I was an anxious child. I can’t really explain why, but my default way of being was being worried. As Einstein said: “One of the most important decisions one makes is whether we choose to live in a friendly or hostile world.” I unconsciously chose the latter. My mother was a worrier before me, and I remember vividly her telling me, “If we don’t have something to worry about, then we’ll then worry about that.” I think that was meant to be reassuring but it never quite hit the mark.
This default made me strive to make sure things didn’t turn out how I feared, which meant I tried to be in control, work hard and always be as good as I could, or better than others. As long as I tried hard to make things right, then surely things wouldn’t go wrong – the naivety of youth.
It wasn’t always easy growing up, even though I was very fortunate in so many ways. I had a loving family and an idyllic countryside environment to grow up in. I got a free private school education, thanks to my father’s job as a teacher, which I know makes me extremely privileged. On one hand, it gave me the best starting place possible and the rest of my academic and career life would flourish because of it. But on the other hand, it severely damaged any self-confidence or self-esteem I might have had. I was different from the girls at school; most notable was not the difference in money and lifestyle (which was also very clear to me) but the fact that I was a day pupil and they were all borders. This difference excluded me from being “one of them,” from fitting in, from belonging. In turn, this only served to fuel my habits of worry and anxiety. I struggled to make friends and was always on the periphery of groups, desperate to be part of them. Subtle but long-term exclusion and rejection made its imprint on me here, and it would take over twenty years for me to unlearn the defenses I built up to protect myself from this pain.
At the time, I didn’t know anything different so I wouldn’t have classed myself as unhappy for these five years at the girls’ school, but when I was forced to move schools at 16 to my father’s school (where we also lived), the difference became stark.
Finally, I felt like I found a place to fit into, and while I was painfully shy to start with, I started to find the world a little less hostile. I made friends more easily and started to grow in confidence. This was from a very low base, but as a result of this and a more nurturing environment, my academic results rose to the top and my sporting abilities flourished. It was a happy couple of years, not worry free, but it felt like I’d moved from surviving to thriving and I realised then what happy school life was meant to be like and how absent it had been until then.
This was also a time that I started to realise that I was different in one important way from most people around me. I think all teenagers struggle with emotions and hormones and general growing up challenges, but my feelings were extreme. They could totally engulf and overwhelm me, both positively and negatively, and it often felt totally out of my control, and even a curse. I could rollercoaster from extreme happiness to extreme sadness, or worry, from one day to the next. My mother and I were very much alike in this, and it was quite apparent if you observed our relationship that it fluctuated precariously between loving playfulness and World War III.
Unfortunately, the coupling of the exclusion in my early school years with this emotional sensitivity drove me to develop strong defense mechanisms to protect myself from further perceived hurt. In addition, there were frequent triggered outbursts of behaviour that would cause pain to those around me and myself. Of course, at the time I couldn’t understand the cause of this behaviour, this would come decades later.
The following few years at university, while again not worry-free, was a period of exploration in the world. I lived away from home, made great friends, fell in love for the first time and continued to do well academically and in sport. The worry always made me study hard. I was not a natural intellect but I put in the hours and was adept at recalling information in exams.
Towards the end of university, I’d like to say that I pondered my calling in life and searched endlessly for the career path that would fulfill it. I had finished a degree in Geography and Anthropology but was disillusioned and overwhelmed with the challenges in the world that I had studied. I wasn’t inspired by jobs in town planning or going to live half-naked with some indigenous tribe in the middle of nowhere, which seemed to be the only options directly available. So instead I looked at those around me and joined the masses that were attracted by the sparkling promises of bright futures in accounting, law, banking, and marketing. I followed the migration into London and signed up for three more years studying while working and living hard. I fitted in and felt a sense of belonging and friendship inside and outside of work, which is what I had been yearning for since those early school years. The accountancy training with one of the big four firms is still one of the best business training grounds and certainly wasn’t a bad stopgap. I just have one regret: I forgot it was a stopgap. I forgot to revisit this decision, and then it became a career path I just slipped into and, true to form, tried to be the best at it I could.
