There’s a kind of feeling stuck that’s quite difficult to explain because, from the outside, your life probably looks absolutely fine.
You’re getting on with things. You’re working, looking after your family, keeping on top of appointments, remembering what everyone needs and dealing with the endless list of jobs that comes with everyday life. Nothing is necessarily wrong, but you still have this nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right either.
I hear this a lot from women in their 40s and 50s. They’ll say things like, “I should be happy,” or “I’ve got nothing to complain about,” and yet they don’t feel particularly happy or excited about their life.
They feel stuck.
And quite often, the first thing they assume is that something needs fixing.
But what if it doesn’t?
What if you’ve simply spent so long being responsible for everything and everyone that there isn’t enough of you left in your own life?
When did life become all responsibility?
It rarely happens overnight.
There probably wasn’t a morning when you woke up and consciously decided that your needs, interests and plans were going to come last from now on.
It happens gradually.
Work gets busier. Children need you. Family life changes. Parents get older. There’s a house to run, appointments to remember and a hundred little things competing for your attention.
You get used to being the person who sorts things out.
Meanwhile, the things you enjoy become the things you’ll get around to “when you have more time.”
Maybe you stop doing something you used to love. You see friends less often. You stop making plans for yourself because fitting them around everyone else feels like too much effort. Even when you do get some free time, you’re so tired that you don’t know what you want to do with it.
After a while, that can simply become your normal.
That’s when feeling stuck in life can creep in, even when there isn’t one obvious problem you can point to.
Feeling stuck doesn’t mean you need a completely new life
When you’ve been unhappy or dissatisfied for a while, it’s very easy to start looking for the big answer.
Maybe you need a new job. Maybe you need to completely change direction. Maybe you need to finally work out your purpose or decide exactly what you want from the next ten years.
Suddenly, finding yourself again has turned into another enormous job to add to the list.
No wonder so many women stay exactly where they are.
Change doesn’t have to begin with a huge decision.
Sometimes it starts with recognising that you’ve become so focused on what everybody else needs that you’ve stopped asking yourself a very simple question:
What would make my life feel better?
Not perfect. Not completely different. Just better.
What would make your life 10% better?
I love making this question smaller because it takes away some of the pressure.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed or stuck, you don’t need to know exactly what you want your whole future to look like. Try thinking about what would make your life just 10% better.
Maybe you want more time to yourself without feeling guilty about it. Perhaps you miss something you used to enjoy and would love to start doing it again.
Maybe you’re tired of saying yes to things you don’t really want to do, or you want to make plans without checking whether they suit everybody else first.
It could be something even smaller. You might want to read more, go for coffee on your own, take a class, see a friend more often or have something in the diary that you’re genuinely looking forward to.
None of those things will completely transform your life by next Tuesday.
That’s not the point.
The important part is that you’ve started including yourself in the conversation again.
Finding yourself again after 40
There’s a lot of talk about finding yourself in midlife, particularly for women over 40, and sometimes I think we make it sound far more dramatic than it needs to be.
You haven’t necessarily lost yourself.
You may simply have stopped paying attention to yourself.
When so much of your adult life has been shaped around responsibilities, relationships, work and other people’s needs, it can take a while to remember what you actually enjoy and what you want next.
That’s where clarity often starts.
Not with a perfect plan, but with noticing.
What do you miss?
What gives you energy?
What have you become curious about lately?
What do you keep thinking you’d love to do before immediately talking yourself out of it?
What are you doing purely because it’s what you’ve always done?
Those questions can tell you far more about the changes you want in your life than trying to force yourself to come up with one enormous answer.
Putting yourself first doesn’t mean putting everyone else last
This is a big one.
For women who are used to looking after other people, the idea of putting yourself first can sound selfish. It can feel as though someone else has to lose out for you to have more.
But there’s a huge difference between making everything about yourself and simply making sure you have a place in your own life.
You’re allowed to have interests that belong to you. You’re allowed to protect some of your time. You’re allowed to change your mind, want something different or start thinking about what the next chapter of your life could look like.
And you don’t need to wait until everyone else is completely sorted before you do it, because realistically, that day may never arrive.
Maybe nothing is wrong with you
If you’re feeling lost, overwhelmed or stuck in life right now, try not to immediately turn yourself into another problem that needs solving.
You may not need to become more productive, more motivated or more confident.
You might simply need to start listening to yourself again.
Make one choice because you want to. Give yourself an hour that doesn’t need to be productive. Go back to something you used to enjoy, or try something completely new simply because you fancy it.
Then notice how that feels.
You don’t need to know exactly where any of it is leading yet.
Sometimes the first sign that life is beginning to change isn’t a huge decision.
It’s simply realising that you’re back in it.