Your Younger Self Would Kill to be You
If you are always looking forward, expecting the future will solve everything, try this unexpected mindset shift to help you find the value of being in the present.
For most of my life, I would leave each day exhausted. It wasn’t that I hadn’t worked hard. I had.
It was that despite working hard, I continued to feel that I didn’t do enough. My to-do list felt endless. The list was ever-growing and never shrinking.
I started each day, each week, each month, each year expecting I could and should accomplish more, but then I would end it feeling I didn’t measure up.
There were a few moments when I felt proud of an achievement. Perhaps I received a reward, got a good grade, or even got a promotion. But even then, I would immediately move on to the next thing on the list, worried that if I paused for too long, I would be wasting time and becoming complacent.
Life was a race.
And I was behind.
It’s depleting and self-defeating to always feel behind.
At first, I thought it was an issue with school and the constant stream of homework, projects, and tests.
I naively believed that growing up and going to work would solve my feeling of constant pressure and nagging thoughts. No homework. No tests. No applications to competitive programs. No group projects. Being an adult and going to work would free me, I told myself.
Boy, was I wrong.
Growing up meant the exact opposite.
More responsibility — rent, insurance, taxes, meal planning, prepping , and cleaning, transporation. More pressures — would I get a raise, office politics, high-stakes work projects, would I ever find a worthy life partner? More people to compare myself to — people who had more money, a higher title, a larger home, more glamorous clothes.
As I crossed each incredible threshold of success — buying my first property, getting engaged, getting married, getting pregnant, getting promoted, it seemed that a longer list presented itself on the other side.
I could and should be doing more.
Others were.
Why wasn’t I?
Caring for young children while taking on demanding executive roles brought me to a breaking point.
People tell you that you need to go through dark periods to grow. I would agree, but I wouldn’t wish that darkness upon anyone.
The late nights, the lack of sleep, the constant insecurity about whether you’re making the right choices — caregiving can take the most confident, high-performing leader and bring them to their knees.
It did for me.
I became more impatient with everyone around me. I snapped at people I cared about. My words were unfiltered and unkind. I was overly demanding and unforgiving.
I became the villain but felt like the victim. It was a horrible combination.
And the person that got the worst of it?
Me.
I don’t think I was even conscious of how much I beat myself up. It was something I had done most of my life — an old habit.
It took a major shakeup for me to recast my stories and how I saw myself.
The fall of 2013 was not the first time I was pushed beyond my limits, but it was the first time I was CEO.
I was tired of being the one responsible for holding the line against an ill-functioning Board to prevent them from destroying a small but growing start-up. The stress of reducing costs while growing revenue while navigating toxic behaviors had taken its toll.
I had had enough.
I hadn’t sought out the role of CEO and so I thought leaving it would be just as easy.
It wasn’t.
I didn’t need the title to see myself as worthy, but I also felt the pressure of having ascended to the proverbial corporate summit.
I had so many questions circling in my head:
Was this my one shot at the top and did I squander it?
Was the only acceptable next step to find another CEO post?
Would taking a non-CEO role signal that I wasn’t up for the challenge?
Was my departure a sign that I couldn’t handle the role?
Perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising that I was struggling with doubt. I was a first-time CEO at 34, assuming the post when my first child had just turned one.
As a graduate of Wharton and a former analyst on Wall Street, I was used to being surrounded by extremely ambitious and successful leaders who didn’t know the meaning of balance or pacing.
There was only one path: the one to the top. There was only one pace: faster than everyone else.
I had already challenged and overcome these notions before, but apparently, they were re-emerging again.
I quieted my mind and silenced my ego only when I reminded myself of how far I’d come.
During this time, I was cleaning out my bookshelf one weekend and came across some high school photos. I was immediately transported.
I could feel the stifling pressure that squeezed my throat and my chest every day without me even knowing, all from how badly I wanted to achieve. I don’t even think that I had a specific vision of what I wanted. I just knew I wanted something bigger, something better.
I was filled with an overwhelming amount of empathy for that hopeful, anxious, and driven high schooler. She had no idea of what was ahead.
Never had I envisioned that I would have attended an Ivy League school or attained leadership roles in Fortune 500 companies. I certainly never thought that I would be the CEO of a company. I hadn’t imagined meeting a partner who would take my breath away and make me laugh every day. And I didn’t think I would be living a cosmopolitan life in Manhattan and building a family.
Looking backward helped me to stop fantasizing about the future and ignoring the present.
Pausing, I realized that what I had achieved, what was happening in my life at that moment was more than anything I had ever imagined possible.
By connecting to my younger self, my past, I was able to more deeply appreciate my present and all that I had done and benefited from to achieve it.
I was able to celebrate my progress, my learnings, and my resilience.
I was also able to hold my decision and future path more lightly.
Reminding myself of how far I had come had a calming effect. I had made the right moves in the past. I had done the work. I had stayed the course and achieved my goals and then some.
I stopped assuming that the future would solve all my challenges. I stopped berating myself for being behind, not moving fast enough, and not being as good as the next person.
Most importantly, I finally started to fully enjoy the present.
Key Takeaways
If you find yourself being unkind or overly critical of yourself, coupled with a narrative that when the future finally arrives, everything will be better, try the following:
Remind yourself of your younger self's aspirations
Take stock of how far you’ve come and what you've accomplished
Fully acknowledge and celebrate your progress, including the challenges you’ve overcome
Reflect and see if you can give yourself the credit you deserve, imagining how delighted your younger self would have been if they had known you would have achieved so much
Each time you find yourself feeling down or fantasizing about the future, remind yourself of how proud your younger self would be of you just as you are
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Thank you Kathy! This is such an important message for any hyperachiever.
Or anyone who's used to pushing themselves and ignoring the signs that life is passing them by.
That moment or day doesn't come around again.
It's so important to celebrate the gains and not be obsessive over the gaps of how far we have to go.
When my mother was dying of cancer, I wasn’t as present with her as I would’ve liked. It was just too painful.
I beat myself up for several years in therapy over it.
Until, one day, I realised: If I could have done better than that, I would have.
The fact that I didn’t meant I couldn’t.
I remind myself that we are always doing the best that we know how (at any given point.)