We Ride At Dawn - Grasshopper

I was watching a video the other day–Taylor Swift hanging out with her boyfriend, now fiancé, Travis Kelce and his brother Jason. At one point, Taylor tossed out a line straight out of a thousand old cowboy movies: “We ride at dawn.”

She was referencing something being “ready to go.”

And that got me to wondering: how do we know when we’re ready to go? When everything’s lined up, the saddle’s cinched, and it’s time to ride?

I don’t believe there’s a neat seven-step plan for that. No formula you can copy and paste. But I do think there’s one common ingredient: a sense of knowing.

Call it a gut feeling. Call it intuition. Call it a vibe, or even divine intervention. Doesn’t matter what you name it–what matters is whether you recognize it when it shows up. The label is immaterial; but its presence is critical for us to say, with confidence, “giddy-up.”

Even scientists, when they’re staring at a decision that’s fifty-fifty, lean on something that isn’t strictly logical. It’s that silent nudge. That “other than rational” sense.

It comes from out of the blue, and learning to trust it will keep your errors in judgement to a minimum.

And you know that sense because you’ve felt it before. Maybe you ignored it. You went ahead with something when your gut was pulsating, “don’t.” You didn’t get a second bite at that apple, but you did get something valuable–"you learned what that non-verbal vibe feels like.

Cultivate that sense. Notice it each time it shows up and you’ll strengthen that muscle. 

So when push comes to shove, it’ll now dawn on you when it’s time to ride. 

All the best,