Will The Center Hold
Will the center hold.
That’s what Jessica said to me after I asked her what the big fear is when it comes to where she is at in life and business.
Will. The. Center. Hold.
A smile washed across my face because as I heard the words come out of her mouth, I knew exactly what she meant.
Jessica is the founder and CEO of Points North Studio - a branding and design agency in Baltimore, MD. A while back, she heard me on Emily McDowell and Holly Whitaker’s podcast, Quitted, which led her to follow me on social media, and eventually she reached out.
And a couple of weeks ago, she flew to Nashville and spent half a day with me.
For a while now, I’ve been working on creating a half-day intensive (more about this later) for people/leaders who are in a season of life of realizing that what they are looking for isn’t found on the other side of doing and achieving more.
Bigger doesn’t always mean better.
And like Jessica, while they know that they are capable of more, they are realizing that what got them to where they are today—the willpower, the striving and the white-knuckling their way through life—is not what’s going to get them to where they want to be.
But the new way forward is unclear—for now.
When I left the NFL, I knew that the game I was playing of trying to achieve my way into the life I was looking for was a losing game.
The goalposts to my life were continuously moving ten more yards down the field and this experience of feeling like something was missing no matter how hard I was working was leaving my soul tired.
For the last decade, I’ve committed my life to my own growth and healing and discovering a new way forward. A new way that ultimately allows me to shift from surviving my life to participating in life—an embodied balance between willpower and trust.
And I’ve realized that there comes a time when the next evolution of success that we are living into isn’t found on the familiar path of the upward trajectory but is only discovered at the bottom of an internal deepening.
But to cross over the threshold of change and step into a new way forward requires us to challenge the status quo, ask new questions and hold the tension of these unanswered questions as we live into the answers that may or may not come.
So, when Jessica was saying that her big fear is knowing if the center will hold, it was clear to me what she was saying.
Will the center hold as she follows her heart even when her heart is walking her away from the tried and true?
Will the center hold as she lets go of the only way of life that she knows to be true and trust that something new will emerge?
Will the center hold as she leans into a season of stillness as the world in which she does business continues to move at the speed of non-stop striving?
Will the center hold.
While I can’t answer this for her or for you as living into the answer yourself is the internal deepening that you’re looking for, I’m here to help you find out.
After all, if you know in the deepest parts of your being that the center will hold, what risk would you not take? What passion would you not pursue? What dream would you not lean into?
How would your life change if you knew that the center would hold?