I Kept Waiting for Life to Settle Down

A few weeks ago, I wrote about empathy with boundaries and the importance of not wanting something more for someone than they want for themselves. 

The response to that article surprised me. Not because people disagreed with it, but because so many people immediately knew what I was talking about.

Some were talking about team members. Others were talking about partners, parents, children or friends. Different situations, but often the same feeling: caring deeply about someone and wanting things to improve for them, while slowly coming to terms with the fact that no amount of effort on your part can make someone change if they aren't ready to.

It got me thinking about where I learned that lesson.

The truth is, I didn't learn it through leadership. I learned it through life.

For most of my childhood, my father was either in prison or dealing with the consequences of the choices that had put him there. After his third prison sentence, he was deported to the UK, where he later struggled with addiction.

Like most daughters, I wanted things to work out for my dad.

I don't think there was ever a point where I consciously decided to take responsibility for him. It just sort of happened. Over time, I became the person he would talk to. The person trying to help organise things. The person trying to keep things moving forward.

At the same time, I was trying to establish myself in real estate and build a future of my own.

Looking back, I can see that I spent years trying to manage both.

What I remember most clearly isn't the circumstances themselves. It's the feeling that no matter how much I was doing, I should somehow be doing more.

That feeling followed me everywhere.

I could be working hard, helping where I could, doing everything I knew how to do, and I'd still find myself wondering whether I should be making another phone call, finding another solution or somehow trying harder.

The strange thing about responsibility is that it can become part of your identity without you even noticing.

You stop asking whether something is yours to carry and start assuming that if it matters to you, it's your responsibility.

For a long time, that's how I lived.

I also spent a lot of those years waiting for life to settle down.

I remember thinking there would eventually be a point where everything became more manageable. Work would feel less demanding. Family challenges would ease. Life would become a little less complicated and I could finally focus on where I was heading.

It's funny how convincing those stories can be when we're telling them to ourselves.

Because life never really settled down.

It just kept changing.

Some challenges disappeared. New ones arrived.

The people changed. The circumstances changed. The responsibilities changed.

Life carried on doing what life does.

What eventually changed was my understanding of what I could and couldn't control.

That wasn't a lesson I learned overnight.

In fact, I was probably slower than most.

There was a period where my body started making it very clear that the way I was living wasn't sustainable. I was exhausted. I was having panic attacks. I was constantly running on adrenaline and convincing myself I was fine because there were more important things to focus on.

Looking back now, I can see that my body knew something long before my mind was prepared to admit it.

One of the lessons I've carried with me ever since is that if your body is talking to you, you'd better listen.

It rarely whispers forever.

Around that time, I wrote a letter to myself.

It wasn't intended to be profound. It was simply an attempt to make peace with the decisions I had made and the ones I still needed to make.

I was worried about regret. Worried that one day I would look back and wonder whether I should have done more.

One line from that letter has stayed with me ever since.

Every decision I made was the right decision for that moment in time.

Not the perfect decision.

Not necessarily the decision I would make today with the benefit of hindsight.

But the right decision based on what I knew, what I was carrying and what I was capable of at that point in my life.

There was something incredibly freeing about that realisation.

We can be very harsh judges of our younger selves.

We look back with years of additional experience and expect ourselves to have known things we couldn't possibly have known at the time.

The older I get, the less interested I am in judging the person I used to be.

She was doing her best.

Most of us are.

When I look back now, I don't see those years as time lost or obstacles that stood in the way of my future. They were part of my future. They shaped the way I lead, the way I build relationships and the way I think about responsibility.

They also taught me something I wish I had understood earlier.

You can care deeply about people without carrying everything for them.

In fact, sometimes caring means recognising where your responsibility ends and theirs begins.

That's not selfish.

It's healthy.

And in my experience, it's often the only way to sustain both the relationship and yourself.

One thing I've come to believe is that when we're at our lowest, we're often learning the most. The challenge is that it rarely feels that way at the time.

When you're in the middle of it, you're not thinking about growth. You're thinking about getting through the day, solving the next problem or finding enough energy to deal with whatever comes next.

The learning tends to reveal itself years later.

For a long time, I thought life would begin once things settled down.

What I've come to understand is that life was already happening.

The lessons, the growth and the experiences that shaped me weren't waiting somewhere on the other side of the chaos.

They were happening right in the middle of it.