Dear 21-year-old Catherine,
There are so many things I wish someone had told me when I was your age.
Actually… that’s not quite true.
Most of the people around me couldn’t have told me because they didn’t know themselves.
Mum and Dad rarely interfered in my decisions and, looking back, I’m incredibly grateful for that… not that I ever asked their permission anyway! They doing the very best they could with the information they had.
Some teachers inspired me. Some taught me exactly who I didn’t want to become. My lecturers genuinely believed they were opening doors for me. The people who encouraged me to get a proper job, join a good company, work my way up the career ladder and build a decent pension probably believed they were giving me the best advice they possibly could.
They weren’t trying to limit me.
They were simply handing me the map they’d been given.
It never occurred to me then that one day I’d question whether I wanted to follow that map at all.
I’ve thought about that a lot over the years.
Most people we know aren’t deliberately trying to steer us in the wrong direction (we do know some control groups are). They’re simply passing on the beliefs, experiences and understanding of the world that were handed to them. They believe they’re helping us because, in many cases, that’s exactly what they believe helped them.
The trouble is, we rarely stop to ask whether the map we’re following is actually our own.
Looking back now, I don’t feel angry about any of that.
Quite the opposite.
I feel incredibly grateful.
Grateful for the values my parents gave me. Loyalty. Responsibility. Hard work. Looking after those who depended on me. Those values have shaped my life in ways I wouldn’t change for the world. The pain in my early life helped me tremendously to stand on my own two feet.
Alongside those wonderful values came something else.
Beliefs.
Not bad beliefs.
Inherited ones.
Beliefs about success, money, work, health, the way we should live our lives and what it meant to be a responsible adult. Beliefs that felt so normal I rarely stopped to ask whether they were actually mine.
I was the first person in my family to go to university, and what an incredible opportunity that felt like. I absolutely loved it. I threw myself into the academic side and, let’s just say, I certainly didn’t neglect the social side either!
I wasn’t there just to get a degree. I was there to experience life, to meet people from different backgrounds and different parts of the world, to stretch myself and make the most of an opportunity that nobody in my family had ever had before. Many of those people are still my friends today, albeit from afar.
After university I worked two jobs, day and night, looked after my horse, lived in digs and saved every penny I could because I wanted to travel the world. I couldn’t wait to see what was out there.
Looking back now, I smile because I really did squeeze every drop out of those years.
I was excited about life.
Excited about people.
Excited about learning.
Excited about what the future might hold.
I don’t think I realised it then, but curiosity has probably been the greatest gift of my life. It’s taken me into careers, countries, conversations and friendships that I could never have planned.
Then I came home.
And that’s when I started to notice something.
Almost everyone around me seemed to be following exactly the same path, yet very few people ever stopped to ask why.
Get a proper job.
Join a respected company.
Work hard.
Climb the ladder.
Become a manager.
Get a good pension.
Be sensible.
Be responsible.
That was what success looked like.
Or so I was told.
I never completely bought into it, but I certainly bought into parts of it.
Some of it made perfect sense. Responsibility mattered to me. Loyalty mattered to me. Working hard mattered to me.
There was always something inside me, though, that quietly kept asking…
“Is this really it?”
That little voice wasn’t always easy to live with.
It created distance between me and some friends who couldn’t understand why I kept changing direction. It confused family members who thought I was making life harder than it needed to be.
Looking back now, I realise that little voice wasn’t trying to make my life difficult.
It was trying to stop me living somebody else’s life.
As a biologist, I would have loved to have spent my life out in the field studying wildlife. I was lucky enough to do that on projects, and I absolutely loved it. There was a huge part of me that would have happily disappeared into the jungle to work with monkeys.
But I also had an old horse, Sheena, who depended on me, and there was no way I was going to walk away from her.
Even at the time, I never thought I was compromising.
I was choosing loyalty.
Sheena had been my best friend throughout my teenage years. My parents would have done anything to have a horse when they were growing up, and I never took for granted how lucky I was to have her.
I have never regretted choosing loyalty over ambition.
Looking after another living being every single day teaches you things that no qualification ever can. It teaches responsibility, commitment and consistency. It teaches you that love isn’t just something you feel, it’s something you do, day after day, whether it’s convenient or not.
Those lessons have stayed with me far longer than anything I learnt in a classroom.
Life didn’t take me into the jungle… well, it did later, but that’s a story for another time!
Instead, it took me somewhere I never planned.
I followed opportunities that interested me. Sometimes I followed my intuition. Occasionally I made decisions that looked completely irrational to other people but somehow felt right to me.
Over the years I’ve worked in telecoms, environmental management, project management, the public sector, the private sector, as an employee, as a consultant and running my own businesses.
For years I thought I couldn’t make my mind up.
Now I see it very differently.
I wasn’t changing direction.
I was collecting experiences.
Every role taught me something.
Every career helped me understand people a little better.
Every challenge added another piece to the jigsaw.
Looking back now, I honestly don’t think there was a wasted year.
One thing I’m genuinely proud of is that I never stayed in a job that no longer felt right.
It certainly doesn’t mean every decision worked out perfectly.
Some didn’t.
Some were incredibly hard.
Looking back, though, every single one taught me something I needed to learn.
People have thought I was mad more times than I can remember.
Many probably still do!
I’m proud that I became an Equine Iridologist when most people had never even heard of it.
I smile when I think about opening an organic shop selling herbs and natural products when people told me it would never work. I can still picture myself standing there late at night, mixing my own formulations while trying to run a business with two little children who seemed to think sleep was completely optional!
Poor Mark has become wonderfully accustomed to me wandering into the room and announcing, “I’ve had another idea…”
I can almost see him mentally preparing himself.
Is it another business?
Another qualification?
Another podcast?
Another animal?
Or all four?
