Meet Kara Payton

We were lucky to catch up with Kara Payton recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kara, great to have you with us today and excited to have you share your wisdom with our readers. Over the years, after speaking with countless do-ers, makers, builders, entrepreneurs, artists and more we’ve noticed that the ability to take risks is central to almost all stories of triumph and so we’re really interested in hearing about your journey with risk and how you developed your risk-taking ability.

Risk is defined universally as the exposure to danger, harm, or loss. As a career artist of 20 years with no guarantee of where your next month’s rent, client, or opportunity is going to come from–dealing with risk is the undertow of daily life.

For me, there are a few ways I’ve developed the ability to take risk;

– Having clearly defined and non-negotiable values. My top value is freedom. Above all things, I want the irrevocable ability to occupy my life, myself and my time as I choose. In my career, this not only makes me unemployable to any “backup plan” my fear could suggest, but it significantly diminishes the cost of risk. Risk becomes necessary, a welcomed price for freedom. Risk is often the cost of my top value so because it is valuable–the price is proportionate.

– Thinking often about the reward. There’s not a day where I don’t constantly take inventory of the benefit of risk taking in order to keep myself calibrated to the life I chose. If I focused on the cost, the stress, the “sharp edge” that risk presents, I would falter in the boldness required to maintain it. I constantly think about the rewards in a place of gratitude.
With my career, I get to see my kids everyday after school, I get to travel when I want, I get to decide my daily schedule, I get to see school plays & be available for the “little things” without any imposition.
With my relationships, there is a risk in vulnerability & honesty. The risk is loss of connection. The reward is that the connections I enjoy have been bet on, strength-tested, and are solidly rooted in mutual risk.

– I remember there is no such thing as risk free. No one is given any path that involves more or less risk to any significant degree. Working for a corporation, small business, or yourself all carries very little certainty. Having a thankless job or meaningful pursuit doesn’t secure any kind of risk aversion. Avoiding or pursuing relationships both carry risk. Putting yourself or your dreams out in the world or hiding both carry risk. Going for it or playing safe in any direction both carry risk. When acutely aware of what really matters to you, risk becomes a part of the process to move through, not something to resist.

Whether anyone knows it or not, they’re risking it all everyday. Whether that be betting on the life they dream or just dreaming of living is simply a matter of where they draw their line in the sand and if it is deep enough.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Kara is a Kansas City based artist & muralist with an organic floral focus that brings the timeless and ethereal together. She has a fine art background of over 25 years with a deeply curated field of study in art history. She seeks to bring a timeless classic element back into the modern arts with large scale floral installations, murals, and commissioned art pieces that look as though they are from another century.

Her studio, ‘Studio deFleuriste’ is a one-of-a-kind art production company that accommodates both residential and commercial projects from individual designs to concepts at scale.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

At 38 years old, it feels like you sit squarely between the reality that you have come a long way and still have a lot left to learn. However, if I look solely on what has gotten me to where I am now and curated it into a set of skills, qualities, or areas of knowledge that has been most pivotal I would say;

– Honesty. With yourself & others in who you truly are, what you want & need, and the ability to separate & question what is true along the way. We are born wanting to belong and this can cause us to be dishonest in order to stay connected. We can shape shift to fit in, draw blurred boundaries to avoid loss, and avoid uncomfortable truths to garner approval or acceptance. Over time this rapidly devolves into an unseen habit that can cause us to self-betray & self-abandon. Eventually we lead lives that are not our own and no longer recognize ourselves in the mirror. The greatest ally we have is our inner knowing, to remain connected to it is the key to living fully.

– Compassion. This is an often overlooked skill for many and was for me for nearly 35 years. Many confuse compassion for pity, the difference being the place we offer our benign declination to judge harshly or dismiss. Compassion, in my experience, removes the separation between two people. My humanness meets their humanness face to face and offers itself in whatever capacity is most supportive and loving. We are happy to do this as long as it is not challenging. The easiest place being when its someone we love or a stranger and we haven’t been affected. More challenging is when its a stranger and we have been affected, and more still when its someone we love and we’ve been affected. But the most difficult, is offering it to ourselves–typically the most needed and least offered.

– Self trust. In today’s world we pretty much Google how to live our lives. We ask Siri for definitions, directions, statistics, information, and facts. AI generates the answers and Alexa helps us get it all done. The idea of referencing ourselves is often an afterthought. We’re too busy to know how we feel, too noisy to pay attention to the signals our body sends us, and too overstimulated to slow down and listen to our inner knowing. Caffeine to wake up, food-like substances to fill & satiate, and alcohol, vapes, drugs, & prescriptions to shut off.
The single-handed most impactful relationship we will ever have is the one with ourselves, but we are living in a world that benefits greatly from the detachment to oneself. If we are disenfranchised from ourselves, we can be sold to, lied to, governed, controlled, manipulated, moved to action, easily influenced, and otherwise pawned to any agenda chosen by any chooser.
My life changed nearly overnight the day I decided to self-reference, self-advocate, and self-determine.

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

Most often when someone is experiencing overwhelm, there is a process of ‘stacking’ that has taken place. Perhaps a rogue thought about an important date or task occurred while you were in the midst of another. The feeling of having your attention pulled away from what you were focused on causes stress. Then you remember the deadline you’re facing, the conversation about not having enough time to make that deadline and the poor response you received. Couple this with your sudden awareness that you had coffee but haven’t eaten and feel a little nauseous. Your anxiety spikes because you definitely don’t feel you have time to stop and eat. Now your breathing has spiked right as you look at the time and see you are late for a meeting.
We can easily fall into the trap of stacking one small thought into an anxiety attack. Fortunately the key is in our own bodies.

Overwhelm is in the mind and travels to the body to send the rest the chemicals needed to bring it into the same state. The answer? Responding with the body to send a signal back to the mind. How? The breath.

Once overwhelmed, your mind goes into a sympathetic nervous system state as a response to stress. Taking a slow, deep, controlled breath over and over until your body & mind return to its normal state is the practice of self-regulation and is the most on-demand strategy for overwhelm.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

@KCMStudios www.kcmstudios.com

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