316. Don’t try to solve it. Just sit with it.

How many things in your life look functional only because you've become exceptionally good at compensating for what isn't? That's the question I can't stop asking, and it's the reason I started This Can't Be Normal, a new thinking space on Substack.

This episode is a little different. I'm not teaching a framework or walking you through five steps. Instead, I'm pulling back the curtain on why I started writing publicly about the questions I don't have answers to yet, questions about responsibility, caretaking, competence, and what we've all quietly agreed to normalize.

It started with a moment in Lake Tahoe, on vacation, when I suddenly noticed how automatically I take on responsibility that nobody actually assigned to me. That noticing turned into an article, then another, and eventually into a whole new space for thinking out loud instead of teaching from the front of the room.

If you've ever felt like the person everyone relies on, the one who catches everything before it falls, this episode is your invitation to pause and ask a different kind of question.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why Chanie started This Can't Be Normal, and how it's different from the podcast, coaching, or her book
• The moment in Lake Tahoe that made her question how automatically she takes on responsibility
• Why being a highly competent, capable leader can make it easy to compensate for things that shouldn't require so much of you
• The difference between wanting an answer and wanting to be witnessed in a question
• Why the same "operating system" that shows up in your leadership also shows up in your marriage and parenting
• The question Chanie wants every leader to sit with: what have you become so good at tolerating that you've stopped asking whether it should be normal?

Mentioned in this episode:

• This Can't Be Normal on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/
• Article: "The Cost of Being the Caretaker" — https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-being-the-caretaker

Connect With Us:

• Join This Can't Be Normal on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/