Speakers

Greg McKeown, Danielle LaGrone 

Transcript

Greg McKeown

Essentialists, thank you for listening to the Essentialism podcast. It’s such a pleasure to be able to talk with you each week to come directly to you. And if you find this useful if you’re finding the conversation valuable, please include others so that we can continue to expand this community that’s making different choices to achieve a different kind of life altogether. And speaking to that this episode itself is a little different. A few weeks ago, I had Emily Stewart, a nurse from the NHS who’s been working on some of the high-risk patients in the Covid pandemic. And in that episode, I said, if you like this, if you found this interesting, and you think that there are others, that ought to have a central intervention, please reach out to me just email me go to Essentialism.com and email me who you think should be on the show, and why. And in future episodes, we’ll consider just such an option. That’s exactly what happened with my next guest. And it’s Danielle LaGrone from Toronto, Canada. And this conversation captures attention a particular tension between the internal voice of conscience of clarity that says, this is the right path. And other voices, even well intended voices in our own family, our friends, and beyond, who may want great things for us as well, but may still pull us off the path that we really are supposed to be on. That’s the tension at the heart of this conversation. But what I think you’ll find is a resonance with yourself in your own journey to grapple between those different voices. Please enjoy.

Greg McKeown

Danielle. 

Danielle LaGrone  

Hello.

Greg McKeown  

Where am I catching you today Danielle?

Danielle LaGrone  

I am hiding in my 10-year-old daughter’s room, for privacy.

Greg McKeown  

And tell me about you Danielle.

Danielle LaGrone   

Ok so, my husband is currently teaching a class live in our living room, which is why I’m hiding in here. We are both university instructors and I teach for a couple of different universities and I teach the history of religion. 

Greg McKeown  

What universities?

Danielle LaGrone

I teach for Queen’s University, primarily. My husband works for the University of Guelph-Humber, which is in Toronto. And I’ve started teaching there in the last few years. So that is my primary job.

Greg McKeown  

I love Toronto.

Danielle LaGrone

Oh, wow. Yeah, I love Toronto too. I didn’t grow up here but close by. But it’s my home now for sure.

Greg McKeown  

Tell me a little more about the rest of your family.

Danielle LaGrone

Okay, so um, so anyway, so my husband Matt’s actually American. He’s from Alabama. And we met on the first day of our PhD program at the University of Toronto. And I was the first Canadian he spoke to, and then a few years later, we got married.

Greg McKeown  

One conversation that, that changed 1000.

Danielle LaGrone

Pretty much. We have two daughters, a 12-year-old girl named Alice and a 10-year-old named Shira. And they’re both well, not in school, but in school. Yeah, we make Toronto our home. I didn’t end up finishing my PhD. I took pauses when I had my children. And I didn’t much like it, to be honest. And I desperately wanted to leave, but I really liked the teaching. So I was lucky enough to start teaching while I was still in my PhD so I developed that experience and those connections. And that’s always sort of lasted through ever since. And I actually, I left my PhD to go to midwifery school. I loved it, delivering babies is pretty amazing. 

Greg McKeown  

Yes. 

Danielle LaGrone

I’d wanted to do that since I was a teenager. In the end though, I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but here in Ontario midwives are on call 24/7. And as I was going through my training and my placements and internships, I realized that I was going days and weeks without seeing my family. And I didn’t want to give that up. So I decided to stick with teaching instead. And that’s where I am.

Greg McKeown   

Well, here you are on the Essentialism podcast. And so inherently we feel obliged to start with this question, which is, tell me something that is really, really important to you. It matters. It’s essential. But you’re currently under investing in it.

Danielle LaGrone 

Yeah, I, I’ve been thinking about this question a lot. And I think the most essential thing to me is living joyfully with my family. I am feeling very much the passage of time with my children and my husband and as happens as we get older, and I find myself at the end of the day feeling as though I’ve spent so much time on other things that I’ve missed all these opportunities for what I truly love, which is finding joy, and raising great kids and spending time with my family. And I’ve said yes to so many other things, consciously or not during the day. And I find myself wondering where it all went.

Greg McKeown  

Hmmm.

Danielle LaGrone

And I don’t want that feeling. I don’t like that feeling at all.

Greg McKeown   

You’re describing a repeated, maybe even, almost everyday experience where you have the sensation. I think I might have missed the moments that mattered most today.

