The Deciding Line: Staying the Course

You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you’re sittin’ at the table
There’ll be time enough for countin’
When the dealin’s done

-Kenny Rogers (The Gambler)

The Gambler

I remember going to a Kenny Rogers concert in 8th grade with a few friends.  I didn’t much like country music but it was the thing at my school back then and I was locked smack dab in the middle of my awkward stage pinnacle.  I also got a huge kick out of Dolly and she was slated to make a guest appearance that night for their classic duet, Islands in the Stream.  Needless to say, I went along with it.  After all, there was very little for a twelve-year-old to do in Mobile, Alabama that didn’t involve golf cart mudding or toilet papering the odd neighbor’s front yard.

Cool Points

Towards the end of the concert, I decided to step it up a notch in hopes of earning a few more cool points. (I was already ahead as my drop dead gorgeous mom was playing chauffeur that night).  In between songs, the auditorium got super still for some strange reason.  Was he switching guitars?  Was he waiting on sound? Did the Budweiser run out?  I didn’t know and didn’t care.  I took the golden opportunity and ran like it was a skydiver’s terrifying first jump.

Leap

There in the silence I inched towards the edge and screamed at the top of my pre-pubescent lungs “The GAMBLERRRR!!!!” The next thirty seconds felt like a turtle’s lifetime and I’m sure I resembled something of a seared beet.  Finally, Mr. Rogers peered way back into the nosebleeds as if to try to locate this brave (read: ludicrous) young soul, then chuckled, “Well, alright then.”  He launched into that familiar finger picking pattern followed by a warm raspy vocal, holding thousands of hungry fans and one proud pre-teen in the palm of his hand.  It was epic, indeed.

Alive

Believe it or not, this post is about staying the course of our goals, not how to make it out of middle school alive.  I’m convinced that was a miracle I don’t remember much of.  The Gambler lends us wisdom as we navigate our goals.  I love this idea of knowing when to cut our losses; when to walk away from something that appears good, but may not ultimately be great for the overarching journey ahead.

One

Many of you are highly creative, highly intuitive creatures, tightly wound for success.  The achievement stakes are high as is the capacity to dream.  You do many things really well, which makes choosing just one of them often difficult.

Action

Today, I want to drop a few ideas that have helped me translate desire into action.  Play around with them, tease them out a bit.  They may challenge a few beliefs you’ve held thus far.  They’ve certainly done so for me.

You can’t have it all (Gasp)

I breathed a deep sigh of relief when I read Twyla Tharp’s sharp words of wisdom in her bestseller The Creative Habit for the first time.

As a brilliant, world-renown choreographer in her 60’s, she harkens back to her stringent 20’s way of thinking that she could, indeed have it all:

“To lead a creative life, you have to sacrifice, ‘Sacrifice’ and ‘having it all’ do not go together.  I set out to have a family, have a career, be a dancer, and support myself all at once, and it was overwhelming.  I had to learn the hard way that you can’t have it all, you have to make some sacrifices, and there’s no way you’re going to fulfill all the roles you imagine.”

Hats

What roles are you currently juggling?  Does it feel exhausting?  Perhaps its time to re-examine all the hats you’re wearing and choose one or two that fit the best.  I know I know,  you are good at what you set your mind to and multi-tasking might be your jam. However, when calling and desire are at stake, slow and steady may be your best bet for consistent delivery.

Cut it out

The word “decide” comes from the Latin decider, literally meaning “to cut off.”  Whenever we make a choice, we cut off and remove another option.  I love this imagery–it frees up space for more of what we actually want and lightens the load in order to quicken our step in the right direction.  Choosing to prioritize a dream that speaks lovingly and loudly allows us to silence the dead weight of conflicting voices that speak out of turn.  Plus, this is how we practice listening and leaning into intuition,  ultimately building trust in ourselves, our voice.

Good vs. Great

This doesn’t mean the conflicting voices are necessarily bad.  Au Contraire!  I believe at the core of our desires we find purity.  We want to make a good living to create freedom and security, we want to get a promotion in order to feel accomplished and respected, we want to travel the world in order to fuel a sense of wonder and expand our horizons.  These are all beautiful desires.  We’ve got to learn how to navigate them.

