Shonda Rhimes And Her Year of Saying YES To Everything

I watched Grey’s Anatomy. I watch Scandal. My son watches How To Get Away With Murder and The Catch.

I guess you can say, our family likes TGIT Thursdays in Shondaland.

In true Wisdom Wednesday fashion, I give you a TED Talk that is truly worth watching.

Yes, the “titan” of the tv industry Shonda Rhimes gave her first TED Talk in February of this year to share her year-long experiment of saying yes to everything in her life. Yes to playing with her kids whenever they ask, yes to speaking in public, yes yes yes. All of this, of course, detailed in her book Year of Yes.

In her TED talk above, Shonda shares some real insight into what it’s like to be addicted to ‘the hum,” or the vibration of success. She shares what it’s like to be ‘in the flow,’ and how that feeling drives and fuels her. And then she shares what it’s like when that hum stops, when the candle of creativity becomes merely a flicker and no longer a bright shining light, because you’re overworked or burned out.

“A dream job is not about dreaming. It’s all job, all work, all reality, all blood, all sweat, no tears. I work a lot. Very hard.”

Does Stella get her groove back, or shall we say, does Shonda get her hum back?

You should watch.

And then you should let me know what you think.

I have many thoughts on this talk. One, Shonda so eloquently points out how incredible the hum is, and on the flip side, what it feels like when we lose our hum due to overwork. I can so relate to this, as I’ve written before about my close encounter with burnout over a decade ago. Another thought — I sometimes wonder if people with this magnitude of success reach this level of self-actualization only once they’ve really made it. It’s easy to relax and work less and play more, once you’ve proven yourself, once you’ve “arrived.” Usually that’s when spirituality and self actualization enter, once we hit this certain level of success, and we question it all: Is it only just about the money? Is this all there is? Isn’t there more to life?

But what about the rest of us? The big takeaway, in my humble opinion, is how can we make time for play if we’re not living the hum? How do we make more time for play when we have REAL responsibilities: mouths to feed, a family to support, we’re just getting by, or better, if a loved one is sick? How do we keep our hum going then?

For me, that’s the real on the fence question.

But first, watch this amazing talk.