Danielle LaGrone 

Absolutely. And so when I, when I find myself scrolling on Facebook, or doing the what seems like the endless number of tasks in my day, whether it be work related tasks, or home related tasks or other people related tasks. I feel like I’m swimming from one task to the next. But not getting very far. And when I step back at the end of the day, and I think so what did I do that brings me to that essential thing in my life? I’m lacking. I’m finding a hard time pinpointing times in my day where I gave that my attention.

Greg McKeown   

Hmm. You’re saying that you are busy all day. You’re doing things all the time. But they float together, they merge together. And when you pause, to reflect, when do you pause to reflect?

Danielle LaGrone

Multiple times a day, I do that a quite a bit. I do. I wake up really early in the morning. Because since the pandemic, since all of these isolation measures have happened. Our family of four is always together in this tight space as most people are dealing with right now. 

Greg McKeown  

Right.

Danielle LaGrone

And if I get up really early, it’s the only time of the day nobody asks me for things 

Greg McKeown  

Right. 

Danielle LaGrone

And there’s still responsibilities that I have to do but no one’s it’s time to myself. And so I certainly think about that a lot in the mornings. I also I have a book. I don’t know what to call it a journal, a agenda, a to-do lists, whatever it is, and I refer to it all day long. And I, I’m regularly asking myself, you know, am I doing, am I doing what’s important? And but I still feel like it gets away from me. So I am taking those moments to think, but I feel a bit overwhelmed by it all. I mean, I certainly didn’t want to speak with you because I want to learn how to get more things done. Like I’m doing a lot.

Greg McKeown  

You’ll already got a lot on the agenda a lot on your plate. You get a lot done; you would probably describe yourself as a productive person. 

Danielle LaGrone

Yes.

Greg McKeown  

But there’s something and this is what I’m trying just to clarify. There’s a moment or a sense, is it a continual sense or is there a moment each day at end of the day that you say, I just feel like, I’m still missing something. You are getting stuff done all day long.

Danielle LaGrone

I think that’s it.

Greg McKeown  

Is it when you’re going to sleep, is that the moment that you say? 

Danielle LaGrone

Absolutely. 

Greg McKeown  

So you’re going to sleep? Well, what time are you going to sleep?

Danielle LaGrone 

I got to sleep around 11.

Greg McKeown

Okay, so 11 o’clock, you’re sitting in bed. What are you doing in this moment of pause? Is the journal back out? Or is it just.

Danielle LaGrone

No.

Greg McKeown

You’re just tired now.

Danielle LaGrone  

I’m just tired. 

Greg McKeown

You’re worn out from the day.

Danielle LaGrone  

I’m worn out from the day.

Greg McKeown

And you think?

Danielle LaGrone 

I think wow, I’m often thinking I didn’t get the most important things for my work done today. I missed some really great opportunities to spend time with my girls today. I felt all over the place again today. And this actually starts around nine which is when my body turns off to the world. And I’m a terrible parent from nine o’clock forward. Fortunately, my husband can take over, because I am not able to parent very well. I’m really good at the mornings. I’m used up by that time.

Greg McKeown  

Yeah, you’re you, you’re used up.

Danielle LaGrone  

So then I find myself staying awake doing little things with my girls, getting the house closed for the day. And then I get into bed and I read, and I fall asleep. But that’s the time of day where I feel a sadness sometimes that things are moving really quickly, instead of feeling like I’m contributing and working towards those things that are so essential to me. I feel like I am coasting from one thing to the next to the next to the next. And I have just as everyone does. I have had a year where I have lost people I’ve loved quite young. And I mean, it’s what everyone says because it’s that natural reaction but, you know, it reminds me of how little time there is and I and I don’t want to look back and think, Oh, I missed so much. And I don’t mean miss so many opportunities to do things big and small. I just mean, I missed my life.

