a difficult client, the working out of the composition of an illustration ? such jewls are the gifts of the inner mind.

They are fragile bubbles that pop when exposed to the direct morning sun. The trick is to capture the quiet voices before they are drowned by the noise of daily activity.

By extending the quiet time a little longer I can sit at my computer and transcribe those thoughts.

Some say artists and intuitives hear it loudest. But we all have an inner voice. And it speaks to us. All we must do is listen.

Ellen Zucker's site, selfemployment101.com, provides helpful articles and resources to help the creative sole-proprietor earn a living and create a life.

Ellen has been successfully self-employed for the past 10 years. Her company, Faces & Fortunes, http://www.facesandfortunes.com, provides caricature and psychic entertainment to parties and special events in the Philadelphia area.