The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 333 - Life Lessons from Cate

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: I'm coming to you today as a proud mama.

Pete: Aww.

Jen: And also, as potentially a student with a fifteen-year-old teacher.

Pete: Oh, yes.

Jen: Yeah. I want to unpack a couple life lessons from Cate.

Pete: I mean, one of my favorite episodes we ever did was called Leadership, and it was essentially life lessons from Cate on leadership. So, you better believe I'm excited for this. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Oh my gosh. Thank you for reminding me about that.

Pete: What wisdom has she dropped now? You remember that? I still remember where I was when we recorded that episode, because...

Jen: Because it was kind of extraordinary.

Pete: She had this whiteboard, and she was writing about leadership, and I was like, "What? Tell me more." It was just wild.

Jen: This was years ago. I mean, was she ten or eleven? She's fifteen now.

Pete: Yeah. Wild.

Jen: Actually, she might have been nine...like, it might have been the first year that we recorded.

Pete: One of the OGs. We'll put that in the Box O' Goodies, for those that want a nice throwback.

Jen: Okay. Now, I need to preface everything I'm about to say with, "I know. I know. Every parent thinks that their child is the most amazing, the most brilliant, the most evolved...,"

Pete: Wait until I tell you about Ollie.

Jen: "...my daughter really is."

Pete: Ah, that's so funny.

Jen: Okay, I'm going to give you a little bit of context.

Pete: Alright.

Jen: First, I'm going to tell you where we landed. And then, I'm going to back all the way up to the beginning of the story. I think that might be helpful to set the context.

Pete: Alright.

Jen: The moral of the story, the life lesson learned from Cate is something I have had to learn over and over and over and over again: The person you want to be is waiting for you on the other side of your fear.

Pete: Hmm. Agh, I feel it in my throat.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: I feel annoyed.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: I feel annoyed in my throat.

Jen: I know. I know. Okay, so here's the deal. For those of you who don't know, my daughter is a musician. She's a guitarist, she's a singer, she's a songwriter, super talented. I'm in awe of her every day. Full stop.

Pete: Prodigy.

Jen: She was asked to be the rhythm guitarist at this pretty significant venue in New York City called 54 Below, for their night of Broadway singers singing the music of Taylor Swift.

Pete: Alright. So we have Broadway singers, i.e. some of the best singers in the world, singing Taylor Swift songs, i.e. one of the most popular musicians in the world, and we have your daughter playing guitar for said evening. Alrighty.

Jen: Right. So, the band is all like Broadway musicians...

Pete: Right.

Jen: ...and Cate.

Pete: Amazing. Ah, this is so good.

Jen: It's crazy. So anyway, rehearsal for the band is approaching and she is experiencing serious imposter syndrome. "Why did they ask me? Who am I? I've never done this before with like 'real' musicians. They're going laugh at me. I'm not going to be able to keep up. I don't even know what it's like to be in a professional band rehearsal." This is her first time doing something like this.

Pete: Oh my god. So like, I love this because imposter is kind of valid, in a way. You know?

Jen: It's 100% valid, like, "I am an imposter." So two days before band rehearsal (she tells me this later), she tells her friend that she's going to figure out how to get out of it. She's not going to do the gig, she's going to get out of it. And her friend was like, "Cate, they wouldn't have asked you if you couldn't do it. And you committed, you have to do it."

Pete: Great work, friend.

Jen: So we grab the guitar, we head out of the house on our way to rehearsal, and she's nervous and she says something like, "I don't belong," or like, "I'm not one of them." Anyway, we get to rehearsal. I see her. I get to watch...I get to be a little bit of a Mama Rose here.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: I get to watch. I see her sort of like, "Oh, god, oh god." They're playing the first song. She's not sure if she's doing it right. And then, the drummer, an incredible Broadway drummer, makes a mistake, and they have to hold to correct this. And in this moment...she has explained this to me after the fact. In this moment, she was like, "Wait a minute. That guy is an expert. He made a mistake. And everybody's fine with it."

Pete: Yes.

Jen: "Oh, maybe I don't have to be perfect right now. I just need to do it."

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: So, I saw her posture change. I saw the way she was strumming her guitar change. She started cracking jokes.

Pete: Whoa.

Jen: Yeah, like she was making people laugh in the room.

Pete: What? Yes!

Jen: Anyway, long story short, at the end of rehearsal, she was on cloud frickin' nine. She could have floated all the way home. And then, we were talking about how when she was much younger and she was auditioning for this children's chorus, this very prestigious children's chorus here in New York, she had the same exact thing happen, where she tried to get out of the audition. She knew she wasn't going to be good enough. She went in the room. She sang. She got accepted to the chorus. And she was like, "That was the most fun I've ever had."

