Embracing Limitations

How constraints can actually help us make better decisions and progress

In life there are things that help us make progress and some things that block us, and sometimes, I don’t think we’re good at identifying which is which.  

The thing that started me thinking about this is being on the cusp of my children leaving home. They already don’t need me as much, and I can clearly see on the horizon the point where they’re no longer living with us, (or maybe they will be, you can’t tell in the current housing market) they’ll be adults who can run their lives by themselves. Already they can feed and dress themselves; get themselves to work and school independently and although I’m here, it’s a different here from when they were small, and it was all so immediate and intense.

To give some context, I had my kids when I was young, so I’ve been a parent the whole of my adult life. And for the whole of my adult life, I’ve been counting down to this moment and assuming it will be so much easier. Because every time I’ve made a job move, every time I’ve made a career decision, I’ve had these very strict parameters around me about the decisions I could make. Whether I worked full time or not, whether I had a commute, whether I had flexibility to go to sports day or take days off for poorly children. All of these felt like big and important constraints on the career decisions I could make, at times it felt quite hampering and restrictive.

And it’s funny as now I’m here, rather than overjoyed, I feel a bit lost. It’s like someone has taken the sides of the swimming pool away unexpectedly, and I’m floundering trying to learn to swim without anything to hold onto. Whereas before it was obvious which way was forward, and I kept moving, now I’m not so sure. Where should I be going? What should I be doing?

Rather than feeling freed by the reduced constraints on my life and the decisions I can make for myself, I feel a bit untethered. This got me thinking about other scenarios where we might think that the parameters are holding us back, but they’re actually holding us steady so we can move forward. A few years ago, we were looking to move house, and as it happened my colleague’s son was looking for a house at around the same time as us.

He and we were in very different stages in our lives. He and his girlfriend work in tech, both very well paid, and both working at home. It was just the two of them, so their search area was large, and the budget was big. Whereas we had two teenagers to fit in, we were looking for as much space as we could possibly afford on a limited budget. We had two school catchment areas to think about, along with workplaces to commute to.  So, our search area was small, and our requirements very specific.

At the time it was easy to be a bit jealous of their lack of constraints, how exciting to be able to buy any house you liked just about anywhere. How freeing to have so many options and avenues to explore. But I wonder if that’s how it felt to them. In the end we bought our house in January 2020, and as it happens, I saw that colleague a couple of weeks ago. Her son is only just buying a house now, a full 4 years later.

A lot of the time, I think it’s easy to think of anything that gives us parameters, constrictions, or boundaries as blockers, when actually they often open the way for good enough decisions and decision which will do for now. And by embracing good enough, better than what was before, ok for now, we keep steadily moving forward. Whereas when we don’t have parameters, we can keep looking for perfect, keep looking at more options and fail to make any progress at all.

Have you found this too? Is there such a thing as too many options or have you been frozen by feeling like you have too few avenues to explore?