This career path was a successful one for me when measured in the traditional way. I passed all the grueling exams the first time and qualified within three years. The desire for change and exploration motivated me to follow a group of work friends out to the Sydney office for a two year working holiday. At 25, the years in Australia were a couple of the best; a relatively worry free and sunny ex-pat life where there is an immediate sense of belonging and kin.
After two years I was forced to face the reality of staying more permanently or returning home, and the draw of the family from the other side of the world made this decision for me. It was hard returning home. It was at this moment that the reality of family life hit home. A fact that didn’t seem relevant to tell you until now was that my beautiful vivacious mother was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease when she was about 30 years old. Of course, it was always in the background of my growing up but not with any seriousness or gravity, though I am sure it was for her. Looking back, she was strong and courageous and determined not to let it impact her or her family and that is why I think it never really hit me before this point. But she had deteriorated while I’d been away and the starkness of her illness was like a punch in the stomach when I came home.
I settled back into the UK, again moving back to London and re-integrating with my old friends and life in the city. I left accountancy, as I couldn’t see myself in the partners I had been working for in the firm, and decided commercial finance in the industry looked like an obvious next step for me. I worked for seven years for one of the UK’s largest supermarkets, moving up the ladder every couple of years. I would go home as much I could but often, I was torn between the guilt of not going home and the pain of going home and facing my mother’s illness. This came to a head when it was time to buy my first house, and I decided to move back to West Berkshire and be closer to home and family. It was extortionately expensive to buy in London so this also drew me out of the city. It wasn’t long after this that I also moved my work out of London and started working for my third employer, one of the UK’s largest telecommunication companies. Again, I continued to grow and ascend up the ranks and develop as a leader. I also was in a happy and solid relationship and thinking about the next steps towards the vision of a family life of my own. I thought I could see the path clear in front of me. The path that those around me were also taking and the one that I believed was normal, right, successful and the route to happiness. One year later, while waiting for a train in Brighton station, I received the call no one ever wants to receive. “I’m sorry Miss Barton. We tried everything we could to save her, but I’m afraid she died in theatre.”
My mother had discovered she had heart damage from all the drugs she had been taking for the last twenty years and had gone in for a complicated heart operation. Despite the odds not being great she had survived the operation. Illness and operations were not foreign to her or us. She had in previous years also had open brain surgery as a test case for radical treatment for Parkinson’s and fought off skin cancer. I think this is why I felt she was invincible, that combined with her courage to hide the seriousness of the situation behind humour and light-heartedness. It was during her recovery from the heart operation that she contracted septicaemia (blood poisoning) and suffered multiple cardiac arrests, which this time she couldn’t fight through.
The year following was very dark. Grief is heavy, and for some, it is shorter some strange way find comfort in the darkness of this place. It was a lonely isolated place, but I retreated further into my cave. I pushed my partner away and decided to suffer the pain alone.
I wonder whether I wanted to punish myself, as I felt so guilty for not being able to prevent my mother’s death or for the guilt of not being a better daughter to her. Either way, I took the suffering and wore it like a heavy but warm coat. Not long after the anniversary of her death, in the depths of a dark cold winter, I plummeted into depression and deep anxiety that stemmed from the loneliness and guilt. This is when the first pivotal point came in my life.
I was driving home one afternoon, and I remember wondering if I could be brave enough to drive my car off the bridge and take myself out of the struggle of daily life and join my mother. This thought was immediately frightening enough to make me reach out for help as I knew this wasn’t right.
The therapy that followed was life-changing. The concept that I was not my feelings was powerful. The idea that I could be in control of my feelings by controlling my thoughts and beliefs. A lot of my negative thoughts and behaviours were the result of programming on my personal hard drive that had happened without me being conscious of it; learning the possibility that I could reprogramme myself was the light I needed to draw me out of the darkness. The journey I started here, to become aware, to understand, to accept, to grow, was my saviour.
As anyone who has made this journey knows, it is long and slow and takes all sorts of twists and turns. I made my way over the next few years to a level of existence that was neither greatly fulfilling nor unfulfilling, neither very happy nor unhappy.