Greg McKeown  

I totally understand what you’re describing. I keep a journal, you know, pretty religiously, hardly miss a day in many years now. And one time I was rereading and noticed that many of the entries didn’t matter to me at all. They just, it was just nothing. And my structure for most of my journal is gratitude-based journal. So I’m writing the things on that day that I think not only matter, but I’m grateful that they happen. So it’s already pre-selected for things that I will have assumed on that day mattered and would matter later in my life as well. So it was a bit of a surprise to find how many of the entries were of no importance at all to me, even just a couple of years later. What grabbed my attention was that as I would go through every so often, well a particular entry grabbed my attention, and it was of a game, I played spontaneous game with my youngest daughter, where I’d been in her bedroom and we were playing this game and I’d given some specific details of that interaction. And in reading it again, I’d completely forgotten about it until rereading it and in rereading it. I relived it, I remembered exactly the game. I’ve remembered being there with her, there was enough detail and specificity that I relived it and that moment mattered enormously to me. And so I feel like in that experience that I had rereading and seeing and that the difference with some hindsight Between the things that seemed to matter, and the ones that actually did over even a little bit of time. This is really what you’re sensing on an ongoing basis is I’m doing a bunch of stuff. But there are precious moments. I’m not noticing them. I’m not present in them. I’m not fully there for them.

Danielle LaGrone  

And that’s, that’s a terrible feeling to feel like I’m not there.

Greg McKeown  

Why does it matter so much to you?

Danielle Lagrone  

I don’t know. I think I feel I mean, parenting is challenging. Don’t get me wrong, but I feel like I’ve got these gifts. And another thing that’s very important to me is that I want to do good in the world. And I don’t mean by some large-scale act, I mean, small scale through relationships, through small acts of service through connecting to people, and, most importantly, raising these good kind girls. And if I don’t feel involved, and if I don’t feel present and aware of sort of those daily moments, then I feel like I’m not doing that goodness in the world that I so badly want to leave the world with you.

Greg McKeown  

What you just said to me, I think is that you feel that you have a mission to do that work. 

Danielle LaGrone  

Yeah. 

Greg McKeown

And if you get to the end, and you did a bunch of other things, but that work wasn’t done you’d feel you didn’t do what you came here to do.

Danielle LaGrone    

And I think I feel that way in part because I was on these two very particular career paths. And I left those and while I’m an instructor at universities and have been for so long, and I like my role as a teacher. I’m not an academic, I don’t do research. I no longer write articles. And then I went through three quarters of my midwifery training and I cared for women and babies and I delivered babies. But I decided to step away from that. And so, while I enjoy my work, I do. It’s not that meaningful path that so many people speak about. I don’t jump up in the morning, to run to my computer to teach my online classes with that kind of passion. I like it. I love connecting with my students. I love teaching. But I’ve come to realize over the last five years or so that kind of meaning doesn’t have to necessarily come from your paid employment, it can come from other places. And all of this talk about finding your path and finding your work specifically, I think misses the point that there are other parts of life that you can find meaning in that are just as important. And so that’s when I started to realize that’s where I find my meaning is doing good in the world and finding that joy and sharing it with people and helping people and helping my children, and my husband.

Greg McKeown  

What I think you are saying is, is similar to what one of my mentors used to say to me, which is that life is a mission, not a career. 

Danielle LaGrone  

Yes. 

Greg McKeown

And it also seems to me that maybe you held at one time, an assumption that a career was the point.

Danielle LaGrone  

Yes.

Greg McKeown

And would be the way in which you would primarily contribute to the world.

Danielle LaGrone  

Certainly. 

Greg McKeown

And then through this experience of twice, having gone down a path and not quit in a sense of, Oh, I just can’t be bothered to do that anymore or I’m afraid of the work involved. It’s just something within you said, this is not it. This isn’t the way for you.

Danielle LaGrone  

Very loudly.

Greg McKeown

Very loudly, that’s interesting.

Danielle LaGrone  

Very loudly.

Greg McKeown

How so? What does that mean when you say very loudly?

Danielle LaGrone  

Well, for midwifery school in particular, when I was struggling with it, I decided to take a year off. And I took that year off. And I started to entertain the idea of going to finish my last two semesters. And I met with the people in charge, and we were working out a plan and the dread that I felt instantly was physiological. It came over me like I couldn’t not listen to it. And I thought, I’m not I can’t go forward with something that makes me feel this way. Not just emotionally, but physically, like just the idea of returning.

Greg McKeown  

What was the physical sensation?

Danielle LaGrone    

Well, it was that feeling in your gut that heaviness of like, Oh, this is terrible idea. It was that intuition and that feeling of panic. Uh oh goodness, I’m gonna have to return to this. And I mean, there are plenty of people who are amazing midwives and deal with this work, but it just did not work for me. It was sad for me that it didn’t work like I had that part of it that I had to let go. But I had to listen to that feeling.

Greg McKeown  

You’re saying, of course other people could find meaning in this you’re not in any way undermining.

