If only I could be like them…

If only I could be like them…

There can be pain and struggle in the gap between who you are… and who a part of you wishes you were.

I’m 41, right in the middle of life.

Coming towards the end of the sixth septennial I’ve lived through.

In the end of one era, and coming to the beginning of the next.

I keep seeing qualities in people around me that I envy.

But that I know, deep down, aren’t who I am.

Knowing that doesn’t seem to stop the struggle.

I need to check: am I sure this isn’t who I am? Or could I be that person?

For the last set of accounts I completed, my profit came to about £40,000. That’s my worst year since the pandemic disrupted everything. By quite a way.

Sitting with that felt humiliating. Some of that was story: fusing income with self-worth, forgetting what I had chosen, in terms of time committed to work and other priorities.

But some of it was genuine: have I been integrating my financial priorities with my other priorities?

Should I have made better decisions? Should I make different decisions for the next phase of my life? For the next era?

Have I got it in me to do this thing for 10 more years?

In this questioning, I think about other people I know, who can do a job for the money, putting up with all the stuff they have to put up with. Staying there, and getting the things they get in exchange.

And I wish that could be me.

But I am what I am.

And that’s not who I am.

Over and over I have made choices that prioritised other things ahead of money. Family, energy, creativity, adventure, flexibility, love and more.

And I wouldn’t change that, even though I wish I could.

Can I make more skilful financial decisions? Of course. But over the last few months, I really tried on the idea that I could do a job just for the money. And I found: I’m not someone who can sacrifice the things that I need just for the money. Other things - the flexibility, the time with my children, the freedom to pursue what I can see really matters. They call me.

That doesn’t make me better than anyone else, but it doesn’t make me worse. There are things I can’t provide because of how I am. But there are also things I can provide, because of who I am.

I found myself thinking, just the other day, a similar thought: that I wish I could be someone who could stay in one role, stay in one organisation, for 20 years.

Even stay in one level of success in my business, consolidating where I am.

But then I picked up a bag that my sister-in-law made for me, showing a lyric from one of my favourite singers: ‘I face the horizon, the horizon is my home.’

And I wondered: did she choose that because she just likes that line, or is it because she sees it in me?

And do I see it in me?

That ability to see the next horizon, to know that following the horizon is and will always be who I am.

That the reason people hire me to do deep, transformational work, is because I can see the horizon with them? We can look at it together, and move towards it together, in a way no one else in their life can do.

All strengths have a shadow, and integrating these can be one of the places we can swiftly unlock potential.

For me that might look like: am I being distracted by a new, shiny thing? Or have I just glimpsed the horizon and the possibility it contains?

I envy and crave the stability and security of being in a job for the money.

Or of being completely content where I am, with nothing calling me on.

But that’s not who I am.

I face the horizon.

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PS My new book, The Power to Choose: Finding Calm and Connection in a Complex World, is out now! Get your copy here: https://geni.us/powertochoose

This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.