When People Don’t Understand Your Next Chapter

What’s Your Ex? Tell me here.

What happens when the people around you don't understand the career change, dream, business, or life you're trying to build?

This episode is about separating other people's opinions from your own decisions, trusting yourself during a transition, and moving forward without needing everyone else's approval.

Not everyone has to understand your next chapter. They're not the ones who have to live it.

Grab the free one-page action plan HERE.

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Transcript

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Speaker 0:07

You made a choice that was right for you, and then you felt like you had to say sorry for it. Like you owed everyone in your life a reason before you were allowed to feel okay about your own decision. You know that feeling, don't you? You make the call, and here come the questions. Why would you do that? Are you sure? What about this? What about that? And even when they're kind, even when they come from people who love you, you feel this pressure start to build. Like you have to defend it, explain every piece of it, get everyone to understand and sign off before you can breathe again. I want to take the pressure off you today because the truth is not everyone is going to get it. And that's okay. You don't owe the whole world an explanation for a life that's yours to live. Welcome to the What's Your Ex? podcast. I'm your host, Marilie, and I'm so glad you're here. This is the show about who we used to be and how it was all preparation for who we are becoming. This is episode 5, and today we're talking about the freedom that comes when you let people not understand you. That exhausting job of getting everyone to approve your life and how to finally set it down. So let's get into it. This one's for anyone who's made a choice or is about to, that the people around them don't fully understand. The career move, the relationship decision, the change of direction that makes complete sense to you but raises everyone else's eyebrows. And what I want to give you today is freedom. Freedom from that exhausting job of getting everyone to approve. Because you were never required to do that. Not once, not ever. Let's start with something simple that we forget all the time. Other people can only understand your choice through the information they have, and they will never have all of it. Think about that for a moment. They don't have your full history, they don't have your reasons, sometimes reasons you can't even share out loud. They don't have that quiet knowing in your gut that told you this was right. They're standing on the outside looking at a choice that got made on the inside. So of course they have questions. Of course, some of them don't get it. How could they? And here's where we trip ourselves up. We decide it's our job to close that gap, to explain and explain and explain until every last person finally nods along. And that turns into a trap because some people will not understand no matter how much you explain. You can pour endless energy into a justifying project that quite literally never ends. So here's a better way to see it. Your choice does not need anyone else's understanding to be valid. Their confusion isn't proof that you're wrong. It's just proof that they are on the outside, which is exactly where most people will always be when it comes to your life. You are allowed to make a choice that only you fully understand. You're even allowed to make one you can't fully put into words. It's still yours, it's still valid, and you do not have to win an argument to be at peace with it. And I want to stay on this a little longer because I think there's something underneath it, we don't say out loud. A lot of the time when we were over explaining ourselves, we tell ourselves we're doing it for them, so they'll understand, so they won't worry. But if we're truly honest, we're often doing it for us. We want their approval because it would quiet the little bit of doubt still sitting in our own chest. That was uncomfortable, I know, but it's worth facing. Because if you go looking for someone else to make you feel sure about your choice, you hand them a kind of power over it. Their nod becomes the thing that makes you okay, and their confusion becomes the thing that falls you apart. But when you can hold your own choice steady on your own two feet, you take that power back. You don't need the nod anymore. You'd welcome it, but you don't need it. And that is a completely different way to move through your life. And I know this one all the way down because I've made a choice like this before, the biggest one of my life. When I left my island, when I left home to chase a life somewhere else, my family did not understand it. Not really. To them, I was leaving the place we knew, the place that was safe, to go chase something they couldn't see. And I'll be honest with you about the hardest part. I hurt my father with that decision. I did. He did not understand why I had to go, and my leaving cost him pain. And I carried that. Knowing you've hurt someone you love, someone whose approval means everything to you, that is one of the heaviest things a person can carry. But even with all of that, even knowing it hurt him, I knew in my heart I had to go. Some part of me deeper than words understood that staying would cost me something I couldn't get back. I couldn't fully explain it to them. I'm not sure I could have explained it to anyone. I just knew. And here's what I can see now looking back that none of us could see then. If I had stayed, if I'd let their not understanding stop me, I never could have become what I became. Because that hard choice, the one that hurt, the one nobody approved of, is the exact reason I was able to provide for my family as the breadwinner for the last twenty plus years. The very people who didn't understand why I left, my leaving is what let me take care of them. Really, let that land for a second. The choice they couldn't understand became the choice that held all of us up. If I had waited for them to get it, I'd have stayed. And if I'd stayed, none of it, none of what I was able to give them would have been possible. So when I tell you that you can love someone and still make a choice they don't understand, I'm not saying it lightly. I've lived the hardest version of it, and I'd make the same choice again. And I'm living a smaller version of the very same thing right now. As I've told you before, I'm making a pivot in my business, same industry, but a real change in direction. And here's the honest part, it's