Harvest

I love vineyards.  The process of growing, pruning, crushing, and harvesting grapes that eventually produce wine is fascinating, if not poetic.  The farmer is intimately acquainted with this process of knowing, choosing, and cutting off in order to render the best the vines can offer.  Of course, there are wilting grapes in obvious need of elimination.  Then there are perfectly good grapes; grapes that appear healthy, ripe, and full of potential.  The winemaker knows, however, that in order for optimal growth, too much weight and fruit will actually dampen the vine and lower overall quality.

There doesn’t need to be harsh judgment of our decision to focus on one goal over another.  The good news is, we can always come back to it and reassess.  Like the song boasts, “There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.”

Now dream

For now, I encourage you to make a list of 5-10 things you deeply desire to accomplish in the next three months.  Don’t edit it or deem them unrealistic, just listen to what wells up inside.  Spend five minutes with that list and circle the one that would have the MOST positive impact on your life now.  If there’s one that’s are close second, draw a box around it; you’ve found your six month goal.  You can build this out as long as you want and revisit with more clarity down the line.  As I mentioned last week, the Passion Planner is an amazing resource to supplement this journey as well.

I absolutely love partnering with you on this journey of making dreams and desires a tangible reality.  If you feel you need extra support, don’t hesitate to reach out.  Oh and, stay tuned for some really exciting news on the blog in the coming weeks!  I’ve got some fun stuff planned for us

Love & Gratitude,

Katie

xoxo

Legacy & A Broken Hallelujah

Please think about your legacy, because you’re writing it every day.

-Gary Vaynerchuck

I have a confession to make.

Despite years of deep south steeping growing up in Mobile, AL,  I have never been a huge fan of country music.  In fact, I always felt like the odd man out during those fragile years of middle school when the cool kids where discovering the likes of Alan Jackson, The Judds, John Michael Montgomery, and most curiously to me, Billy Ray Cyrus.  I was totally stumped, yet went along with it as my awkward stage lasted painfully longer than everyone else’s and I had just switched to a preppy new school.  The part of me that wanted to be liked was much bigger than the part that couldn’t be bothered.

So I succumbed to country music peer pressure and owned all the cds to prove it.  Looking back, I stand by the fact that it didn’t make sense to me then and it still doesn’t now, not even “Old Country.”  There, I said it. Hilariously, I now live in the country music mecca of Nashville,  and am married to a man who works in that industry.  God truly has an impeccable sense of humor.

Storytellers

What I am a fan of are the rich stories those often simple songs have told over time and the legends who did the telling.  You know the stories: about family, hard work, love, tradition, heartache, and a good time.  From what I’ve learned, the largest radio format in the world is that of country music and has been for quite some time.  My uneducated guess as to why is that these songs and stories are more widely accessible for most people.  They tell normal, relatable  stories and in that normalcy, provide a familiar  and welcoming place to visit.  I’m clearly no expert, it’s just a hunch.

A league of their own

My appreciation of this genre hiked up a few notches on Sunday night as I got to tag along with Daniel for an induction ceremony at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Three icons were to be honored: the legendary songwriter, producer, and founder of Monument Records, Fred Foster (think Dolly Parton and Roy Orbison), Charlie Daniels, and Randy Travis.  I felt completely honored to be there and stepped into a totally next level cool kids club upon arrival…way out of my league.   Dolly sang, and in my estimation, definitely still has it.  She could give Adele a run for her money at age 70!  The tiny but mighty Brenda Lee presented as did the likes of Garth Brooks and Vince Gill, (personal crush since forever and the one exception to my apathy for country music).

