Leaders, Professionals, and High-Responsibility Lives
What I was experiencing during my twenties, and particularly into my thirties, was an increasing amount of responsibility. I had responsibility as a husband. I had responsibility as a father. I had responsibility as a CEO. I had responsibility as an employer. As life progresses and as you climb the ladder, what comes with increasing responsibility, from my personal experience, is increasing pressure—pressure to keep everything together, pressure to show that you are stable, dependable, and reliable.
When I had senior people around me in my business, they were looking up to me as the leader. Showing that I was strong, showing that they could depend on me, that I was reliable, and that they could trust me to continue to lead was so important. I felt the weight of knowing that others were watching, assessing, and depending on how I carried myself, both professionally and personally.
The fear I had of showing any form of weakness or vulnerability always caused me to turn the other way. How could I possibly be open and honest with those who were looking up to me? How could the owner of the agency show signs of weakness or vulnerability? I was carrying this burden of knowing that people were depending on me, and I feared that if I showed weakness, it would somehow affect them or undermine their confidence.
As I reflect back, I would say that I wasn’t being truly authentic, because of the worry and fear of what true authenticity might lead to. That fear shaped how I showed up, what I shared, and what I kept hidden beneath the surface, even as responsibility continued to increase.
Today, when I think about leaders, professionals, high performers, and high achievers—those living high-responsibility lives—I see how deeply I relate to them. There is truth in the saying that the higher you climb, the further there is to fall. Yet what I have come to learn, following the collapse of my own life and falling from a great height, is that all is not lost. There can be intervention before collapse.