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: Anyway, on the other side of her fear was this identity that she wanted so much, which was professional musician. And she was so...now, this is mom analyzing. She was so afraid that that title would not be bestowed upon her that she was willing to, for a second until her friend talked her out of it, give up the chance to find out if she could do it. But then, she did it. And now, tomorrow night is the show, and she is the rhythm guitarist, and I'm sure there will be videos online or something after the fact for people to see.

Pete: That is wild. I'm beaming. I just like, that is such an inspiring and relatable...

Jen: It really is.

Pete: I mean, it's weird to call that a relatable story, because I've never been a musician. But I mean, relatable in the sense that...for so many reasons. One, the fear that you have about something acting as a voice that convinces you to not do something, like, "Oh, you could just get out of it. Just get out of it." I mean, gosh, how many times could I relate to that? "You should just not bother. You should just not do that thing." Like, that voice is so relatable. But the other thing I feel like is so relatable, my favorite part of the story actually is the drummer making a mistake,

Jen: Right.

Pete: And that being the unlock for Cate, that seeing someone who you have on a pedestal, that you regard to be in some other world or operating in a way that you could never operate, do something totally human.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And something that you too can do, i.e. make a mistake or play off beat or whatever happened, and for that to be this realization of, "Huh. Oh, I got this."

Jen: Right.

Pete: Like, that's just...ah, it's so good. It's so good.

Jen: It is so good. Pete, I remember my first rehearsal for a Broadway show. I showed up at rehearsal, I was 100% convinced that I would be fired the same day.

Pete: Wow.

Jen: Like truly convinced, to the point that I couldn't even take in the information that was being given to me by the person putting me into the show. And I kept making all of these mistakes, and I was like, "Oh my god, here comes the firing. Like, what are they doing?" And she, very sternly but also very kindly, was like, "You just need to focus." I was like, "Oh, okay...okay." She was like, "Breathe, and let's try it again. And this time, actually do it." And then, I did. And I was like, "Oh, maybe I won't get fired." But it's like this fear of, maybe part of it is like the not being accepted by other people. I think that was happening for me. I know that was happening for Cate.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: But the other part of it is like, "Am I who I think I am?"

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: "Am I capable of being who I want to be?"

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: "Am I an imposter to myself?"

Pete: Ooh. Yeah. "This thing that I've always had in my head, could it actually exist in the real world or is it only ever going to exist in my head? And what if I try to make it exist in the real world, and it doesn't?"

Jen: Right.

Pete: "What does that say about the story in my head?"

Jen: Right.

Pete: "Who am I?" This is deep.

Jen: Isn't it?

Pete: I agree with you around, that part of the fear is the fear of not fitting in to a particular group. And back to the drummerand why that was so profound for Cate, for me, it's one of the takeaways, is that the reason that or the manifestation of that fear, the manifestation of me not fitting in, will be because I will make a mistake, and no one in this group ever makes mistakes.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: So when you see someone do the thing that you thought would be the thing that castrates you, and they don't get castrated, it's like paradigm shifting. You go, "Wait a minute."

Jen: Right.

Pete: That's the moment, to me, where she saw the other side of the fear.

Jen: Right.

Pete: You saw what happened if that worst fear of yours was to come true, and the thing that happened was, "Alright, let's go again."

Jen: Yep.

Pete: It's just like, okay. It was a non-event. It was a non-event.

Jen: Right? So Pete, one of the things that I realize is directly associated with this particular fear is what Brené Brown calls "fucking first time".

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: Like, this is the fucking first time. Do you remember that? She did that during the pandemic. I think it was like her first episode during the pandemic.

Pete: Totally forgotten about that. That was like March 2020, yes. Oh my god, I remember where I was. I was driving my car to Wilsons Prom, which is a national park in Victoria. Wow. And I was listening to that, and I was nodding my head. Yeah. Alright, fucking first times...what a throwback.

Jen: Yeah, I was walking by the water in Nantucket, and I was like, "What the hell is happening in the world?

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: "Do I live here now? Like, what is happening?" But the fucking first time of it is, this was Cate's fucking first time being in a band with professional musicians who had expectations that she could play right alongside them and blend right in.

Pete: Beautiful.

Jen: You and I have had so many fucking first times. Everybody listening to this show has had so many fucking first times. Your very first keynote, your first corporate workshop, the first time you asked for a raise, the first time you took a private client, the first time you had that difficult conversation with a family member, like we've all had so many fucking first times, and the person who we wanted to be was waiting for us on the other side of that fucking first time. And I think the like, the double life lesson I am getting from this is: Seek the fucking first times.

