Six things I had to stop doing.

There’s a particular kind of unhappiness that’s hard to spot. It doesn’t arrive with a big crisis, or a breakdown, or any of the obvious things we’ve been taught to watch out for. It just sits there, quietly, for years. You go to work. You see your friends. You make dinner. You tell everyone you’re fine. And after a while you’ve been saying you’re fine for so long you can’t really tell anymore whether it’s true. Probably because you’ve also been saying it to yourself, in your own head, several thousand times.

I lived with this kind of unhappiness for the better part of a decade.

It probably started in my late 30s, though looking back, it was earlier than that. What happened was that I got really good at pretending fine-ness. So good, in fact, that I could fool myself. Which is a useful skill in some contexts and a really costly one in this one.

What eventually cracked it open wasn’t a moment of clarity. It was a question, asked by a coach I was working with at the time. She listened, very patiently, to me explain all the external conditions of my life that were making me unhappy, and then she said:

“Liz, how are you complicit in what you say you don’t want?

I remember sitting there for a moment, not saying anything. It was one of those questions where you immediately know it’s true, and now you’ve heard it, you can’t un-hear it, and now you’re going to have to do something about it. I didn’t like her for asking it. It’s a bloody horrible question, isn’t it? But a useful one.

So I went home and had a bit of a word with myself. I didn’t journal in a beautiful notebook. I didn’t book a silent retreat. I just sort of, gradually, came up with some rules. Things I had to stop doing if anything was going to budge.

So. Here they are, all 6 of them:

1. Stop blaming everyone else. This was the first one, and I did not enjoy realising it. I’d been very much enjoying blaming everyone else for what was shit about my life. And then I had to admit that the person making my life harder, a worrying amount of the time, was me. Which was a bit of a blow, honestly. I’d much rather the answer had been out there, in other people, because then I wouldn’t have had to do anything about it. The catch was that as long as I kept looking out there, nothing would ever change.

2. Stop pleasing everyone. I’d been doing it for so long it had become automatic. Saying yes to things I didn’t want to do. Saying I was fine with plans I wasn’t fine with. Putting on a slightly easier, breezier version of myself for almost everyone. And the really infuriating thing was that none of it had actually made anyone like me more. It had just made me tired, and quietly resentful, and in my 30s, never having said no to a hen-do. (For the record, I now do not go on them. I have not been on a hen-do in years. I would rather do almost anything else. If you are reading this and considering inviting me to one, please don’t, but I love you.)

3. Stop trying to be perfect. Oooof. This one ran deep. It was something I’d learned in childhood, and I’d been carrying it around for so long I’d mistaken it for just how I was. It had become a habit, a way of approaching most things. Once I clocked it, I could at least start to work on new ways of doing things. This is one of the hardest, and at 45, it’s the one I still have to watch out for. I am, for instance, currently on the 8th draft of this very email, having previously decided it wasn’t good enough at drafts 1 through 7. Old habits and all that…

4. Stop being the strong one. I’d been the strong one since my mum died when I was 18. The role had served me when I needed it to, and then it had pretty much outlived its usefulness, but I was still carrying it around. The trouble with being the strong one is that everyone, quite reasonably, believes you. So when the day arrives that you actually need help, you discover you’ve trained the people in your life NOT TO OFFER IT. Undoing that was slow and embarrassing work. It involved admitting I wasn’t okay when I’d previously have said I was absolutely fine, thanks.

5. Start trusting my own opinion. I’d spent years outsourcing my opinions to other people: friends, family, the internet, women who were thinner than me. If I liked something, I’d check whether other people liked it before committing. If I wanted something, I’d check whether other people wanted it for me before allowing it. It’s a very tiring way to be a grown-up. Now, mostly, I trust that if I like a thing, that’s enough information to be getting on with.

6. Actually do the things I said I’d do. Mostly to myself. I’d been making little deals with myself for years: I’ll start tomorrow, I’ll do it next week, I’ll think about it properly when I’ve got more time. And then I’d let myself off, and feel slightly worse about myself for it, and then make a new little deal next week. Turns out you can do that for an entire decade and not notice. These days, I do what I say I’m going to do. Most of the time, anyway.

The coach’s question has never quite left me. I think about it most weeks. Sometimes daily. And I can’t give it back to her, no matter how much I’d sometimes like to.

Most of us, when we’re stuck, are very good at noticing what’s wrong out there. The friend who doesn’t text back. The partner who doesn’t notice. The boss who takes the piss. The government. Late-stage capitalism. The general state of things. We can list it all, easily.

The harder bit is when you turn the question back on yourself. What am I doing, or not doing, that keeps this in place? Am I saying yes and then resenting it? Am I staying vague about what I want, so nobody can hold me to it? Am I having entire arguments in the shower with people I haven’t actually spoken to?

The bit that’s yours is the only bit you can do anything about. Which sounds annoying, and is. Most of us don’t really want to look at it. Because looking at it means admitting we’ve been part of the problem, which is uncomfortable, and inconvenient, and frankly a lot to be getting on with. But the alternative is staying exactly where you are. Same conversations. Same resentments. Same Sunday-night dread. Same vague feeling that something’s off. The friend, the partner, the boss, the state of the world: not yours to change. Your own patterns, your own yeses, your own ways of keeping yourself stuck: those are. And once you start working on them, even slightly, things start to move.

This is exactly what I help my clients with in our 1:1 work. Spotting the patterns they’re a bit too close to see on their own.

It’s also what my next group coaching course is for. Six weeks, Saturdays on Zoom, small group. For women and non-binary folks who are tired of the overthinking, the people-pleasing, and the guilt that just won’t bugger off. We start on the 5th September. Will you be joining us?