The Hats We Were Gifted, and When To Put Them Down

Hello beautiful,

Someone believed in you. They saw something in you, maybe before you saw it yourself, and they handed you more. More responsibility. More scope. Another hat to wear.

And you wore it. Because that's what you do.

But somewhere along the way, you may have started to notice a quiet friction. A hat that doesn't quite sit right. One you've been adjusting and readjusting, hoping it will eventually feel like yours.

It might not. And that's not a failure. That's information.

This is what we're sitting with in episode five of The Courageous Middle Podcast. The hats we've been gifted. Where did they come from? What it costs to keep wearing them. And what becomes possible when you finally allow yourself to put one down?

The Hats That Were Placed on Your Head

Not every role we carry is one we chose.

Some were earned through years of showing up, building, and delivering. Some were placed on us by leaders who trusted us, families who needed us, systems that simply assumed we'd figure it out. And often, the people who gifted us those hats did so with love. With confidence. With the best of intentions.

"Each one came with more responsibility, more scope, more trust from the people above me."

That trust can feel like an honour. And sometimes it is. But trust and fit are not the same thing.

Some hats reflect something true about who you are. They stay. Some you wore for a season, and they made sense at the time. And some you're still carrying right now, years past the moment they stopped belonging to you.

The question worth sitting with isn't whether someone believed in you when they handed you the hat. They probably did. The question is whether it still fits.

When a Hat Stops Fitting

In 2014, I received a new portfolio added on top of the work I already loved.

I was leading a change management team at the time. Work that mattered a lot to me. "I love seeing those aha bubbles... those moments of aha where someone figures out what's next or how change this can work for them."

The new hat? Producing an internal TV show.

It wasn't the work I'd built. It wasn't the work I loved. And "producing an internal TV show felt incredibly performative... it just wasn't authentic."

But being the responsible one, I tried to make it work. I looked for a way the two things could coexist. I stayed quiet about the cost.

That's a familiar pattern for a lot of us.

We take the hat. We try it on. We adjust. We tell ourselves maybe this is supposed to fit. And we keep going, long past the moment something in us already knows the truth.

The Real Cost of the Wrong Hat

It's rarely just an inconvenience.

There's the personal cost. The health. The hours. The slow erosion of energy that no amount of productivity can explain.

But for me, "the real cost, the thing that hurt even more, was that I was losing my ability to lead the team in the way that I wanted to."

That's the one that cuts deeper. When wearing the wrong hat starts affecting the people around you. Your team. Your family. The work that actually matters.

And still, speaking up felt impossible. Walking into her leader's office and asking for a change was "so far out of my comfort zone."

I did it anyway.

Not because I had a perfectly rehearsed speech. Not because I had everything figured out. Because "I had just gotten so far away from the work that I love to do. I needed help, and I needed to be able to put this hat down."

That was the moment. Honest. Unglamorous. Necessary.

You Get to Decide Which Hats Stay

Here's the reframe worth holding onto.

The people who gifted you those hats? They believed in you. That part was real. Letting a hat go doesn't have to mean resenting them for placing it there.

"Just because a hat was gifted to me doesn't mean I have to keep it. I get to decide which hats stay, but I also get to decide which ones I get to put down."

And when you do put one down, something shifts.

You get clarity. You get to understand yourself more fully. You create space for something that might already be quietly asking for your attention.

The hat won't lift itself. It's up to you.

A Question To Sit With

Which hat are you still wearing right now that was gifted to you?

Not chosen. Gifted. Placed on your head by someone who believed in you, needed you, or simply assumed you'd figure it out.

Does it still fit?

And if it doesn't, when did you last say that out loud?

The roles we carry in midlife are rarely ones we sat down and chose from a blank page. They accumulated. Through careers, families, and systems that rewarded our willingness to hold more.

That's not a criticism. It's just true.

But midlife has a way of asking us to look at what we're carrying. To hold each hat up and ask: Is this mine? Does this still belong?

There's nothing wrong with putting down a hat that no longer fits.

In fact, it might be one of the most courageous things you do.

Until next time, 

Coach Lisa