You Decide How Your Table is Set
Someone I admire once told me, “You get to decide how you want to set your table, no one else.” That simple statement has made a profound impact on me…not just in my relationships, but also in my career…in how I choose to spend my valuable time and whom I spend it with.
To give you some context, this special person said this to me about a month before I got married and it certainly got me thinking, not just then, before I made one of the biggest decisions of my life, but now and everyday – we should always be in inquiry about how our table is set, the company sitting next to us, and what we’re choosing to consume. Inquiry should not be reserved for those big life decisions like marriage, kids, buying a house, or accepting a new job.
Frank Underwood once said it well, “If you don’t like how the table is set, turn it over.” I’ll take it a step further than one of my favorite Netflix series villains and say: if you’re not inspired, you reserve the right to flip over your table and reset it.
We are forever evolving and changing beings and sometimes it takes just one “ah ha” moment to make you see things from a different perspective. And with that, you don’t need anyone’s permission to change your mind, even contradict yourself. If you’re no longer inspired by the conversation, supported by the company at your table, enjoying the food, you reserve the right to end a friendship that isn’t serving you, change political parties, become a vegan, switch yoga studios, move on, start over, etc.
And just to be clear, I’m not advocating for giving up or “quitting” every time the going gets tough, or the conversation at your table gets lackluster…if anything I have been someone who has sat at my table, next to someone, for a lot longer than I probably should in way too many situations than I can count (that’s a post for another day).
I’m simply advocating for giving yourself permission, for being completely unapologetic, in making a change, or resetting your table, whenever you feel a strong intuition in your bones to do.