Taking Charge Instead of Being a Passive Bystander

My life has transitioned a bit in the last few years, and things are moving very fast. I was going through an uncharacteristically slow time at work as an attorney, and now I am going through an uncharacteristically busy time at work, and all of this shifted quite substantially in only a week’s span (which is normal as a lawyer). The three years before becoming an attorney, I was a special education teacher during the day and a law student at night.

Busyness aside, this year, one thing I am trying to do is take charge of my life — my marriage, work, and hobbies. I am a husband, runner, and writer outside of being an attorney.

My wife sometimes sends me videos on social media that I roll my eyes at husband influencers. In one of them, the influencer criticized the concept of “happy wife, happy life,” and pretty much said both people in the relationship should equally make mutual decisions instead of one party always trying to make the other happy.

I found that concept pretty compelling — taking charge of the marriage instead of being a passive bystander, but in life in general. I was doing way too many things to make my wife happy instead of doing things to make me happy and pursuing decisions that were best for our marriage.

Sometimes, this meant I just insist on my way sometimes when I felt strongly about something — I would usually just compromise or acquiesce when my wife did not want to do something that I wanted. But for a football game, I did insist on having friends over one day and cleaning the house so people could come over, and we compromised. We are still having conversations about whether we should get a treadmill for the basement, and although there are concerns about space, I think it would be good for my mental health and save money on a gym membership that I wouldn’t have to pay for.

I reflected that I can be very assertive and ambitious in a lot of parts of my life — my professional life as an attorney, my previous professional life as a special education teacher, and my hobbies as a runner and writer. I wanted to run 80 miles a week last year to get in better shape — I did that. I wanted to run 41 miles of a trail two weeks ago, and did that. I wanted to I have an idea of what I want to accomplish at work every day and more or less accomplish those targets.

This ambition, drive, and tendency to take charge of my personal and professional goals suddenly going away in my marriage had a very easy explanation. My parents fought a lot and constantly argue, even to this day. I did not want that and developed an inherent desire to keep the peace and keep everyone happy. I still do, and that, at times, makes me worry too much about what other people think. I worried so much about what other people wanted that I did not, in so many contexts, prioritize what I wanted, and the spillover from being someone who cares what other people think and keeps the peace ended up being a bit of a negative one.

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Thus, I have resolved to take more charge. I run almost every shared decision by my wife, but there are many minor things that I can just make sole decisions on. For example, we got new kitchen knives from my in-laws. I almost always defer to my wife for anything kitchen-related, but I saw only one practical place we could store these knives in our pretty, cluttered kitchen. I made the decision that they would go there, told her about it, and she appreciated that I made the right call, where she didn’t need to give any input.

I don’t have a lot of free time, and one excuse I can make to not taking risks and putting myself out there is being really busy as a lawyer. But there are various more personal quests I want to take charge of that this epiphany gave me.

One was cooking. Sure, I could cook scrambled eggs and pasta with meat sauce, like a lot of people can. But I wanted to expand my repertoire. Cooking was what restaurants did, and for years, the issue wasn’t that I couldn’t cook — the issue was I was too scared to try. I was too scared to try more complex recipes that required a lot of ingredients. I would not have one ingredient in the kitchen, like thyme, and just say, “I can’t do this.”

But that changed last week. I cooked some complex Mexican street corn and chicken recipe my wife sent me, and it came out well. Last week, I cooked some traditional Chinese recipes of foods my grandfather makes — braised pork belly and Chinese eggplant with garlic sauce. It wasn’t as good as my excellent cook of a grandfather, but it was pretty good.

Above all, I was happy I tried and knew what I needed to do to make the food even better next time. Now the pork dish took two hours to make, so trying complex new recipes is likely a once-a-week kind of thing, but I was happy I tried and I am much better at this than I was last week.

. . .

Taking charge means taking a lot of risks, and not every call is going to be the right call. I don’t seem like it to people who meet me in person, but I worry quite a bit. As a writer and lawyer, I worry about the conflict between my desire to express myself as a writer and the need to have less exposure of a digital presence in terms of risk management for my professional career.

I worry about this maybe a few times a week, and it causes quite a bit of angst about whether there is too much of my life on social media. I have to take charge and decide who I want to be — do I want to be just like everyone else, to be super cautious and be a blank slate, or do I want to pursue what I want? It is probably naive to think this way, and probably more risky, but I want more of myself out there in terms of my personal brand and reputation.

This is not the case with touching every hot button topic that’s out there, especially in this political climate and increasingly concerning actions from the Trump administration, but as much as I weigh pros and cons, risks and benefits, I have to, at the end of the day, live in a way that’s more in line with my values.

There is an element of fear here. I worry a lot, and the reason I don’t do many things is just being scared, and I’m willing to admit it. I was scared to cook because I was scared of making mistakes, or people I was cooking for not liking my cooking. It’s not the fear I should be ashamed of and suppress — it’s whether I have the ability to move past my fears or not. I am working towards that and will continue to do so. Conquering that fear in small areas, like cooking, has done wonders for my sense of agency.

And there are so many ways that fear can manifest in other parts of my life, particularly at work. As a first-year lawyer and the newest guy on all my teams, I worry about a ton of things in terms of workplace dynamics, but they above all boil down to a fear of getting in trouble.

I came from a career where this is a constant problem in education and a lot of teachers do whatever they can to stay on their principal’s good side and keep a low profile, so I have been conditioned to be hypervigilant in a professional space. I feared wasting more senior attorneys’ time with ideas that might not work out. I feared asking for more opportunities and overstepping my place. Slowly and slowly, I am overcoming those fears, and I am willing to be more visible and make my input more known.

Instead of being a passive bystander, I aim to make more active choices about the type of life I want to live. It is subtle, but slowly and slowly, it is making a big difference.

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This post was previously published on Everyday Being.

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