The Life They Wouldn’t Choose

There is a peculiar confidence that can come with knowing what somebody else should do with their life. Take the secure job. Buy the house. Don’t take that risk. Stay where you are. You’d be mad to give that up. Why would you want to start again now? Surely you want something more stable? Usually, the advice is well intentioned because people who care about us naturally want to protect us from mistakes, disappointment and unnecessary difficulty. They imagine themselves standing at the same crossroads and tell us which direction they would take.

The problem is that you might not want to go where they’re going. Sometimes the life somebody else would never choose is exactly the one that makes sense to you, and one of the harder parts of adulthood is becoming comfortable with making choices that people around you genuinely cannot imagine making themselves.

One person’s nightmare is another person’s dream

Ask ten people to describe their ideal life and the differences can be enormous. One person wants to build a business employing hundreds of people, while another wants to work three days a week and never manage another human being. Somebody dreams about living in the middle of a city surrounded by people, restaurants and noise, while somebody else would happily live miles from their nearest neighbour. One person wants marriage and four children, while another doesn’t want either. Some people dream about retiring as early as possible, while others cannot imagine ever completely stopping work.

None of those lives is inherently better, and most of us understand that when we’re talking about life in general. It becomes more difficult when somebody close to us chooses something we wouldn’t choose ourselves. We look at the risk they’re taking, the things they’re giving up or the lifestyle they’re creating and instinctively judge the decision against our own priorities. The fact that you wouldn’t choose somebody’s life, however, tells you considerably more about what you value than it does about whether their decision is right.

Entrepreneurship can make very little sense to people who don’t want it

Building a business is a perfect example because, from the outside, particularly in the early years, entrepreneurship can look like an objectively terrible arrangement. You may work longer hours than you ever did as an employee, carry considerably more responsibility and give up the certainty of knowing exactly what will arrive in your bank account every month. You might invest money you could have spent elsewhere, work while other people are switching off and spend years building something without knowing whether it will eventually become what you imagine.

Someone looking at that life can reasonably wonder why you wouldn’t simply get a job. If what they value most is predictability, a guaranteed salary and being able to leave work behind at the end of the day, employment may genuinely be a far better choice for them. Their reluctance to take the same risk doesn’t mean they lack ambition, just as your willingness to take it doesn’t automatically make you brave.

You may simply value different things. Perhaps the uncertainty of running a business bothers you less than the idea of somebody else controlling your working life. Maybe creating something matters more to you than predictability, or you’re willing to accept years of sacrifice because you want the possibility of building something much bigger than a salary. Two people can look at exactly the same set of circumstances and reach completely different conclusions without either of them being wrong.

People see the sacrifice before they see what you’re building

One of the difficulties with choosing an unconventional path is that the sacrifice is usually visible long before the reward. People see you working late, turning down plans, reinvesting money and worrying about things an employee might reasonably leave at work. What they cannot necessarily see is the picture in your head of what all of that effort might eventually create.

This doesn’t mean every sacrifice is worthwhile. There is nothing admirable about damaging your health, relationships or finances simply so you can say you worked harder than everybody else, and sometimes the people around us are right to question what our ambitions are costing us. Leadership and entrepreneurship can both become unhealthy when sacrifice itself starts being treated as evidence of commitment.

The more useful question is whether you still believe the exchange is worth making. There may be periods when you deliberately accept less free time, less certainty or less disposable income because you are building towards something that matters enormously to you. Somebody who doesn’t want the outcome is unlikely to understand why you would accept the cost, but they don’t necessarily need to.

Sometimes the unconventional choice is wanting less

Living differently isn’t always about chasing something bigger. Sometimes the life other people wouldn’t choose is actually the quieter one. It can mean leaving the impressive job because you no longer want the pressure that comes with it, selling the enormous house because you don’t want the mortgage or turning down a promotion because the extra money isn’t worth losing your evenings.

We live in a culture that frequently assumes progress means more: more money, more responsibility, a bigger business, a better title and another achievement. For some people, success eventually means needing less. A leader who decides to run a smaller company because they want more time with their children hasn’t necessarily lost their ambition, and somebody who leaves a prestigious career to do work they enjoy hasn’t failed to fulfil their potential. Their definition of what a successful life looks like may simply have changed.

Choosing your own life means resisting pressure from both directions. You don’t have to make yourself smaller because other people are uncomfortable with your ambition, but you don’t have to keep becoming bigger simply because other people are impressed by it.

Different choices can make people uncomfortable

Sometimes another person’s choices challenge our own without either person intending them to. When somebody leaves a career you’ve both complained about for years, you may suddenly find yourself wondering why you’re still there. When somebody moves abroad, starts a business or completely changes direction, it can remind you of the things you’ve considered doing but decided against.

