Posted on December 31st, 2025

Living your life on autopilot, not stopping to breathe or take anything in, just walking through life in a haze, somewhat. You get up, get yourself and your children ready, bring them to school, go to work, collect the kids, go home, have dinner, go to bed, repeat, repeat again. Waiting for the weekend to come so you can get a break, while at the same time preparing for the week ahead, so that you can start the repetitive cycle again.

The thing is, we are preparing our children to do and have better than what we had, but why have we forgotten about ourselves, and are we preparing our children to be just as complacent, or showing them how to settle?

Initially, I don’t believe this is how we start out. I believe the majority of us want more, to reach further than what we have experienced. So where and when did it change, and why did we decide to forget about our dreams?

Complacency and settling can often be confused with one another and are sometimes used interchangeably. This is due to there being an overlap between the two. Both can lead to a lack of personal growth, prevent people from challenging themselves and taking risks, and involve the avoidance of change. Essentially, both can result in remaining in the status quo and ending in stagnation.

However, it is their differences that set them apart. The main one being that complacency comes from a place of overconfidence, where you feel comfortable and satisfied with where you are. Whereas settling often comes from fear, where a person puts up with less than what they deserve.

I too, at one point in my life, became complacent, staying in a job for years where I could not grow, although there was a lot going on in my personal life. I suppose, in some ways, it aided in keeping things simple, comfortable, and reliable for me.

When things became somewhat more stable, I could no longer ignore my growing feelings of wanting more and feeling bored with where I was. So I went back to college in my spare time and took on more learning after, once I decided which direction I was going in. I then got a new, better-paying job that would support my new dreams.

This new job, I knew early on, would not be for me. I needed it as a stepping stone. I couldn’t imagine how someone would want this as their dream career. I’m not trying to be judgemental, but most of what I understood came through conversations with my colleagues.

Some were younger and spoke about going back to college or university, even if they didn’t have a direct plan or goal in mind. Then there were slightly older colleagues who were in university, some doing their Masters. The majority of them had come from another country to study in the UK, working hard to pay their fees. From what I remember, many spoke about wanting to start their own business or progress further in the field they were studying.

Then there were the older ones who had been in this field for so long that they didn’t know anything else. I remember having a conversation with one of the managers and asking him what he wanted to do before this, or whether this was something he had always wanted to do. He didn’t respond straight away, went quiet, and then sidestepped the question by talking about work. It was a little awkward, but also eye-opening. His silence seemed to speak volumes about another possible future he may have once imagined for himself. Of course, I could be reading into it, or maybe he felt I was being nosy and wanted to keep that part of himself private.

Some of the university students were taking on more duties that a manager would do. They were that good at their jobs, so I wasn’t surprised that management would take advantage of this. Why wouldn’t they want the best? I asked these students whether they wanted to become managers in this profession. One said it was a possibility, another said no. Of course, it’s their prerogative to change their minds, but I also took into consideration the conversations I’d had with them.

I also spoke to staff who had simply fallen into this field and had been doing it for so long, for various reasons. Sometimes life happens, and things occur beyond our control, but that doesn’t mean we can’t return to our dreams, unless, of course, those desires have changed. But it does make you question, what about our dreams?

I think along the way it becomes easier to settle and become complacent. After enough climbing, taking risks, fearing both success and failure, and being caught in the rat race, we decide to take it easier and wait for our pension instead. In turn, we place our hopes in our children, wishing and praying that they do better than us.