Nothing’s wrong. So why does it feel like this?

One of the things I often hear from people who come to work with me is not “My life is a disaster”. Or “Everything has fallen apart.” It’s something much harder to get a grip on than that: Things are fine. So why don’t they feel fine?

These are not people in crisis. They are people who have, by most reasonable measures, got it together. They’ve made the sensible choices. They’ve shown up. They’ve kept going when keeping going was hard, and they’d be the first to tell you they have a lot to be grateful for, and they mean it. They’re not wallowing. They’re not having a breakdown. They just have this quiet, slightly mortifying feeling that the life they’re living doesn’t quite feel like theirs anymore. Like they’re in the right house but they’re not sure it’s their house. And they can’t explain it, which bothers them, because they can unpick anyone else’s problem in about ten minutes.

So they do what you do when you’re this kind of person. They journal. They listen to every podcast that might conceivably be relevant (sometimes twice). They read the books, have the conversations, make the lists. And they are trying, genuinely, really quite hard. It’s just that all of that trying is pointed in roughly the wrong direction, which nobody tells you, and which is not their fault at all.

But here’s the thing. The more direction, clarity, and purpose they go looking for, the further they get from what’s actually going on. Because this isn’t something you can think or plan or goal-set your way out of, however good you are at all three of those things.

This particular feeling of being stuck is your life tapping you on the shoulder, quite persistently, going: something has shifted, have you noticed? And often the answer is: not really, no, I’ve been quite busy.

People change. Not loudly, and not in ways anyone would necessarily notice. It happens quietly, while they’re busy being the ones who keeps everything going.

And then one day they get the thing they wanted. The promotion. The kitchen they spent months planning. The trip they booked thinking it might shift something. And they’re waiting to feel something. But mostly what they feel is: “Oh. Is that it?”

They realise they’ve been on autopilot for a while. And the direction they’re heading in was set by a version of themselves that made perfect sense at the time, but doesn’t quite exist anymore.

This gap is irritating and inconvenient and not what anyone signed up for, I know. But it’s also the most honest thing in the room. And honest is a pretty good place to start.