Perhaps some people would settle for this lot in life but my subsequent experience is that a lot of people sooner or later decide there must be more to life. I had a successful career and a nice home; I’d worked my way through extreme loneliness and come out the other side embracing freedom and independence. However, I felt that the dark cave entrance was never far away and that I was often just managing to operations were not foreign to her or us. She had in previous years also had open brain surgery as a test case for radical treatment for Parkinson’s and fought off skin cancer. I think this is why I felt she was invincible, that combined with her courage to hide the seriousness of the situation behind humour and light-heartedness. It was during her recovery from the heart operation that she contracted septicaemia (blood poisoning) and suffered multiple cardiac arrests, which this time she couldn’t fight through.
The year following was very dark. Grief is heavy, and for some, it is shorter and sharper, but for me, it was long and drawn out. I seemed to sink into it and in some strange way find comfort in the darkness of this place. It was a lonely isolated place, but I retreated further into my cave. I pushed my partner away and decided to suffer the pain alone.
I wonder whether I wanted to punish myself, as I felt so guilty for not being able to prevent my mother’s death or for the guilt of not being a better daughter to her. Either way, I took the suffering and wore it like a heavy but warm coat. Not long after the anniversary of her death, in the depths of a dark cold winter, I plummeted into depression and deep anxiety that stemmed from the loneliness and guilt. This is when the first pivotal point came in my life.
I was driving home one afternoon, and I remember wondering if I could be brave enough to drive my car off the bridge and take myself out of the struggle of daily life and join my mother. This thought was immediately frightening enough to make me reach out for help as I knew this wasn’t right.
The therapy that followed was life-changing. The concept that I was not my feelings was powerful. The idea that I could be in control of my feelings by controlling my thoughts and beliefs. A lot of my negative thoughts and behaviours were the result of programming on my personal hard drive that had happened without me being conscious of it; learning the possibility that I could reprogramme myself was the light I needed to draw me out of the darkness. The journey I started here, to become aware, to understand, to accept, to grow, was my saviour.
As anyone who has made this journey knows, it is long and slow and takes all sorts of twists and turns. I made my way over the next few years to a level of existence that was neither greatly fulfilling nor unfulfilling, neither very happy nor unhappy. Perhaps some people would settle for this lot in life but my subsequent experience is that a lot of people sooner or later decide there must be more to life. I had a successful career and a nice home; I’d worked my way through extreme loneliness and come out the other side embracing freedom and independence. However, I felt that the dark cave entrance was never far away and that I was often just managing to keep my head above the water. It was a life again of surviving rather than one of thriving. This is when the second pivotal point came in my life.
Over one or two glasses of wine with a very good friend we spoke at length about this feeling of being on an escalator without knowing where it is taking us, of feeling like you are on a hamster wheel knowing the next turn will just be a repetition of the one before. The flippant comments about quitting it all and heading off into the sunset with a backpack became less about a dream and more about a necessity. By the end of the evening, we had made a pact to do just this, to jump off the wheel and be on a plane in three months’ time with nothing but a small bag and an intention to find some answers.
Six months of backpacking around South America with a rule of no planning in advance was incredible. This was another highlight of my life – the feeling of freedom and space was exhilarating and calming at the same time.
My mantras for the trip were three-fold: “Don’t sweat the small stuff (it’s all small stuff!)”, “What’s the worst that can happen?”, and “Shut up and move on”. My theme tune for the trip was “Let It Be” by The Beatles. These were daily practices to help unlearn the deep patterns of worry, perfectionism, and need for control that were getting in my way of being happy.
I had 200 days just to live and experience each day as it came. I travelled through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil and saw the most incredible landscapes I have ever seen and met the most diverse and interesting people on the way.
Life on the move with new experiences around every corner was so exhilarating. I felt I lived more in those 200 days than I had in the last five years in total. This is when I realised what it meant to feel alive again and that life was too short not to feel this way more often.
Each ten-hour bus ride across this vast continent offered opportunities to think. You have so much time to think that you are finally forced to think about the things you are even subconsciously avoiding thinking about. Once you can tackle these thoughts, then you really open up to what is really going on, what the real questions are that you are trying to answer. I can’t profess to have found anything but bigger and greater questions during this period. No answers appeared as revelations but the realities of what I didn’t want were becoming clearer and clearer. The path that I had been travelling, whether the escalator or the wheel, was not one I had consciously chosen or written for myself, but one I had been put on and not strayed from or questioned until this day.
