How to Dream Bigger in 2020 with Lara Casey
Happy New Year, friends! Today we’re talking with Lara Casey. Lara is an author and the CEO of Cultivate What Matters. She has created a goal setting tool called Power Sheets, which are an amazing tool that helps you focus on what really matters and live intentionally. She also has an amazing podcast called Cultivate Your Life with Lara Casey.
I feel like the way Lara writes, the questions she asks that there's an intentionality to life for her and her brain. It is so beautiful. So I first talked with Lara about what she builds and how and why she built it.
“What we do is we have products, but really at the heart of these products that we've created is a mission to help women look at the big picture and have a paradigm shift in the way they think about life instead of living by this narrow to do list and living by the world's expectations. What is going to matter to you when you're 80 or 90 or a 100 years old and how does that change the way you're going to live now?”
I think there’s this urgency that we both share that we try to seize the day and use our lives well, and the questions Lara asks in her Power Sheets get to the core of that ultimate goal, which is to spend our lives well. So it's what do we hope for? What's holding us back from that? What are we afraid of? And it's exactly what the Get Out Of Your Head book is talking about - this idea of intentionally noticing what we're thinking about. Because our fears are holding us back, but we don't really name them. We don't write them down. We don't talk about them.
So I next wanted to talk with Lara about how she has seen that as an important step to actually living intentionally.
“Well, it's totally changed my life. I think the reason I'm so passionate about this, too, is not just God consistently opening my heart and my soul to it, but I've lived on the other side of it. I've lived completely by accident in my life and chasing all the wrong things. To the point where I felt like I was at rock bottom. And so when I hear and I see women experiencing that - man, nothing fires me up more than helping women to flip the script. So like you said, when we are stepping into these things, sometimes even just talking about stepping into our fears or just noticing what is there, it's going to help to clear out a pathway for us to make room for the new things that God has for us.
I feel like that's probably one of the biggest things that women struggle with is, I'm already so overwhelmed. I can't imagine adding something else to my already full plate. I get it. You know, I don't want that either. But that is where our word cultivate comes in. To cultivate means to break up the soil and to break up the hard ground, to break up those old roots and the past and the rocks that are there. It doesn't mean to completely remove all that stuff. It means to grow in the ground that you're standing on with those things. So that's why I love the practical planning side of things. I love getting a clean slate at the beginning of a month. And I'm doing it from that heart of knowing that we're going to break up the old stuff to make room for the new stuff.”
There's got to be something hardwired in our DNA about a new year. It wants a reset. It wants that blank slate. And so next I wanted to talk with Lara about what it looks like when you have that idea to make a decision. Is this something I should do? Is this something I should consider and wait on and sit on? Is this something maybe I shouldn't do?
“Well, I love this question because I feel like we all wrestle with this. How do you know if your dreams are God-led and not from yourself? How can you tell the difference? And I know that we feel afraid that we're going to make the wrong choices, that we're going to either choose the wrong goals or set out on the wrong pursuit. And I think first of all, we just have to ask God. I know it sounds so simple, but it's fundamental. God wants us to ask Him whether or not these things are right. When we feel lost in those moments dreaming about the year ahead or the decade ahead, when you feel lost in those goals or in your purpose or in choosing between one path or another, ultimately He wants you to be with Him. He just wants you to ask for help - not because He wants to give you a perfect answer, but because He just wants you.
And then I think we can do a little check-in. So practical tips here:
1. Open the Word and look for specific scriptures or stories or examples in the Bible that confirm the goal that you have in mind. Have you seen this pattern walked out before? And again, these are fundamental things, but is your goal biblically sound? Sometimes we think to ourselves, ‘this is going to be really awesome and just grow my life’ before we stop and ask, ‘Hey God, is this good? Are you in this?’
2. Just ask Him. He's so good. He wants to instruct us. He says, I'm going to instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. That's what's in the Bible. So let's ask Him.
3. Ask trusted friends or mentors for guidance. It might be your significant other, it might be a friend that you're doing some goal planning with, or your roommate. But ask for guidance from God-loving mentors who have a different perspective about your life than you might. It's always hard to make decisions about whether or not to take a step forward on a goal or a dream when we're in it. We've got all the emotion wrapped up in it so I think taking a step back is really helpful.
4. And lastly, dreams that are bigger than us are sometimes from Him because we know that they will require His strength, and He will get all the glory because there's no possible way we could do them without Him. I keep that in mind if it's really uncomfortable for me to think about stepping into a goal or a dream that's going to call me to be more courageous than I have the courage for. And sometimes that is something worth leaning into.”
Next we talk about those first steps. Once someone has run it past their channels, and they feel like they're supposed to go, but it seems too crazy. What does that first step look like towards that?
“First, I think we have to ask a basic practical question. Is it right for right now? Like what is this going to cost us? And it's a tricky question to answer because when you think about what an idea or a goal is going to cost you - a good thing to lay down is say our pride or feeling like we're not going to have enough courage or strength to do it. Like we can lay that down and God can help us with that. But if it is in a season where you already have a full plate, like maybe you're caring for an ailing parent or you're going through a job transition or something like that. In those times we really have to stop and say, what is this gonna cost me? Is this maybe a really good pursuit, totally God-led, I've prayed about it, God says go, but maybe it's best for four months from now and not right now? So we have to stop and consider the season that we're in to make sure we can really sink our teeth into it. The right goals will always lead you on His path, in His ways and not away from Him. So if it's going to cost you time, your relationship with God, it’s not a good idea.
