Why do I do what I do?

How do you put your innermost thoughts to words? How do you define how you “feel”?

How do you just *know* something, but can’t explain what that feels like in your core? Similar to faith, yet that doesn’t need defining, you just know “why” and never thought to outwardly define it.

Have you ever been there?

Maybe you are stuck there now. As I was. For years and years and years. So I just avoided the question and maybe just touched on the the actual answer with a fraction of the depth I should have explored. Because the real answer was too difficult for me to decode. That means that I would have to do a lot of “work” like dig deep into what makes me tick and what motivates me outwardly to make daily decisions and inspires everything I do. Sheesh……who has time for THAT?!?!? And the loudest thought in my head was, “Does anyone really need to know this?”

Then a few years ago I saw Simon Sinek’s TedTV talk (if you haven’t seen it, I HIGHLY recommend it). The simplicity of that talk both inspired me and frustrated me ever since. His thought provoking question of “Why do you do what you do?” was gnawing at me. With giant shark teeth into that very place that I was avoiding. Yes, I do need to know this. And those who I interact with might need to know too.

What complicated things further was that my business and my photography and my life are so intertwined. One continually feeds off of the other. My life inspires my work and my work inspires my life. The people I do life with, from my clients to my family to my closest friendships, all have a great effect and influence on me. Hopefully we all encompass the same values, goals and priorities.

So my attempt went as far as to draw a little graphic of it in my journal just to give it a tiny bit of structure.

It looked something like this:

Then I flipped that page, and continued to ignore it for many more months. I could continue to keep ignoring it, but a continuous problem never goes away. It resurfaces and resurfaces forever. Without defining my “why” I had no filter in which everything would flow through. Like a good mission statement, everything needs to pass though that. If I am going to give away a chunk of the most valuable currency I have  – time – I needed it to pass through this filter. I want why I do what I do to be able to pass through these questions easily.

Are we a good fit for each other?

Am I serving them the best that I can?

Will my time with them enrich their life in some way?

What kind of work do I really want to be doing?

Is this true to my style?

Am I keeping a good work/life balance?

Am I giving others the experience they deserve from me?

Am I prioritizing my family?

Am I taking care of myself?

Am I making a difference in this person’s life?

….And on and on and on the list would go….

How would those questions be easily answered if I couldn’t answer the biggest one for myself? Why do I do what I do?

I could guess my way through it, I could continue to ignore it, or I could do the work and actually dedicate some mental time and energy to figure this out. And if I really couldn’t answer this question, then I am not spending my valuable currency wisely. By investing in this time now, I believe it would help steer the course of the next phase of my life, my work, my brand, and my businesses.

So I brewed with Hannah. (Founder of the incredible More Love Letters movement – which you need to totally bookmark and check out).

It went something like this:

“Hannah – please help me – pretty please. I need you to get in my head and pull out the words that I have hidden in there way down deep inside. I need to find them.” (or it went something like that)

I showed her my little embarrassing graphic and tried to fumble though explaining what my deepest life’s goals are and what my heart might look like on the inside.

We collaborated…..She was brilliant….. And it was overall amazing. She gave me the most beautiful copy ever. I probably should have just hit publish and I would have been done.

But then I sat on that copy for an entire month. I realized that it just wasn’t exactly all of “me”. Yes, it was me, but it was only the “me” that I allowed her to see. We only went through the doors that were already open. And I knew I was still being lazy.  *Sigh*. WHYYYY was my “WHY” sooo hard!

With Hannah’s blessings, I tried to edit her beautiful words. I enlisted the help of my songwriting husband and even when we were “finished”  I knew that there were still doors left untouched. Closed by everyday life and responsibilities. Closed by past judgments and insecurities and fears of failure. Closed by fear of rocking the boat. And then left closed because I knew opening them would make everything a bit more complicated and real. And real personal. And back to my original fear that I had somehow laced within a question, “Does anyone really need to know all this?”  Don’t we all just want to know that what we are doing, matters…..at all?

During this dramatic made-for-tv internal struggle, a few of my girlfriends and I went to see artist Jesh de Rox speak in Philadelphia. I would love to share my thoughts on THAT, but I just can’t even put that to words yet how amazing that was. What I can tell you is by the end of that night, a few new doors were opened. Not flinging wide and quick with a bunch of giant declarations – but just enough where I can peek inside and see all that I had ignored for so long. Enough to see the possibilities of things I didn’t even know about yet.

Enough to remind me of who I am, and how I was intentionally and uniquely created for a purpose.

I knew it was the perfect time to put pen to paper and explore some of those new doors. Before my everyday responsibilities were at the forefront of my mind once again. It finally allowed me to finish answering that plaguing question and rest in the knowledge that what I am doing does matter. What we ALL do, matters.

 

“There is a grace filled heart at the very core of me. It’s big. And it’s bulging. And it whispers steadily with every beat: love harder. Love harder today.”

It sweeps into everything I do, every role I carry – wife, mother, woman, friend, and follower of Christ. I am first a servant, who has learned to set her eyes on capturing something real.

My heart rests in the presence of joy. Pushing into the portraits of life when it’s most unbound and fragile, and precious to us. The moments when life seems to stop and we breathe in something deeper. Those moments when nothing else in the world seems to matter so much as the presence of one another – that we’re here. And we’ve been given this day.

Life is precious. Every story matters. And we often forget how rich we truly are. It is not about perfection. But about finding a balance of authenticity and joy, and getting grace stuck in the grooves.”

 

 

Big thanks to my dear friend Tiffany Farley for this sweet photo of my son and I. More on those photos coming soon!