Danielle LaGrone    

Certainly not.

Greg McKeown  

It as a role, as an important role. Indeed, that’s precisely why you went down this path. But then, in a way to your surprise, you found not only was it not a fit, you found this strong moment of guidance, because it’s the next best thing to knowing the right path is to know clearly the wrong path. 

Danielle LaGrone  

Yes. 

Greg McKeown  

And that’s what that moment was, it wasn’t this is what to do. But in that moment, you knew, clearly, unambiguously this is not the way.

Danielle LaGrone  

You know, I’ll never have to give back those experiences that I got as a student midwife. I think there were 40 births or so that I attended and, you know, caught with my own hands, and I’ll never have to let that go. That’s always mine. But I think when you mentioned that, I always saw my career as that way that I would contribute to the world. I think, having done so many years of my PhD and then stepping away, and then doing midwifery school and stepping way, there is a part of me that has to reconcile a big feeling of failure on that path. And while at the same time trying to reimagine what I see my sort of mission now, that’s taking a while. And I think that very much contributes to that feeling I have of trying to accomplish so many things in a day and not feeling like just feeling that it’s too much and it’s not purposive.

Greg McKeown  

You’re saying two things in the first is got my attention. And that is that this idea of I have failed. In fact, I failed twice. 

Danielle LaGrone  

Yes. 

Greg McKeown  

And so that creates, I think, a burden, clutter. Emotional debris. 

Danielle LaGrone  

Yes. 

Greg McKeown  

That somehow needs to be you know, each day. It’s almost like my work today, my to do list today somehow alleviates that error or somehow makes me feel less bad about that. Or somehow, I’m obligated to do these things in order to make up for that. That’s what I hear you.

Danielle LaGrone  

I think you’re right. Because I’m trying to craft something different. But I still have that, that expectation in my head. You know, my mom, who has always been my biggest support has been telling me in my ear my entire life up until like two weeks ago, you’re meant to do great things. You’re going to keep doing great things. Whether that was as a professor, whether that was as a midwife, and now, I’m not sure what she sees, but that voice has been with me forever. And I can’t always separate those feelings of failure from that. That sort of motivation that I’ve always had.

Greg McKeown  

What I hear in that story is that great things means two different things to you. Great things means a positive of you’re born with purpose. You’re a person that matters, that you have a mission. That’s the positive. But I hear another side within you saying it’s like, spliced into that is career, that great things must be career things. I’m not trying to put words in your mouth. That’s what I sense in you. Does that sound right? Or am I getting it wrong?

Danielle LaGrone  

No, no, you’re so right on that actually. It is something I struggle with all the time, trying to cure that voice and myself that I must find. I must find that career I must find that big sort of contribution to the world versus I’d like my ordinary life and I can contribute in that way. It’s a very powerful pull, like that tension between career not being everything, and rethinking how I see the life that I’ve got. 

Greg McKeown   

There’s two parts of you. One, assuming and feeling pulled career is the path to greatness. And then another part of you inside, pushing against that saying that is not the way for you. Maybe if we gave it different language, that is not the way of greatness for you. That’s not the path to greatness for you.

Danielle LaGrone  

And that’s where I start thinking and have been over the past few years about this more smaller scale contribution to the world and rethinking it differently. And I read, I can’t for the life of me remember who wrote it, but it was an article online and the title is something like, you know, what’s wrong with my ordinary life? And I can’t even remember the details of the article, but it stuck with me, because I feel like when I’m on that career side, searching for something that I don’t know if it’s about creating an identity for myself as someone who’s got this sort of passionate career drive. But when I see that and then I see the article like this about an ordinary life, I think yeah, that’s, that’s what I actually want. And I want to figure out what’s essential to me to create that life. So like I’ve said earlier that so that I don’t feel like I’m missing out on all these wonderful joyful things. Because I truly am joyful at all these things. I love my life. I’m not complaining about it, I just, I want to be deliberate in it.

Greg McKeown  

Which I hear is that something quite beautiful in you, which is, I actually believe that my ordinary life with my husband, with my girls, trying to make a difference in this what you’re calling, the smaller life really, really matters. 

Danielle LaGrone  

It does. 

Greg McKeown  

But I feel this layer of pressure externally telling me, that can’t be right. You’ve got to find greatness in a public domain. Yes, that’s what greatness is. And this is the war that you feel. But if you were being completely honest with your own clarity, your own voice, you would say, it’s the simple life. That is the one I want to invest in. That’s the one I want to go after.