Second, know that you're not going to have an idea and then take that first step forward and think you’re going to coast from there. God wants you to stay connected to Him every step of the way. When you're following the purposes that He has for you, it is like following a map. So just like you would go on a long road trip, you kind of have to keep checking the map to make sure you're headed in the right direction. And if you lose sight of the destination and the plan, you might find yourself in unfamiliar territory. But then you can come back to the map, get back on track, and know that He wants your heart. So when you have a crazy idea, know that, ultimately, He wants you to continue to ask Him and not just say, ‘okay God, tell me the answer and then I'm gonna run with this for the rest of the year.’”
Lara is exactly right. Ultimately, God’s after our relationship and us depending on Him day in and day out. Because she’s experienced both, I wanted to shift and talk with Lara about the difference between when it’s hard and you should press through in obedience and when you should shut down a dream.
You know, it is never an easy thing to close a chapter on something. I started Southern Weddings Magazine 11 years ago, and it was such an accident that Cultivate What Matters started. ‘Accident’ meaning God had a plan. But on our end, we had no intentions of starting a shop and making money in a shop that was no business plan at all. It's like we weren't following some blueprint that someone gave us. We made the decision to print a print that said ‘love never fails’ on it because that was the heart of our fifth anniversary issue for Southern Weddings. And that's kind of what snowballed into the Southern Wedding Shop. And then us starting the Cultivates Shop. And long story short, both of these businesses kept growing and growing and growing. And we came to a place of restlessness, of friction where I thought to myself, ‘okay, both of these things are really good. How in the world am I supposed to give up one of these things? I can't give up one’.
So the obvious answer is to do what the world says, which is to grow both. However, at the end of that season, I knew that I wanted to be homeschooling my daughter, and these two ideas were very much opposing each other. Then God, as we wrestled with this, told us ‘maybe this isn't closing down a dream. Maybe you've completed the work I've given you to do’. And then feeling that confirmation - that we actually have completed the work that we had been given to do with Southern Weddings so that we could not just affect women in a marrying stage of life, but in every stage of life. That became the dream. That was the God-led dream that He gave us. And He had a lot of transition and hardship for us and difficult things in the season that followed that.
But He wanted us to grow so much more in our faith so that our focus would be in the right place. And I could say so much more about that. But the point is, it's okay to let go of a dream. It's okay to let go of a dream to make room for something new, even if you don't know what is going to happen on the other side of the obedience, that step that you need to take. And for us now, over a year since that hard season, I am so grateful that God had us walk into that mess. I am so grateful that he had us walk into the fire because that fire refines our souls and our team has never been closer. The work we do has never been clearer for His mission, and I wouldn't have known that about eight months ago.”
I wanted to know the hardest part for Lara on the other side of shutting down a dream.
“Oh, the hardest part, I think is coming into a new normal, especially as a leader coming into a whole new charge on something that doesn't have the memories and the legacy that Southern Weddings had built over that long span of time. Really, the hardest part is embracing slow growth. It's like what we teach all the time. It's okay to grow slow. I wanted immediately for our team to gel and for me to be able to lead them clearly and have clear objectives and so many things. And yet God did not have that in the plan. He said, actually, first you need to do what you're teaching people and that is to cultivate the soil you're standing on and break up the hard ground. And then I'm going to give you some seeds to plant in due time.”
I wanted to talk next about two words that I'm fascinated by. I've been able, in my life, to start to notice when I'm living into one of these two words. So I asked Lara to describe the difference between DRIVENNESS and CALLING.
“Oh, I feel like this is the ultimate question. It is the wrestling that we have in our souls of am I doing this for me or am I doing this because God is leading me to? I start with asking myself what I call the golden question. Where do you want to be in the big picture? What is going to actually matter when you're 80, 90, 100 years old? And sometimes that's difficult for me to envision, but I love the flip side of that question. What's not going to matter when I'm at that point in my life? That's what you have to ask yourself, why are you doing this? I can convince myself and a whole lot of people that this is a great pursuit, but you know, you feel that tension in your soul, you do. You just feel like at the end of the day this actually doesn't matter. And I have the, the verse from Psalm 90:12 has just been ringing in my soul all year.
Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
-Psalm 90:12
And I think in that verse is the answer to this question. Drivenness versus calling. When you are faced with the brevity of life and the gift of life at the same time, you can discern between those two things.
I mean, you've spoken about how you've intentionally taken time away and shut off the phone to the best of your ability. I think that's really what it is. If you can intentionally throw some darts into those cog wheels on a regular basis, you will shake up your brain. Because you know so much about this from writing this last book that your brain really seeks out pattern and habit, and we could just keep on doing the same old things that we've always done and keep sitting in the mode of listening to social media and listening to what other people are saying. Or we can get uncomfortable and step away from that for a minute and get some perspective. And many times, like you said, it's just even the act of getting still, which may actually mean being active, can help us to see where we are feeling that tension. Are you exhausting yourself at the expense of the things that really do matter in the big picture or are you stepping into a time of super hard work? God does talk a lot about hard work in the Bible. There's a difference between those two things though, depending on the motivation that you have.”
To close, I wanted to hear from Lara on her dreams and what she’s excited about for the new year.
“On the same lines of what we just talked about. To me, the biggest thing is interacting with my physical Bible. And I've been trying to wrestle with like how do I put really nice pretty words to that to make it into a goal, and I think it just doesn't need them. I think that's what I'm most excited about is interacting with my physical Bible. I've loved reading my digital Bible and I occasionally have the physical Bible out, but to me it is the intentional act of stepping away from any device that's going to possibly distract me. Because I could be in the middle of praying, and then suddenly I'm making my grocery list. right. So really interacting with my physical Bible, writing in my physical Bible using the power of handwriting, which really does start to trigger our brains to make decisions and to soak in the information that we're reading. To me, that's what I'm most excited about because I know it's going to have a domino effect in every other aspect of my life.”