I mention all of this for one reason: the three icons inducted into the Hall of Fame on Sunday night were honored because of their unique gift and contribution to their fans and the world at large through music.  These three great men were honored for their Legacy.  Merriam-Webster defines legacy this way:

Full Definition of legacy

plural legacies

1:  a gift by will especially of money or other personal property :  bequest

2:  something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past <the legacy of the ancient philosophers>

Shrink

I define legacy with a vivid memory.  I was sitting in a psychiatrists office around age twenty-four and in the throes of some pretty rocking anxiety and depression to the point where I hated to be alone and had tons of trouble sleeping.  Four hours a night was success.  This psychiatrist was unlike most who focus mainly on medication prescription and maintenance (which greatly helped me at the time).  The touchy feel-y talk stuff typically didn’t show up in these types of offices all that often.  My doctor, however, would always spend the extra time asking insightful open-ended questions and practicing the kind of active listening that would make Oprah squirm.

The Big Question

This particular day I was feeling pretty frail.  Upon my impasse of despair, he looked at me with eyes full of compassion as asked, “Katie, what kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?”  Mic drop.  Are you kidding me? I thought to myself.  I’m in tons of excruciating emotional pain and confusion over here and you are asking me to tell you what I want my grandkids to say about me when I’m gone?  That is just cruel and unusual punishment.

Ansel Adams

He didn’t flinch.  Dammit, I had to dig deep for this one.   As I sat there, something shifted inside.  It was like a massive wide-lens movie camera zoomed out and captured my life in an epic, Ansel Adams kind of way.  I saw vast nuances instead of harsh details and gentle peaks and valleys instead of the unflattering flatlined monotony of my current reality.  It was as if someone took a soft, forgiving filter and appropriated it to my life.  It was that good lighting on a first date kind of luck, you know?  There was a spike of hope that arose in my soul.  My heart perked up like the ears of a bored dog who just heard the garage door open.

Desire

I didn’t have a grand, clever answer for him.  I actually can’t even remember what I said.  I do, however remember the gravity of that perspective shift.  The truth was, all I could see and feel in that moment was the intense barrage of my current emotions.  I was landlocked in that sense, but I wanted so much more.

I wanted the freedom of an ocean so I could look back 10 years from then and see a gift I gave along the way to others who may have felt a similar sadness.  I wanted to give so much, do so much, be so much! I wanted to write songs, write books, have a family, love wildly, throw dinner parties, travel the world, run for public office (it was just a phase), own at least one pair of Jimmy Choo’s, you know…the important stuff!  In that moment, I got angry at my sadness.  That anger felt really good.

This highly annoying legacy question gave me the nudge I needed to start making future-based decisions that didn’t always reflect the way I felt in the moment.  

Serendipity

What I later discovered in our work together was that my psychiatrist went to med school at the University of South Alabama and did his cardiac rotation under the instruction of my Grandfather, a talented and respected heart surgeon in Mobile at the time.  All those years later in Nashville, I held in my needy hands the gift of hope and tangled proof of a beautiful legacy.  My own Grandfather paid it forward for me in that moment, unbeknownst to him.  If that isn’t serendipity, I don’t know what is.  I’m reminded of that story every time I want to give up.

I guarantee if Fred Foster, Charlie Daniels, and Randy Travis would have listened to the discouragement and naysayers along the way, caving into popular demands instead of following their heart as crazy as it seemed against the great odds of their humble beginnings,  there would not have been a big ceremony on Sunday night.  Well, I suppose there would, yet faces and stories belonging to a different cast of characters.

Amazing Grace

The night ended as it should, with a song.  Not just any song though: an imperfect and a capella Amazing Grace, led by Randy Travis. His words were barely understood due to a severely paralyzing stroke he suffered in 2013.  His velvety baritone still shone through the cracks though.  A tear soaked audience sang along, humbly, lovingly.  A man who had made his mark with that undeniably iconic voice stood at the helm of the night  inviting us to something greater.  He lost control of the masterful, tangible gift we know so well, however, legacy runs deeper than just a pretty voice and a knock out career.  His legacy is the gift of a life well-lived, full of peaks and valleys:  the character of oak and heart of gold that inspires us to keep showing up, one broken hallelujah at a time.  So, my friends, you knew I’d ask:

What will your legacy be?

Love,

katie