Danielle LaGrone    

It is when I’m careful, and I listen. That’s what I know. And that’s what I’ve always enjoyed so much about essentialism. With more simplicity and accepting and welcoming and being deliberate about those parts of your daily life that I just truly love, and I don’t want to miss out

Greg McKeown  

Well, and what I sense in you is, if you could just give up, let go of this supposed requirement, then you would say, I’ve already found what I’m looking for.

Danielle LaGrone  

And I think that’s the big thing. And I’ve been working on this for years. It’s a slow process. It’s complicated to get rid of that. It involves, you know, years as a people pleaser, years as a perfectionist. A wonderfully supportive family that inadvertently put a lot of pressure on me. And I’m not placing the blame on them, but it’s part of that voice in my head, and I can’t ignore that. I have to sort of I understand it.

Greg McKeown  

You’re also clarifying for us the idea that there are two voices. That there’s your own voice. 

Danielle LaGrone  

Yes.

Greg McKeown

That that actually from your conversation today is clear for you. It’s not, maybe it wasn’t so clear before, but as you articulate it today, it’s not uncertain. It’s actually clear, purposeful present. When you step too far off it, you feel the wrongness of that and you correct it, you’re willing to not just feel it and hear it but to act on it. But somehow there is still this other layer that has been there maybe hasn’t been quite as much clarity before this conversation of the distinction and, and how these, what we might call the right path, the essential path for you and the counterfeit path.

Danielle LaGrone  

That’s a good way of putting it.

Greg McKeown  

That seems to keep nudging its way back in not bullying its way back in saying, but of course, for you to amount to anything to matter in the world, you need to be in a corporation somewhere, in an organization somewhere, it needs to be out there.

Danielle LaGrone  

Yes, that that is that distinction, that it’s something about that sort of inside small, small worlds sort of relations and connections versus out there. Like I feel like that I’m completely missing that part and that that’s the trajectory I was meant to be on. But it’s not where I’m finding that meaning in that joy.

Greg McKeown  

It’s fascinating to me, because really, when you speak in about this, what you keep calling smaller world, but this more private personal area of contribution. There’s a feeling of centeredness, of confidence, of security in your voice. It’s almost like I can hear you smiling.

Danielle LaGrone  

I am smiling.

Greg McKeown  

And so this is not uncertain. This is not convoluted or, it’s the other side. When you talk about the other side that you feel, I suppose the confusion is, I’m supposed to find meaning in this. This is supposed to matter. This is supposed to be a path to greatness. That’s what I hear from other people, but my actual experience, what I actually have lived, what my truth is, it does not validate that it’s not true for me.

Danielle LaGrone  

And that’s exactly it. I think one of the reasons I can’t let that go or I haven’t let that go. That voice is that I think one of the biggest fears I have in life And I think this is common is, I fear disappointing other people. And I fear that by ignoring that voice and staying in this sort of life that I’ve crafted for myself on a smaller, non-big world scale, I feel that in doing that I’m disappointing some person, people. I’m not even sure exactly who.

Greg McKeown  

I’m gonna ask it still though. So who are you disappointing?

Danielle LaGrone  

Well, certainly my mother, who tells me she’s not disappointed all the time. She is my, one of my biggest supporters. But I would say my mother and my family, I’m the first person in my family to have graduated high school. I’m the first person to that have gone to university to get a master’s degree, to go onto a PhD program. There’s a lot of expectation there, and a lot of sacrifice made, as well, to get me to those places. And I feel when I see some members of my family, which isn’t all that often. And this is certainly not isolated. I know lots of people feel this way. But I feel that sense of disappointment that whereas I was exciting and contributing, I’m now just a mom who teaches from her home office. And I don’t like that feeling. I don’t know how to deal with that feeling.

Greg McKeown  

I think what you’re saying is that there’s a hierarchy of values in the assumptions that some people in your family have had. That they don’t say explicitly but seems to be in the air, seems to be in the conversation that basically says out their contribution is higher up on the hierarchy, then the here at home here with family here, making a contribution in the way you actually feel pulled towards.

Danielle LaGrone  

And on an intellectual level and on even other levels. I see that for what it is to me, which is just an opinion. But there’s still that emotional pull that it draws from me.

