What to Do When the People Around You Don’t Believe in You

For most of my life, I was the troublesome twin. The one who made mistakes, then made another one, and probably another one after that. I grew up knowing that some of the people closest to me expected me to get things wrong.

And when people have known you since you were a child, sometimes they keep seeing that version of you long after you have outgrown her.

I know my parents love me in their generational way, but I also know that somewhere in their minds, I can still be that daughter who makes questionable decisions. The one they worry about. The one whose next big idea might just be another mistake waiting to happen.

The funny thing is, they are not entirely wrong.

I still make mistakes. I make them in business. I make them in relationships. I make them as a mother, a leader, a founder and simply as a person trying to figure out what she wants from this life. But somewhere along the way, I stopped being afraid of making them.

Because what exactly is a life without mistakes? That is not really living. That is simply trying not to get anything wrong. And I do not want to build my life around avoiding failure.

There have been plenty of moments where the people around me did not understand what I was doing. When I wanted to study forensic science. When I wanted to start my first business. When I decided to resign from the security of a stable job.

There were easier and safer choices available. Choices that probably made much more sense on paper. But something in me kept saying: go.

After years of being the person everyone thought might make the wrong decision, I learnt something incredibly valuable. I learnt how to make decisions without needing everyone else's approval.

When nobody else was completely in my corner, I had to learn how to stand in my own.

I learnt to trust my instincts. I learnt that someone else's fear about my decision did not necessarily mean it was the wrong decision. Sometimes it simply meant they would never have made it themselves. And those are two very different things.

I am stubborn and headstrong (both qualities from my mother, shout out to mummy dearest). I am also determined. And sometimes, yes, I can be selfish. For a long time, those were not necessarily qualities people celebrated in me. But the older I get, the more I realise that many of the characteristics we are taught to tone down, particularly as women and as a South Asian Woman, are exactly the characteristics that allow us to build unconventional lives.

Being stubborn meant I kept going when something did not work the first time. Being headstrong meant I could hear advice without automatically following it. Being selfish meant occasionally choosing what I wanted for my life, even when those choices disappointed other people. And determination meant that when the obvious path disappeared, I looked for another one. There was always another way. Maybe not an easy way. Maybe not the way I originally imagined. But a way.

One of the hardest things I have had to understand is that someone can love you deeply and still project their fears onto your life. They can want the best for you and still have a completely different definition of what "the best" looks like.

For many children of migrants, I think this becomes even more complicated. Our parents' understanding of success was often shaped by survival. Stability and education mattered and were prioritised. A respectable career with financial security meant success that would be discussed at almost every family gathering. The generations before us cannot help but show it off - because for them they cannot simply see it on LinkedIn or social media. It must be acknowledged.

When your family has sacrificed enormously to create opportunities for the next generation, choosing uncertainty can almost feel like rejecting everything they worked for. But gratitude and obedience are not the same thing. I can be grateful for everything that came before me and still decide that my life will look different. That distinction has changed everything for me.

Like many families, mine has its own generational trauma. Things travelled from my grandparents to my parents, and from my parents to me. Expectations. Fear. Survival mechanisms. Ideas about success. Ideas about women. Ideas about what we should tolerate, what we should pursue and how much space we are allowed to occupy.

I cannot change what happened before me. But I can decide what continues through me.

And that has become one of the biggest responsibilities of my adult life. I do not want my childhood, my circumstances, my mistakes, my gender or the colour of my skin to become the explanation for why I never tried.

That does not mean those things have not created barriers. They have. It also does not mean everyone begins life with the same opportunities. We absolutely do not. It means I refuse to give those barriers the final word on who I become. I do not want to be defined simply as a product of my upbringing. I would rather be a product of what I chose to build from it.

There is something incredibly uncomfortable about pursuing something before the people around you can see it. Before there is proof. Before there are achievements you can point towards. Before people start saying, "I always knew you could do it." Because most of the the time they did not. And sometimes you remember very clearly that they did not.

That is okay. Not everyone has to see your vision at the beginning. They are not the ones who have to live with the consequences of never trying.

Looking back, some of the decisions that made the least sense to other people became the decisions that fundamentally changed my life. Studying forensic science. Starting businesses. Choosing self employment. Creating things that did not exist yet. Saying no when it would have been easier to say yes. And yes, none of those decisions came with guarantees.

I simply became comfortable enough with myself to know that if I got something wrong, I would figure out what came next. And perhaps that is what believing in yourself actually looks like. Not believing you will never fail, but believing you can handle yourself if you do.

So if you are standing at the edge of something right now and waiting for everyone around you to tell you that you are capable of doing it, this is what I want you to know. Sometimes they will not. Do it anyway.

You do not need everyone in your corner. But you do need to learn how to be in your own.

And if you are building a career, business or life that does not quite fit the version of you that other people expected, I think we will have a lot to talk about here.

This is where I will be writing about identity, leadership, entrepreneurship, ambition and what it means to build a life beyond the expectations placed upon us.