What it takes to sustain something

Hi there, I’m Aarti, Founder and Lead Counsellor at Incontact. This month, Incontact turns 10. There is something quite special about being able to say that: we’ve been doing this for a decade!

Ten years is also long enough to look back and see not just what has grown, but what it took to keep growing.

When we talk about building something, we often celebrate beginnings. The courage to start. The conviction behind an idea. The excitement of creating something that did not exist before.

But I have come to believe that founding something and sustaining something are two very different acts.

Starting requires a certain kind of courage.

Sustaining asks for many different kinds of courage, over and over again.

Over the past decade, Incontact has moved through many seasons. We have grown our private practice, expanded into corporate mental health, worked on community programmes and partnered on initiatives with the Singapore government. The mental health landscape around us has changed enormously too.

And through all of that, I have changed.

There have been periods of certainty and periods when very little felt certain. Plans have worked, and plans have fallen apart. I have had to take the reins at unexpected moments, change direction, rely on other people, begin again, and make decisions without knowing where they would lead.

Looking back, there are a few things I understand differently now about what it means to sustain something.

Resilience is not fearlessness

I think we sometimes flatten resilience into a very neat idea: something difficult happens, we pick ourselves up, and we carry on.

My experience of resilience has been far messier.

Some of the hardest moments have brought me directly face-to-face with my own fears. Fear of failure. Fear of making the wrong decision. Fear of losing something I had worked hard to build. Fear of simply not knowing what comes next.

Resilience did not make those fears disappear.

It meant allowing myself to experience them fully — and still moving.

Sometimes without answers. Sometimes without confidence. Sometimes simply trusting that the next step would reveal itself after I took this one.

Perhaps that is what I understand about resilience now that I couldn’t have understood ten years ago:

Not all growth needs to be forced

There is enormous pressure when you are building something to always be making it bigger.

More people. More clients. More services. More visibility. More growth.

Incontact’s journey has taught me to have greater respect for organic growth.

That does not mean being passive. There is still intention, ambition and work behind it. But there is a difference between nurturing growth and forcing it.

Some of the most meaningful directions we have taken emerged because we remained attentive to what people needed, what was changing around us, and what felt aligned with the kind of practice we wanted to be.

Over time, I have become more comfortable allowing something to evolve rather than insisting that I always know what it should become.

You need a life outside what you are building

Sustaining something also requires places where you do not have to sustain it.

For me, family and friendships have been an important protective space.

These are the people who may sit at the periphery of the work but at the centre of my life. They remind me that my identity is larger than what I create, achieve or carry professionally.

They give us somewhere to return to.

Leadership should not require us to deny our humanness

There have also been many moments over these ten years when I have needed to rely on other people.

And I mean really rely on them.

To say that I was frightened. Or uncertain. Or grieving. To process the same worry more than once because I had not yet found my way through it.

I am a huge believer in external processing.

Sometimes we need to speak about an experience repeatedly before we understand what it means to us. We need people who will allow us to return to the same fear, doubt or uncertainty without rushing us towards a solution.

I am deeply grateful for the people who have given me that space.

Leadership should not come at the cost of denying ourselves our humanness. Being responsible for others does not mean we must always appear certain ourselves.

Sometimes our ability to keep going is made possible precisely because we have relationships in which we don’t have to pretend that we know.

Failure becomes familiar

If you sustain anything for long enough, you will fail at things.

Plans will not work. Opportunities will disappear. Decisions that seemed right at the time will look different in hindsight.

I don’t think the answer is to become comfortable with failure. Failure can hurt. It can disappoint us and unsettle our confidence.

But perhaps we can become familiar with it.

We can learn that encountering failure does not necessarily mean the larger endeavour has failed.

Ten years gives you enough distance to see that some moments that once felt enormous eventually became just one part of a much longer story.

Ambiguity can also mean possibility

Living with chronic illness can sometimes be limiting. It has reduced some of the spontaneity I once had.

But recently, during a therapeutic training exercise, I found myself reflecting on spontaneity. And something interesting emerged during that conversation.

I realised that my work has given me spontaneity in another form.

Running a practice rarely gives you a perfectly predictable path. Plans change. Opportunities appear unexpectedly. Things you were certain would work sometimes don’t. Directions you never anticipated suddenly open up.

For years, I might have called much of that ambiguity.

I have begun to see some of it instead as spontaneity.

Even adventure.

The circumstances haven’t changed. The meaning I give them has.

And that small reframe has changed the way I experience uncertainty.

Purpose does not have to be enormous

Finally, I don’t think something can be meaningfully sustained without integrity, ethics and purpose.

But purpose does not always have to arrive as one grand mission.

Of course, there is a larger purpose behind Incontact: helping people, strengthening mental health support and contributing meaningfully to the communities we serve.

Within that, however, I have discovered the importance of smaller purposes.

A person we can help today.

A programme we believe should exist.

A conversation that changes someone’s understanding.

A new opportunity that allows us to reach a community differently.

A colleague we can support.

Ten years after starting Incontact, I don’t feel that I have arrived at a destination.

If anything, I feel more curious.

Incontact has grown alongside my children, alongside a changing mental health landscape in Singapore, and alongside my own evolution as a therapist and founder.

I feel grateful to have witnessed how much the conversation around mental health has changed over the past decade — and to have played a small part in that change.

And I find myself wondering:

What more can we do?

Who else can we reach?

What does the next chapter of mental health support in Singapore need from us?

I don’t know all the answers.

Perhaps ten years has taught me that I don’t need to.

I remain optimistic. I remain curious. And perhaps most importantly, I remain willing to adapt.

Starting something may require the courage to take the first step.

Sustaining it requires finding the courage for the next one — again and again.

With warmth and care,

Aarti ❤️