The Brave Pivot: What Kate Kayayan Taught Me About Letting Go of Applause
Have you ever built a life so successful that you were almost afraid to question it?
That’s the question I kept coming back to after recording this episode of Fabulous After 50 with Kate Kayayan — a top league international cellist, performing with Grammy-award ensembles, who walked away from the stage to become a leadership advisor. Not because the music stopped working. Because she did.
The Life She Was “Supposed” to Have
Kate picked up the cello at four years old. By the time most of us are figuring out what we want to be, she already was it — touring internationally, performing with Grammy-winning ensembles, living the career her family had sacrificed for and believed in completely.
So here’s the question that stopped me in my tracks: what do you do when the dream you worked for your whole life … isn’t actually yours anymore?
Because that’s what happened to Kate. Somewhere between the accolades and the applause, she started to notice something uncomfortable — her identity had become the cellist. Not her passion. Her identity. And there’s a difference.
The Pause That Changed Everything
Then came the pandemic. Performances cancelled. Silence, where there used to be music.
I think we all remember that strange, suspended feeling — the world stopping, whether we wanted it to or not. For most of us, it was disorienting. For Kate, it became an opening.
She asked herself a question I want you to sit with too: was this career driven by genuine passion, or by the need to be validated?
That’s not a comfortable question. But it’s the one that gave Kate permission to build something new. She launched the first-ever online cello festival — and in doing so, discovered an entirely different calling: helping other creatives find their own way beyond the identity that once defined them.
From Cellist to Coach — Beyond Potential
Kate’s now the author of Beyond Potential, and through her Creatives Leadership Academy and Creators Leadership Mastermind, she helps people reassess, redefine, and reignite careers that have quietly stopped fitting them.
One phrase from our conversation has stayed with me: the trap of “rocking chair tasks” — the busywork we cling to because it’s familiar, even when it’s no longer taking us anywhere. How many of us are sitting in that rocking chair right now, mistaking motion for progress?
What I Took Away
Kate’s story isn’t really about leaving music. It’s about the courage to ask who you are underneath the thing you’re known for — and to trust yourself enough to find out.
So here’s what I want to ask you: What’s the applause you’ve been chasing that might no longer be yours? And what would it take for you to pause — even for a moment — and ask the question underneath it?
Your Turn
I’d love to know — has there been a moment in your life when you had to separate your identity from your achievement? What did that pivot look like for you?
Drop a comment below or send me a message — I read every single one, and honestly, these conversations with you are half the reason I do this work.
🎧 Listen to the full episode with Kate Kayayan on Fabulous After 50 podcast or Youtube channel.