Episode 202: How to Create Your Own "Order of Things" with Author Sarah Gormley

Jul 30, 2024

I’m a gold star chaser…. If you just give the right answer, everybody’s happy. I started this pattern of doing what my parents and the world wanted. It took me a long time to figure out there’s another way…. The gold stars make it really easy to ignore your gut.

Sarah Gormley

Author of The Order of Things

 

Have you ever done something not because you wanted to, but because you thought you were “supposed” to? 

From the time we’re young, we learn what we’re “supposed” to do. Behave, answer the test questions correctly, make the right choices. But what if the “right” choices are wrong for us? What if we do what we’re “supposed” to do but don’t get the result we’ve been promised?

By all outward standards, Sarah Gormley did what she was supposed to do. She had a great career in corporate America, lived in New York and was highly successful. But she didn’t feel successful, or happy. It wasn’t until Sarah’s mother received a devastating health diagnosis that Sarah began to reevaluate her life and her choices.

In her poignant, humor-filled new book, The Order of Things, Sarah tells how a return to her childhood home on a farm in Ohio made her reevaluate her choices as a “gold star chaser.” A believer in both therapy and self-reflection, Sarah describes The Order of Things as a “self-hope” book, offering a true story that reminds the reader it’s never too late to live the life you are meant to live and to discover joy.

Here at Brilliantly Resilient, we’ve seen how easy it is to get lost in what the world says we should want and do to make us happy. It often takes a sucker punch or train wreck that, while initially devastating, can be the push we need to make decisions that are right for us, not the rest of the world. It takes courage, intention and a willingness to be vulnerable, but as Sarah confirms, it's oh so worth it.

For updates on The Order of Things, check out Sarah on Instagram at @scgormley. Order your copy of The Order of Things here, and tune into the podcast for these additional bits of Brilliance from Sarah:

• If I go do the “things,” I’ll catch up. I’ll start to feel better because I’m doing the “things.”
• That’s what I thought the order was…go do these things and life will be fulfilling. I thought there was an equation. Well guess what? There’s no equation.
• One of the best things about therapy was that it helped me to understand things. What helped me recalibrate was understanding my childhood differently. If you understand things differently, a lot of anger and pain evaporate.
• Why is it so terrifying to be our most genuine selves?
• I love the term ‘recalibraiton.’ It’s about making little changes.
• Sometimes nothing is more unexpected than joy.

Let’s be Brilliantly Resilient together!

XO,

Mary Fran