Greg McKeown  

You want their social approval.

Danielle LaGrone 

Of course, I mean, I’m a member of this family. And I think I lived on that approval because I was always so successful on that path, or at least on the steps toward that path. But then, you know, when you say that, that I have confidence in the other side, I really do. I just need to voice that in a different way. I think and just this morning, I heard news that someone very close to me when I was young died yesterday. And all I could think of is that he was one of the kindest, most gentle men I’ve ever known. And I didn’t in any way think about what he accomplished in his business, or whatever those details are. That’s not what I thought of, I thought of the person that he was and the family he had. And I know in my heart that that’s what matters to me.

Greg McKeown  

Hearing of his passing strips away the vanity. 

Danielle LaGrone  

Yes.

Greg McKeown  

Of this perspective that out there is the priority.

Danielle LaGrone  

Absolutely. It’s a gift in that sense. I mean, it was such a horrible thing to learn about this morning, but it’s just, it shows me so instantly and very much so in that way that I physiologically felt that dread at the idea of returning to midwifery school. I feel the rightness of this internally.

Greg McKeown  

As strongly as you felt not to do that, you feel that you should do this, this is the way this is your way.

Danielle LaGrone  

It certainly doesn’t mean that I know what all the steps are going to look like for me to keep living this way. But I know that it feels right. You know, that’s what I was thinking about when I was emailing earlier. I don’t want to feel like I’m swimming from one thing to the next because I do know what I want. I do know what’s important to me. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that. And so, I’m struggling with how to maybe on a more practical level, how to live that way to live according to what I know, so that I don’t feel at the end of the day that I’ve lost or missed or somehow not been present.

Greg McKeown  

Well what it sounds like you want is to now live out the values that have become clear to you. That is your highest contribution at this time in your life. You want to remove the schedule, the organization, the habits through teams that don’t reflect that. So that at the end of the day, even if it were true that you’d still done work at home and work in your teaching, that the orientation was consistent with the values that you have established for yourself. So that you say, I gave my best hours, my best emotional energy to the relationships that I feel really matter most.

Greg McKeown    

Danielle, one of the things that this conversation is reminding me of, is a meeting that I had. I’ve been invited with a group of 50 people to go to a two-week course at the Kennedy School at Harvard. And it was an amazing program with some remarkable people. The person who led the whole program is one of the leading authorities on gender parity. She was a practical feminist, and I wanted to talk to her about something I’ve sometimes noticed when I’m talking to people, and it’s where feminism can unintentionally turn into corporatism where what it becomes is not what I think at its heart It’s supposed to be, which is choices, empowerment, the option. I have three daughters and I want for them and of course for my wife too to feel empowered to feel that they get to make the choices they want to make in the world, but they are not held back by any other set of external assumptions, any systems that would make that harder than they ought to be. And when I shared that concern with her, she said, oh, that’s sort of a new way of thinking about this for me. She said for her, it was always everything she’s doing is always about the empowerment, the choices, but I think she could see that sometimes, this corporatism makes its way in. And I think that’s more to do with the power of corporatism. And its power and Its sort of ever reaching stretching tentacles into any aspect of life. It’s not something that’s inherently or has to be uniquely embedded in feminism. But I just hear that for you that there’s something here that you have felt empowered, you felt that you ought to do something that mattered with your life. But there’s a wrestle between whether that needs to be in this corporate environment or whether it can be in this other domain. I felt like I wanted to share that with you. Because I think it was one way to deconstruct the situation that you may find yourself in.

Danielle LaGrone     

I think it’s really important. And as someone who has grown up as a feminist and studied feminism in my doctoral work and thinks about these issues all the time, I feel like I’m it’s smacking me right in the face, just how the unintended consequences of this you can have everything. That not only can you have it all, but you should have it all. I think as I’m trying to figure this out for myself, it’s about saying no to the you should have it all, in a way that where I can give myself permission to make the choices that I want to actively make for the life that I think is important, but it’s very hard to silence that cultural voice that I think is telling me I should have everything. I should have the corporate job, I should have the outward focus on top of having a wonderful, meaningful life with my family. And I don’t think for me that that’s a possibility.

Greg McKeown   

And what I really have felt in you isn’t whether it’s even a possibility. It’s, again, I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, you can correct me. But what I hear you saying is, that’s not what I want.

Danielle LaGrone  

Yes, very clearly, I feel that.