Pete: Yes. Yes, yes. Okay, so this is a really awesome way of articulating something that I have tried to articulate in the past and not always done a great job of. And I mentioned this at the start, where Cate's imposter was valid. Because it was her first time, and she was an imposter in the sense that she wasn't who she thought the other people were, based on her own definition. And yet, that was a good thing, because it was the sign that she's doing the thing that she should be doing, to become the person that she wants to become. It was the growing pain or the light that was shining this path, butwe perceive it to be...usually, we perceive it to be the opposite. We perceive it to be a sign that we're doing something we shouldn't be doing. And what you're saying, and what I'm trying to say, is it's actually the thing we should seek out. It's actually the sign that we're doing the work that we want to be doing. And it's so easy to convince yourself of the opposite. So I agree with you, seeking out and looking for those moments of feeling like the fucking first time.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: I was just having this conversation with a very dear friend and collaborator of mine who I'm running a workshop with tomorrow, and who's just recently become a parent. And she was saying to me, one of the things she realized is how she hasn't felt like she's done something for the first time for a long time.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And that's the feeling that she's having as a parent. It's like, "I have no idea what I'm doing. Every day presents a new challenge, and I feel totally unqualified for said challenge." And part of her reflection has been, "Gosh, I haven't felt this way in a long time. And maybe that's not a good thing, because I haven't been stretching or pushing into new territories, necessarily." So yeah, it feels very top of mind.

Jen: We recently recorded an episode called The Year of Experimenting, where I was sharing with you and our listeners that I've committed to 2025 being a year of experimenting, and I've implemented some rules around what that means.

Pete: That's right.

Jen: And since having this experience, watching Cate go through this and like recognizing how important it is to put yourself in a first-time situation, that has started to help me inform my year of experimenting, in that I want part of the experiments to be about first times that freak me out a bit, and that my goal is just to get to the other side of it.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: So I can see who I am.

Pete: Yeah. This feels so...I feel like I'm trying to add value to this, but I feel like the profoundness of it is a weight on me and I don't know how else to add value to it, other than to just go, "Yes! Like, yes, Cate." Everything that Cate learned and discovered is just, it's such a great example of growth, of everything that we've ever aspired to talk about in this podcast, of feeling uncomfortable, dancing with that discomfort, shipping things, trying things, doing things, learning in community, all the things that we've ever talked about culminate in this one story. And then, the energy that you getafter the fact, that like, "I could freaking float home right now because I did the thing."

Jen: Yep.

Pete: And I think sometimes we forget that that's the feeling that's available to us, if we lean into the fear. Whereas we're so crushed by the fear and the discomfort of the whole thing, that we forget that there's actually this kind of like almost utopian feeling on the other side of the fear...or there can be. There won't always be, but there can be.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And like, that's the thing we should be chasing.

Jen: I also feel like there's an important element that needs to be called out...at the risk of being labeled a Pollyanna, which I have been in the past. That, just because you want something and that thing you want makes you feel like an imposter, doesn't mean that you should go after it. Like, you have to do the work first. Because it would be something else if Cate was like, "I really wish I was a professional musician, but I don't know how to play an instrument."

Pete: Right.

Jen: Right? No, she's been working very hard right at this instrument, and had reached a point where she was ready to raise the bar.

Pete: Right. And I think to the point of her friend, "They wouldn't have asked you if you hadn't put in the work."

Jen: Right.

Pete: There's a difference in that versus if she didn't even have an instrument. I doubt her friend would say to her...she wouldn't end up in that situation. Her friend would be like, "Do you even know how to play a guitar? I've literally never seen you strum a guitar in my life. So, what?" So yeah, I agree with you. There's a difference in, have you done the work? Have you shown up as a professional, and practiced, and given yourself a chance to end up in this situation? Versus, yeah, a dream of being a surgeon and doing absolutely nothing about the fact that there's a bunch of skill required in order to be a surgeon.

Jen: Right. You just reminded me of a gift I should get her for her debut, which is Steven Pressfield's book, Turning Pro.

Pete: Gosh, it's been a minute since I've watched or read or listened to Stephen Pressfield, and Turning Pro, and also The War of Art.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: Two books that are definitely going in the Box O' Goodies, and definitely going back to the re-read pile on my bookstand...bookstand? Nightstand? Bookshelf? Bedside table, that's what we call it in Australia. I'm so floored by the wisdom of this episode, I can't even put a sentence together.

Jen: Well, as always, I am in awe of what we can learn from our kids, if we're open to allowing them to teach us.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.