for reasons I'm not able to get into right now. Some of the why behind this decision is just not something I can lay out for everyone. And I've made my peace with that. But of course, a change like that brings questions. People wonder, people ask, some of them don't understand why I'd switch direction. And I can feel that pull, the same pull I know you feel to overexplain, to justify, to make everyone see exactly what I see. And here's where I've landed. I don't have to explain every detail of my decision to anyone. I know what I know. I have my reasons, good ones, even the ones I'm keeping to myself. And the fact that not everyone will fully get it, that's okay. It has to be okay, because if I made every choice depend on everyone else understanding it first, I'd never be able to move at all. I'd be stuck forever waiting for a permission slip that was never going to come. So I've stopped measuring myself against other people's confusion. I made the right call for me, and that's enough. And letting that be enough, I have to tell you, has felt genuinely freeing, lighter, like setting down a bag I'd been carrying so long I forgot it was even heavy. If you're carrying that same weight right now, the weight of a choice you can fully explain, or shouldn't have to, I want you to hear this from someone standing right in it with you. You're allowed to set your bag down too. So let's turn this toward you. I want you to think of a choice that people have questioned, or one you're holding back on right now, because you already know they will. Have it? Okay. I want to give you a few things to hold on to. Real practical things you can use the next time that pressure shows up. First, tell the loving questions apart from the pressure to justify. When someone who cares about you asks, are you sure? That can come from a place of love. And you can take it warmly. But here's the thing: answering the question and defending your whole self are two completely different things. You can say, I appreciate you asking, I've thought about it, and I'm at peace with it. And that is a complete answer. Full stop. You don't have to open the whole file, you don't have to hand over every piece of paper. A warm, short answer is a whole answer. Second, have a short, kind sentence ready, and let it be the end. You don't owe anyone the full breakdown, so keep something ready. I know it might not make sense from the outside, and that's okay. This is the right move for me. Warm, honest, and closed. Notice the last part. It doesn't open a debate, it gently shuts the door. Because we forget this. A boundary can be kind and still be a boundary. Gentle and firm are not opposites. You can be soft in your tone and completely solid in your no. Third, and this is the big one, check who you're really trying to convince. A lot of the time, that exhausting need to explain isn't even about them. It's about quieting our own doubt by collecting approval from outside. So ask yourself, honestly, do I actually still doubt this? Or do I just want someone else to cosign it so I feel safer? Because if you know in your gut it's right, you don't need to cosign. You really don't. You just have to let their not getting it be okay. Let me give you a picture because I think it will click. Imagine you've drawn a map to a place only you can see. You know the ground. You've walked in it in your mind a hundred times, and you hand it to someone standing next to you and ask, does this look right? But they've never been there. They can't confirm your map. Not because it's wrong, but because they've simply never stood where you're standing. That's what it is to ask the people around you to approve a choice only you can fully see. Their not being able to confirm it isn't a judgment on your map. It's just the view from where they are. You can love them and thank them and still be the only one holding the pen. So here's what I want you to take out of today. You do not need everyone to vote yes to live your own life. You don't have to get every person on board. You don't have to explain yourself until the questions finally stop. Because for some people, they never will, and that was never yours to fix. Some of the best choices you will ever make will be the ones the people around you don't understand at first. Or ever. That's not a sign you got it wrong. It's just a sign you can see something they can't, standing right where you are standing. And I want to name what it cost you to keep chasing that understanding because it's more than just tiring. Every time you make your piece depend on someone else getting it, you hand them a vote in a decision that was only ever yours. You give away a little piece of your life to people who didn't even have the full picture in the first place, and slowly you start making choices that are easier to explain instead of the ones that are actually right. You shrink your life down to only what other people will approve of. That's a quiet kind of loss. And it happens to so many of us. But when you let people not understand, when you make the choice, hold it with peace, and let the questions be, you get your life back. You get to decide based on what's true for you, not on what's easy to defend over dinner. And that's where the freedom lives. Make the choice, hold it with peace, answer what you want to answer, keep what's yours to keep, and let the rest go. Not everyone will get it. And that, I promise you, is completely okay. So if you take one thing out of our time together today, just one, let it be this. You don't owe everyone an explanation. Not everyone will get it, and your choice is still valid without their understanding. That's it. This week, if someone questions a choice you're already at peace with, try the short kind sentence. This is the right move for me, and let that be the whole answer. And then notice how much lighter it feels to stop defending and just decide. That's what I've got for you this week. And I mean it. I'm really glad you spent this time with me. So What's Your Ex? Before you go, two quick things. First, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if today landed with you at all, if you thought of even one person who needs to hear this, share this episode with them. And second, I made you something. There's one page action plan for today's episode waiting for you in the show notes. It's got the main idea and that short kind sentence to keep in your back pocket. Plus the three things to hold on to the next time someone questions your choice. Go grab it and let it take some weight off you this week. I'm your host, Marilie. Thank you for being here, and I'll see you next time.