Greg McKeown  

Something you said earlier, feels unresolved to me, and could be helpful. You talked about, well, I just would like to have a conversation. And pretty much I think what you’re saying is with your mother. 

Danielle LaGrone  

Yeah. 

Greg McKeown  

And I wonder, what is it you would want to say to her?

Danielle LaGrone  

I think what I want to say and what I have on some levels already said to her is that I’m okay on this path, and that it’s worth it. And I want to tell her, and that whole voice that’s there in my head, that I’ve asked myself what’s most valuable I know in my heart. What is and it doesn’t look like what I thought it was going to look like, but that’s okay. And when my mom thinks that I’m going to make some big contribution to the world, maybe it’s time to rethink what those contributions look like.

Greg McKeown  

I’m wondering as I’m listening to you, whether there’s a conversation, that includes “Mom, I am so grateful for the contribution that you made. That what you did for me, matters so much. To me, you have lived a life of greatness. You invested and enabled me to be able to live a life that really matters. And now I want to do the same thing and pass on that great and this is the path, this is the way that I feel I can do that, that can last, not just my children, but pass on this legacy.”

Danielle LaGrone  

And I like so much how you say that, because it’s not just the life that I’ve chosen. But it’s the life I truly love. And that’s at the end of the day, what I what I want and nothing more. And I know as the woman that my mother is, I know that she gets that. But I think the conversations an important one to have a direct one like that. Especially the thinking part. I like that you’re good at this.

Greg McKeown  

There’s an article in The New York Times that I was happen to be interviewed for, and this I think will have relevance for you to be able to read and for others that are listening. But I think if I could just summarize one of the key points in it here, it was that as the years have gone by, for me, at least, things that had seemed ordinary, have become extraordinary. And so it’s to see in this moment in the now, which things are going to matter, in an extraordinary way from a longer term perspective. And really, this is what essentialism is about. I tried to be careful in the book and in conversations, not to try to dictate to people or even pressure them into thinking that what I think is essential is what they should think is essential. And what I want to encourage and what I hope I’ve been able to encourage in this conversation with you is to try trust your own internal voice as being the best guide for what matters versus what doesn’t instead of all the loud, suffocating external voices that even well intentioned, can keep us away from that clear voice within.

Danielle LaGrone  

And I haven’t thought about that moment when I knew I couldn’t go to midwifery school again; I haven’t thought about that in a long time. But I think that’s a really important part of this whole conversation. Is that trusting and listening to that knowing in the same way that I knew that midwifery wasn’t for me, I know that this what I’ve created as my meaningful light, I know that is right for me. And while I don’t know what that’s going to look like, as life moves on, I mean, we can’t know that it will certainly look very differently in a year and then five and a 10 than it does now and that’s okay. But I need to trust that gut feeling that also told me when something was wrong.

Greg McKeown  

I think that’s exactly right. And I think let’s just leave it there because I think you have gone on this journey even in this conversation of clarifying what really is essential and how you know it, what isn’t essential, and how you know it. You’ve recognized this, this need to readjust your day to make sure that you’re majoring in those things that you believe matter most and minoring in the things that you think matter less. And also, a prepared now, at least a first version of a conversation you think you need to have with somebody who you at least believe may have had different expectations for you, and an opportunity to be able to work through that together so that you don’t feel that misalignment. And that pull towards doing something, that social pressure that would take you out of this internal clarity. That you will remember Bronnie Ware, the nurse from Australia who worked with people at the end of life hospice care, she had many conversations with people about what the regrets are the dying and found that the number one regret of the dying was that people felt that they had lived their life according to external expectations instead of that internal clarity.

Danielle LaGrone  

And I don’t want that for a minute. 

Greg McKeown   

And here’s what’s beautiful, is you don’t have to.

Danielle LaGrone  

No, I don’t.

Greg McKeown   

You really have a choice. You can make a different choice. And that surely is what all empowerment is about. Empowerment is all about the clarity to be able to say no to have the choice and to make it has been my privilege and honor to be able to listen and talk and explore these applications of Essentialism with you today. I hope it’s been helpful to you. I’m sure it will have been helpful to many people listening. Thank you so much.

Danielle LaGrone  

It’s so helpful. Thank you so much, Greg.

Greg McKeown

Credits:

  • Hosted by Greg McKeown
  • Produced by Greg McKeown Team
  • Executive Produced by Greg McKeown