To his credit, he never tells me not to do it. He may occasionally raise an eyebrow, but he also knows that curiosity has always been part of who I am. I think he’s accepted by now that life with me was never going to be predictable!
One of the best decisions I ever made was starting the podcast, despite people wondering who on earth I thought I was.
The funny thing is…
I wasn’t trying to become anybody.
I was simply becoming more of myself.
Today I have conversations with some of the most fascinating people in the world. Not because I think I know everything, but because I know I don’t.
Curiosity continues to take me into conversations I never imagined I’d be having. It reminds me, almost daily, that none of us ever stop learning.
When I look back now, I don’t see someone who couldn’t make her mind up.
I see someone who kept saying yes to learning.
And I’m incredibly grateful that I did.
One thing that has become clearer and clearer to me as I’ve got older is that, when I look back on my life, it won’t be my jobs that I’ll remember most. It won’t be the qualifications, the businesses or even the podcast, as much as I love doing it. It will be the people and the animals that have shared my life.
Without question, becoming a mum has been the greatest gift of my life. Watching my two children grow into the people they are today has taught me more than I could ever have taught them. Of course I’m incredibly proud of what they’ve achieved (and naturally I take full credit for all of it!), but much more than that, I’m proud of who they are. They’re kind, compassionate and thoughtful, and they’re finding their own way in the world.
As a parent, that’s all I’ve ever really wanted. Not for them to live my life or fulfil my dreams, but to have the confidence to create lives that genuinely feel like their own. Perhaps that’s why this letter means so much to me. I don’t want my children following my map any more than I wanted to spend my life following somebody else’s. I want them to think for themselves, stay curious, ask questions and have the confidence to make decisions that feel right for them, even if those decisions don’t make sense to everyone else.
Now for all the animals in my life, looking back now, I realise they’ve been some of my greatest teachers. They don’t care what qualifications you’ve got, what car you drive or how much money you’ve earn. They don’t care whether other people think you’re successful. They care whether they can trust you, whether you notice when they’re struggling and whether you show up for them when they need you. There is something wonderfully honest about that. Animals have an extraordinary way of reminding us what really matters.
The older I’ve become, the less impressed I am by titles, status and possessions, and the more interested I am in character. How people treat those who depend on them tells me far more about who they are than any job title or bank balance ever could.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m absolutely not saying money doesn’t matter. In today’s world it clearly does. We need money to feed our families well, to care for our animals, to have choices and, increasingly, to have the freedom to make decisions outside systems we may no longer agree with. A lack of money can certainly take away some of that freedom, and I’ve seen first-hand the stress that can bring.
What I have come to question is when the pursuit of money becomes the purpose of life.
I’ve met people with very little who seemed genuinely content, and I’ve met people who had everything they thought they wanted and still weren’t happy. That has taught me that fulfilment isn’t something waiting for us at the end of another promotion, another pay rise or another achievement. It’s created through the way we choose to live each day and the people we choose to become along the way.
I honestly think that’s where character is built.
And perhaps that’s one of the biggest things I’d say to my 21-year-old self. Don’t ever think that choosing loyalty over status is a weakness. Don’t ever think that caring deeply about people and animals will hold you back. If anything, those choices have shaped me far more than any career move ever has.
Perhaps the irony is that this was never really a letter to my 21-year-old self.
Twenty-one-year-old Catherine would probably have smiled politely, thought she already knew everything there was to know and carried on regardless! Looking back, perhaps she had to. Every wrong turn, every career change, every challenge and every person who crossed my path had something to teach me.
Perhaps this letter is really for anyone, at any age, who has that constant feeling that something no longer fits.
The world feels incredibly confusing at the moment. That’s the plan (confusion is a key part of mind control). We’re constantly being told what to think, what to buy, what success looks like, how we should live, what we should fear and even what we should aspire to. It has never been easier to become disconnected from ourselves whilst appearing more connected than ever to everyone else.
Sometimes I wonder whether the greatest act of self-care isn’t another holiday, another qualification or another podcast. Perhaps it’s simply creating enough space to hear your own thoughts again.
If you’re reading this and something has resonated, don’t ignore it.
If your career no longer lights you up…
If you’ve created a life that looks successful on paper but doesn’t feel like your own…
If you’re constantly busy but rarely feel fulfilled…
If you find yourself wondering, “Is this really it?” more often than you’d like to admit…
Then perhaps it’s time to stop running for a while.
Not because you’re giving up.
Because you’re making sure you’re heading in the right direction.
There are a few questions I come back to time and time again. Not because I always have the answers, but because they’ve helped me make sense of some of the biggest decisions in my own life.
Does the life I’m living actually feel like mine?
Where do I feel most alive… and where do I feel as though I’m simply going through the motions?
What have I accepted as ‘normal’ without ever stopping to ask whether it’s actually right for me?
If fear, guilt and other people’s expectations disappeared tomorrow morning, what would I change first?
Those aren’t always comfortable questions.
In fact, they can be deeply uncomfortable.
The interesting thing is that, in my experience, we usually know the answers long before we’re ready to admit them.
The challenge isn’t hearing that quiet voice inside us.
The challenge is having the courage to listen to it.
We spend so much of our lives trying to understand the world around us.
One of the greatest adventures is understanding ourselves.
I started this letter by talking about the map I’d been given.
Perhaps that’s the real lesson I’d want to leave with.
We all inherit a map.
From our parents.
Our teachers.
Our culture.
Our experiences.
There is nothing wrong with that.
The important question is whether, at some point, we have the courage to stop, unfold that map, look at where we are… and decide whether it’s actually taking us to the life we want to live.
If this letter has encouraged you to do that, then writing it has been worthwhile.
And if, having asked yourself those questions, you decide you’d like someone to help you explore the answers, you’ll find more about the work I do below.