It is easy to look at someone else’s life and think they’ve got it all figured out. It’s easy to think that everything works for them while nothing feels like it’s working for you. It’s easy, and maybe it’s human nature, but it’s wrong. Pretty much always wrong.

I had a conversation this week with someone I know well and care deeply about who is struggling to figure out a lot of things in their life. My advice to “take it easier on yourself” and “you cannot do everything for everyone” were met with what I can onlydescribe as derisive laughter. “Look who’s talking,” was the response. “You do it all. You always do.”

The words, and the reaction, gave me a moment of pause and some real reflection. Like many, especially women I think, I have tried to do it all and be it all. I have tried to give it all to my family, to my work, to my friends—the list goes on. Obligation is a piece of it as is that long socialized and internalized message that I need to/want to make everything okay for everyone, to do my best to make everyone happy.

But it doesn’t mean that I always achieve it. And it doesn’t mean that there aren’t times, and circumstances, where I feel as if I have tried and failed or maybe not tried hard enough.

We walk a complex road in life. We try to balance the needs of those we care about with our own needs. We try to manage competing priorities and make it all work. That is not, maybe never, easy or seamless.

When I heard the repeated conviction that I, somehow, do it all, I shook my head silently, the words “as if” echoing in my mind. On the one hand, I know that I have not and, on the other hand, I am grateful that my efforts, at least for the person with whom I was speaking, felt like they succeeded.

I have said many times, as I did in that conversation, that all we can do is the best we can do. But how often do we say that and still find fault with ourselves? How often do we speak those words and not really take them to heart?

All we CAN do is the best we can do. Words I am going to try to remember and accept, words I am going to try and hold with my full heart.