After six glorious months, I returned home; happy, lighter, relaxed, calm and determined. Determined to face my fears and make courageous changes. Determined to find a life that was not about survival but about being fully alive. Determined to find my own path. Six months later the third pivotal point came in the unlikely form of a leadership programme by Oxford Leadership called “Leading Self”.
Under the premise that you can’t lead anyone else until you can lead yourself and that the secret to leadership is knowing yourself, I was immersed for four days in a journey of self-exploration like none I had experienced before.
“Who are you? Who is the real true you? Where have you come from? How has this shaped you? What are your light and your shadow sides? What are your gifts? How do you get in your own way?”
And if this wasn’t enough, we then launched into…
“Why are you here? What is your contribution? What has life prepared you to give? What are the values that guide you?” And then the killer questions that floored me: “What gives your life meaning? What is your purpose?”
Of course, in four days I didn’t answer all these questions, especially not the last two. All I could think was why had it taken me 35 years to ask these fundamental questions? But I deeply felt the resonance of these questions and the yearning to explore them. It felt like the answers I had been looking for in South America were going to come from these deeper questions, and I left with more motivation and drive than I had had for as long as I could remember. There was a deep desire for peace, for letting go, for trusting myself, for trusting something greater than me, for finding love, for giving love, and for finding meaning and belonging.
It had been simmering in my mind while I was in South America that I was deeply interested in the diversity of humankind. It had begun in my university studies of human anthropology and geography and now had moved towards psychology and neuroscience. I was passionate about understanding more about how the mind works and the power in being able to manage the mind and behaviour. The cognitive behavioural therapy I experienced a few years earlier, the journaling and self-reflection I started in South America and then the self-enquiry and introduction to the purpose of the programme all kept leading me towards a path of self-exploration, knowledge, and development. This was a path for me but also was emerging as a path for me to serve others and in doing so find a real sense of meaning.
Following the programme, I explored all sorts of study and career options before I finally landed on coaching. It seemed like the perfect combination of my prior corporate business experience and my more recent passion in the human mind and behaviour. My company continued to be nothing but supportive. They enabled my coaching training while allowing me to move out of finance into a number of exciting projects that offered me opportunities to lead and coach in parallel. The more I studied and practiced coaching and saw and felt the benefit it was giving others and also myself, the more I felt the call to pursue it.
The coaching training helped me find many of the answers to the questions I had been asking myself. I began to really notice and listen to my inner voice, the voice of my true self. I began to know myself deeply and to let go of the patterns of thinking that for so many years had held me back. I acknowledged and embraced that part of me that feared rejection and shame. I found greater self-love that fuelled my self-worth and self-compassion which in turn allowed me to gradually let the fears subside. I realised that my high emotion was not a curse but, coupled with intelligence and management, was actually a superpower that enabled me to be at my best – as a coach and as a human being.
I realised that I was good enough as long as I showed up as the best version of my-self and did the best I could as often as possible. That is all I or anyone else can ask of me, or themselves.
Finally, after three years of getting ready, I left corporate employment after sixteen years and took the courageous leap into self-employment as an Executive Coach and later as a Leadership Consultant and Facilitator. It was a leap I have never looked back from and has shown to be another pivotal moment in my life. I learnt that the courage, compassion and caring that I had so greatly admired in my mother was also in me and that this would guide and support me along my path. Four years later, I am still walking this path, feeling alive and living with immense purpose.
I learnt that finding your true best self from the inside out, so you can then self-author your own story, is the most liberating and joyful practice. And finally, I learnt that then writing your story that is full of meaning is the key to a fulfilling happy life for you and those around you.
My primary purpose is to live in the moment and not be caught in the memories of the past or the worries of the future. To be present and intentional as much as I can to experience life as it unfolds and be grateful. My secondary purpose is to help others discover their true best self, self-author their own stories and lead the most fulfilling life they can, in service of what they care most about.
This is my life and I believe passionately that I will not be an actor in a story already pre-determined by society, the expectations of those around me or by any old patterns of thinking that no longer serve me. I will self-author my own unique path and find meaning in being of service to others. I will show up every day in alignment with these beliefs and help others have self-compassion and courage to face their fears, to live their dreams and do the same.
Abby Barton
Leadership Companion, United Kingdom