That discomfort can occasionally emerge as judgement. People may tell you something won’t work, that you’ve changed or that they don’t understand why you’re doing it. Sometimes they’re raising legitimate concerns and sometimes your decision simply doesn’t fit their understanding of what a sensible life should look like.

You don’t need to assume everybody who questions you is jealous or secretly unhappy with their own choices. Most of the time, people are simply viewing your life through the lens of their own experiences. Understanding that makes it much easier to listen without feeling that you have to follow their advice.

Be careful who you take advice from

Advice matters, particularly when you’re making a significant decision, but the person giving it matters too. If you’re thinking about starting a business, somebody who has successfully built one may be able to identify risks and opportunities that neither you nor your family can see. If you’re considering a major career change, speaking to somebody who has actually made a similar transition may be more useful than collecting opinions from people who have never considered doing it.

This doesn’t mean experience makes somebody automatically right. It simply means advice should be weighed according to its relevance. Someone can love you enormously and still know absolutely nothing about the thing you’re trying to do.

It is also worth noticing when advice is primarily based on fear. If somebody would never risk financial uncertainty, almost any entrepreneurial decision may seem dangerous to them. Their concern can be genuine and worth hearing without becoming the deciding factor in your life.

The people who love you may never understand it

There is something particularly difficult about being misunderstood by people close to you. Approval from strangers doesn’t matter very much, but we naturally want our families and friends to understand what we’re trying to achieve and why it matters to us.

Sometimes they won’t. You can explain the business plan, the opportunity, the dream and what you hope life will eventually look like, and they may still think you’d be happier doing something safer. There may never be a conversation where they suddenly announce that they completely understand why you’ve chosen this life.

At some point, continuing to explain yourself becomes exhausting. You can accept that somebody loves you and still doesn’t understand this particular part of you. Their inability to imagine choosing your life doesn’t mean you need to choose theirs.

You are allowed to change your mind

Choosing your own path doesn’t mean stubbornly staying on it forever. Sometimes you take the risk and discover that you don’t like the reality. The business you desperately wanted to build might consume more of your life than you’re willing to give it. The move you dreamed about may not make you happy, or the career you fought to enter might eventually become one you want to leave.

Changing your mind isn’t proof that everybody who questioned you was right. It is simply another decision you are entitled to make.

There is a tendency to believe that once we’ve publicly chosen an unconventional path, we have to make it work because otherwise we’ll have to endure somebody saying, “I told you so.” That is a terrible reason to remain in a life you no longer want. The whole point of living according to your own values is that you are also free to recognise when those values, circumstances or ambitions have changed.

Make sure it is actually your choice

There is one final question worth asking when you’re building a life other people wouldn’t choose: would you still want it if nobody was watching?

Ambition can become tangled up with proving people wrong. If you’ve spent years being told something won’t work, succeeding can start feeling like the ultimate response. The danger is that eventually you can become so focused on demonstrating that you were right that you stop asking whether the life you’ve created still makes you happy.

The same can happen with status. Sometimes we chase the bigger company, more impressive title or next financial milestone because those things are recognised by everybody else as success, even when privately we aren’t sure we want what comes with them.

Living life on your own terms requires occasionally checking that they really are your terms. The goal isn’t to choose something different for the sake of being different. It is to become honest enough with yourself to recognise what you actually want, even when that answer changes.

You are the one who has to live it

There will always be people who would make different choices with your life. They would work fewer hours, take fewer risks, spend the money differently, stay closer to home or choose the security you willingly gave up. Others would tell you to take bigger risks, work harder, grow faster and chase things you have absolutely no interest in having.

Listen to good advice and pay attention to genuine concerns, particularly when your choices affect people who depend upon you. Be willing to reconsider when somebody sees something you’ve missed and remain honest about whether the sacrifices you’re making are still worth what you’re trying to build.

After that, you have to make the decision yourself. You are the person who will wake up inside the life those decisions create, and that means your definition of happiness, fulfilment and success has to carry more weight than somebody else’s preferences.

The life they wouldn’t choose might be uncertain, unconventional, quieter, bigger, riskier or completely different from anything they can imagine wanting for themselves. That doesn’t make their life wrong, and it doesn’t make yours right. It simply means that a good life isn’t a standard template we all have to follow.

Sometimes the clearest sign that you’re building a life that genuinely belongs to you is that it makes perfect sense to you, even when it makes absolutely no sense to somebody else.

Keep looking after you

Wellbeing looks different for everyone, and sometimes the most useful thing is simply finding the right information at the right time. Explore more from Daily Round with our dedicated Women’s Health, Men’s Wellbeing and Wellbeing for Leaders sections, or head to the Leaders Library for our latest book recommendations, ideas and inspiration for life in and outside work.