Wedding Photography : Mistakes Make Magic

176: Redefining Success: Beyond Business to Personal Fulfillment

• Catherine Guidry: Wedding Photographer + Educator

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What does success really mean when we strip away the expectations of others and truly listen to our authentic selves? That's the question I found myself wrestling with recently, prompting this more personal episode that explores the delicate balance between professional achievement and personal fulfillment.


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Speaker 1:

Hello and thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Katherine Guidry and this is going to be a little bit of a different episode than what I normally do. I am a full-time wedding photographer. I've been in the industry over 15 years, I'm based in the New Orleans area, and a lot of what I talk about is business, but lately I've been thinking a lot about life and how wedding photography and business interweaves with my personal self and the growth that I am trying to achieve, because I've been thinking a lot about this idea of success and what success means, and success in my eyes is not just a monetary thing or a goal thing. It's also very much interweaved with my personal happiness, and so that's what I'm going to be sharing about in this episode. Thank you so much for joining me. If you are interested in more tactical, business or photography oriented content, I want to also let you know that in the description there are links to our free guides, our free classes, and we also have an amazing membership community and courses If you're ready to take your business to the next level.

Speaker 1:

Today, I'm going to be talking about this idea of choosing your life and living with intention. I have a very recent episode that I've been talking through this idea of like why we moved after spending a lot of time over six years, actually, to be exact renovating our house, and that's because we're really on a mission to live intentionally and to just seek joy in life and make success what we want it to be. So, when I'm talking about choosing your life, I really want to hone in on this idea that it's not just going along with societal expectations or the path that you've chosen. For example, I actually went to school for architecture for almost seven years and in about my fourth year third, fourth year I realized that I actually didn't like it at all and I did want to pursue that for a career, and so when I finished my master's in 2010, I pretty much immediately started my business in wedding photography and I've been doing it since. And so, even though at that time, it felt like I'm on this path and this is the path I'm destined for and already started, and like I don't want to change the course, that's just going along with what's expected and I want to share that. You don't have to do that. You can change your course, you can pivot.

Speaker 1:

I recently did a podcast episode with my friend Felter of Felter Unfiltered, and she and I talked about this exact topic of like pivoting and doing something outside of your degree set, and so if that's something you want to listen to, I would advise you to go and check out that episode as well. So, in order to really live with that intention, I think it starts with defining your values, your goals and your priorities, so that you can then choose the direction you want to go in. It's like figuring out your expenses before you know how much money you need to make, and so that journey that we were on recently, where we were trying to figure out to move or not, for example, I talked in that episode about how I had to clearly define my values, and so once that's done, then you can be like okay, what are our next steps to get closer to that? So I'm going to talk today about five key ways and five things that will help you live out more intentionally in line with your values, your goals and your priorities. So the first thing is that you're going to want to live authentically. What I mean is that you're going to want to spend time figuring out what it is that you innately want or need in your life to get that much closer to where you want to go, to stay exactly where we were. Especially after all the things that we went through, I realized that, like my true, authentic self wanted so badly to be near my family and even some of my old friends that I missed so much, even though we're sad to leave some of our friends that we were living near before.

Speaker 1:

But I think going inside when you're making a really big decision and figuring out like what is it that authentically feels right for you that's maybe not always expected that other people would expect of you. The second thing that you're gonna wanna do is take responsibility for your life choices, and this sounds like really harsh, like almost like a parenting, something like a parent would say. But it really just means that you're acknowledging that you're choosing your path in life and you are responsible for the outcome. So when you're doing that, it's like an acceptance of where you are and also the fact that, like you've made choices to get there and you can then choose to change that direction. I feel like if you're constantly pushing your current situations outside factors or external factors and blaming other people for where you are, then you're never going to get where you want to go, because it again is leaving that to those outside factors. So you have to almost like take responsibility for where you are first, before you can feel that empowerment to say this is where I want to go next.

Speaker 1:

The next element, number three is going to be setting boundaries, so figuring out what works for you, what you like, what you don't like, and saying no to those things. I really think that saying yes it almost is easier than saying no or like setting those hard boundaries. But when you do that it's going to free up your emotions, it's going to free up your time, it's going to free up your obligations so that you can focus on building the life that you want. Number four is going to be al your obligations so that you can focus on building the life that you want. Number four is going to be aligning with purpose. So you're going to be choosing the path, choosing the people and choosing the things that most align with your purpose and your intention in life, even if that path or purpose isn't conventional or easy.

Speaker 1:

When I think back, even to like my career shift from architecture to photography, it was like here I am, I've got, you know, six years and a master's degree in architecture. But yet I want a purpose. I want to seek fulfillment in wedding photography. And like that wasn't easy. It wasn't conventional. Even at the time there weren't a lot of wedding photographers not nearly as many as they are now and most of them were older men. And so I knew that that path wasn't conventional. I knew that it wasn't going to be easy, but I did it anyway because it was in line with where I wanted to go and what I feel like brought me most purpose and intention in my life.

Speaker 1:

And number five is going to be embrace change. Even if you go and listen to that episode about us moving my gosh, changing the older you get, I feel like the harder it is, because you have more responsibility, maybe you have more people involved in the decision, more factors, but you just have to embrace that Like life constantly evolving, and as long as you stay stuck in what you're doing just because it's like the easier thing to do or the thing that just like takes less work, it's not going to give you room to grow and it's also probably not going to be in line with what you want out of your life. You you know, when we moved to New Orleans, we didn't have children, and our life looks very different now that we have two young kids and we want to be even closer to our family, and so we just accepted like, hey, things have changed, let's embrace it. Let's embrace that we're not the same people that we were then. When I started architecture school, I was 18 years old, just out of high school. When I finished, I was 23 or 24. I, six years older than that, whatever that is, and you know, at that time I just realized like I'm not the same person. I've grown and I've changed and this is what I want now.

Speaker 1:

And so I really wanted to put this episode together, even though it's something different. It's not like exactly about wedding photography, because I think we're all going through seasons of change in our life and we have to realize that, like, we're going to always be the same, but we're also going to always be evolving, and I know that doesn't really maybe make sense, but it's like who you are remains the same, but your circumstances and the way that you want to live your life might change. And instead of pushing against that and being like, well, I wanted this five years ago, why don't I want this anymore, want this anymore. It's like, well, because things are different now and that's okay like we're going to embrace the change, we're going to figure out what we want and we're going to move towards that intentional life. Thank you so much for tuning in today.

Speaker 1:

I know this wasn't exactly the type of episode that I'm always putting together, when it's like we're gear related or wedding photography related, but we are human beings. We are facing really big decisions in our life, we are changing and evolving, and so I just want you to know that I am right there with you. I am 100 making these decisions every day for my life and just trying to figure out how we can seek joy and fulfillment in this world, and I wish the best for you. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them, them Subscribe, leave reviews, do anything that you can to support the channel so that we can continue to make good content for you, and I wish you all the best in your journey and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.