All I want is everything

You can have it all. If only you know what to let go of.

I remember the first time I thought I could have it all. I was six years old. 

Two shirts sat on the floral mess of my parent’s sofa as Dad announced, “It’s time to choose a football team, kids. You have two choices. Who do you want to support, Spurs or Tottenham?”

On the left sat the striking violet of Tottenham’s shirt, ‘Hewlett Packard’ blazed in white. Next to it, a simple white offering. Spurs.

I didn’t want to pick. How could I? Choosing the purple meant giving up the white. In supporting Tottenham, I’d give up the buzz of marching with Spurs. It didn’t make sense to me; I wanted both. I should have both. 

But the choice had to be made. Agony as the options ticked back and forth inside my brain – Tottenham, Spurs…tick-tock. Tottenham, Spurs. Tick-tok. Tottenham, Tottenham-Spurs-tick-tock.

The more I mulled over the choices, the less sense it made and the harder it became to choose. If choosing between two was hard, perhaps the problem was in the options and not the choice. Maybe I was destined to support Arsenal, Leeds or Sheffield Wednesday. Uncle Neil was a Chelsea supporter, surely they should be in the running too? 

Why had I been given the choice between just Tottenham or Spurs? I didn’t want to support Tottenham or Spurs. I wanted to support everyone – to carry the glory and the sorrow with me. Someone had to win, and it was going to be me. All I wanted was everything.  

But, everything was not meant to be. The back and forth, the new options all became too much and with the increasing noise getting too much, I had to take the cowards way out. So, I left it there unchosen. I wanted someone to make the choice for me without leaving anything behind.

A few hours later, I overheard my dad chuckling as he recapped the story. “I gave the kids a choice—Spurs or Tottenham,” he laughed harder than he should have for something so unfunny. 

And that’s when it hit me—his laugh. The joke was on me. Spurs and Tottenham were the same team. I’d been played. 

I’d been given a lucky escape, but how many more choices could I avoid making? 

The real tragedy isn’t that we have to choose our options. It’s that we believe we don’t have to leave things behind. 

Strong people make choices and leave things in the past. Even if it kills them to do so. They know that however bad it feels in the moment, it beats the alternative – living a life full of the endless noise of indecision.

Theres courage in making choices towards a clear direction. To be great, we have to make choices with intention and throw away the rest–  but god, it’s harder than it sounds.

Every choice has a cost. A “yes” to one means a “no” to another. But, overthink at your own risk. For if you do, a perpetual dissatisfaction, paralysed over what could have been, awaits you.

All I want is everything, but my life had other plans.

From the outside, it looks possible to have it all. I’ve tried.

I’ve juggled leader, friend, writer, partner, enthusiast, therapist, coach and mother. I’ve looked ok whilst doing it. But, behind the scenes is a stretched and stitched reality, a gory mess straining against the seams of carrying too much. 

At some point, something has to give. 

So many of us are trying.

Trying to be a good parent

Trying to be a good boss

Trying to be a good person

Trying to be a good employee

Trying to be a good family member 

Trying to keep a smile on our face while we do it. 

Letting go feels unglamorous.

Books, songs and businesses aren’t built on people who choose a moderate number of things to focus on. Those people aren’t memorable. They’re ordinary. I don’t want to be ordinary.

The labelling is wrong. Is it “having it all” when the burden of every possible path drags us down? Is it having it all if our minds are too cluttered to think clearly or if we don’t even know what truly matters?

I don’t believe we can have it all. But I wonder if we can have something better.

What if we focused on everything that matters at a specific moment? What if we adopted a seasonal approach that helps us shed the excess weight cluttering our brains and bashing our souls?

Stop for a while and think about it.

Life is filled with seasons that naturally shift our priorities—graduating from college, getting married, having a child, retirement. Each of these moments demands a recalibration of what we focus on and let go of. If trying to hold onto everything at once leads to overwhelm and dissatisfaction, focusing on seasons might help us understand that not everything is meant to be a priority at the same time. It could work. 

In some seasons, your career may take centre stage, while in others, your focus shifts to family or personal growth. But answers to problems can only come after we see a problem.

Talking about the difficulty of “having it all” is a conversation to have more often. Choice is universal, yet it’s private. Whilst outcomes are broadcast to the world, decisions are made in isolation.

To create, you have to kill. To cull the things you’ve put blood, sweat and life for something better to emerge – to “kill your darlings.” Each choice we face is a living body of ideas – and we get to choose the outcome, what will live and what will die. 

And that takes courage. 

Courage is the person cutting down the options that don’t matter to clear their path towards the things that do. Right there, right then.

Courage is in those who sever the weight of the anchor to live with the freedom of intentionality. They are the ones who fly.