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Is This It? When Midlife Makes You Question the Life You’ve Built

Mon, 02 Nov 2026 15:44:25 GMT

You have worked hard, achieved plenty and looked after everyone else. So why are you wondering what comes next?

There is a question that can creep in somewhere around midlife. It might arrive after a birthday, a career milestone, your youngest child finishing school, or on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday when you find yourself sitting in the car before heading into work.

Is this it?

You have done what you were supposed to do. You chose a career, worked hard, built a reputation and created a comfortable life. From the outside, there is every reason to feel satisfied. Yet underneath the routine, there is a growing sense that something is missing.

It isn’t necessarily that you dislike your job, your family or the life you have created. It’s harder to put into words than that. You might feel restless, or curious about what else is possible, and a little guilty for even asking, particularly when you know plenty of people would be grateful to have what you have.

Perhaps you haven’t lost your purpose. Perhaps you have simply spent so long responding to what life needed from you that you have stopped asking what you need from it.

How did I get here?

Most of us made our early decisions based on what we knew at the time, what our families expected and what we believed success looked like. Then life happened. There was the next promotion, the next responsibility, the mortgage, the school commitments. You became the person others relied on, very good at anticipating what everyone else needed.

There is nothing wrong with those decisions. Many were made out of commitment and love. But a life built from a series of perfectly reasonable choices can end up being a life constructed around what needs to happen, rather than what you have consciously chosen. I sometimes think of it as living an accidental life. Not because the life itself is accidental, but because we become so busy managing its individual parts that we lose sight of the bigger picture.

And then something shifts. The children need less of you. Another promotion no longer holds the same appeal. You suddenly have more time, or the freedom to make a change, and the thought of deciding what that change should be feels surprisingly overwhelming.

Why is change so hard when you know you want it?

Understanding that you want something to change doesn’t automatically make it easier to do.

You might know you have outgrown your job, yet keep scrolling through advertisements without applying. You might have ideas about study, a business or an interest, yet keep finding reasons to wait until you feel more confident.

It’s easy to read this as a lack of motivation or courage. I see it differently. Your brain is a prediction machine, and it tends prefer what is familiar. Even when a situation is no longer fulfilling, it is still predictable. You know your role, your income and what tomorrow looks like. Change introduces uncertainty, and uncertainty is something the brain is wired to treat with caution.

Your brain isn’t working against you. It’s trying to keep you safe.

The stories we tell ourselves

Over time, we develop ideas about who we are and what we are capable of. I’m not adventurous. I’m too old to start again. I’ve left it too late. The more often we repeat these thoughts, the more firmly they become embedded, until they start to feel like facts rather than interpretations.

Consider someone twenty years into a corporate career who says, “I don’t know what else I could do.” Is that actually true? Or have they spent so long identifying with their profession that they struggle to picture anything else? One is a statement about capability. The other is a belief that has grown through repetition.

The brain is an evidence collector. Once we hold a belief, we tend to notice what supports it and overlook what doesn’t. That same person has probably led difficult projects, adapted to constant change and learnt new skills throughout their career. There is plenty of evidence of capability they have never connected to the possibility of doing something different.

This is why confidence rarely arrives before action. It builds afterwards, through doing something, realising you can manage it and collecting new evidence along the way.

This isn’t a midlife crisis

Questioning your life at midlife doesn't necessarily mean you need to make a dramatic change. You don’t have to resign, sell the house or reinvent yourself. Sometimes a change is needed. Sometimes it’s about how you approach your existing circumstances. And sometimes the most important change is the way you think about yourself.

Roles matter here. When children leave home, it isn’t simply that there are fewer people at the dinner table. Your role changes, and the responsibilities that once structured your days may no longer be there. Likewise, if your identity has been built around being a senior leader or the person who earns the household income, questioning that role can feel like questioning who you are.

I don’t see this as a problem to be fixed. I see it as a chance to understand what has changed, what matters now and whether the way you are living reflects the person you have become.

You don’t have to blow it up or suck it up

When we’re unhappy, it can feel like there are only two options: disrupt everything we have worked hard to build, or accept that this is just how life is. There is a third option. Start by understanding yourself.

What exactly no longer feels right? Is it the work itself, the environment, the expectations you place on yourself, or the fact that your priorities have changed? If your children have grown up, what would you like your days to look like now? What interests have you put aside?

These questions don’t need immediate answers. Clarity often comes after you make a decision, not before. It can start with small, considered actions: reconnecting with an interest, talking to someone working in a field that appeals, looking into study, or simply making time for something that has been missing. Each experience gives you something to work with, new evidence about what interests you and what you are capable of. That is the difference between forcing change through bursts of motivation and creating the conditions for sustainable change.

It can also feel indulgent to invest time and money in yourself after years of investing in everyone else. But being capable of solving problems is not the same as seeing your own situation clearly. When we think things through alone, we bring every assumption and doubt along with us. A thinking partner who asks the questions you haven’t thought to ask can help you recognise patterns and turn your own insights into action.

Your next chapter deserves some thought

I work with people at turning points: questioning a career built over decades, returning to work after a break, or wondering who they are now that parenting looks different. What they often share is a lot of time spent meeting the demands of life and not much time considering what they want for themselves.

Having spent a couple of decades in senior HR roles, I've seen how much our beliefs, experiences and expectations influence the decisions we make. My approach to coaching is curious rather than judgemental. When you stop criticising yourself for feeling stuck and get curious about what is keeping you there, new possibilities can emerge.

You don’t have to wait until breaking point. You don’t need all the answers before you start. And you don’t need to justify investing in yourself after so many years of investing in everyone else.

A few questions worth sitting with:

If you weren’t making decisions based on what other people expect of you, what might you choose for yourself?
Are you still pursuing the same definition of success that mattered to you 20 years ago?
What have you been putting off because you don’t feel confident, qualified or ready enough?
If the next five years looked exactly like the last five, how would you feel about that?

You don’t have to have the answers today. But perhaps it’s time to start asking.

You don’t have to work it out alone

Here is something I think is worth saying gently: you don’t have to do this by yourself.

Many people assume that because they are capable and experienced, they should be able to think their way through this on their own. Sometimes that works. But often it means months, or even years, of turning over the same thoughts and arriving at the same conclusions, because we are trying to understand our situation using the very beliefs and assumptions we are trying to examine.

Mindset coaching offers a different starting point. It gives you the space to slow down, understand how your thinking has developed, notice the stories you have been telling yourself and gather new evidence about what is possible. It isn’t about being told what to do. It’s about having someone alongside you who asks the questions you might not think to ask yourself, and who helps you turn your own insights into practical, sustainable steps.

I find this usually gets people to where they want to go more quickly, and with a lot less second-guessing. Not because the work is done for you, but because you stop spending so much energy going around in circles.

At Know Your Purpose, I believe purpose becomes clearer once you understand yourself: your values, your beliefs, your strengths and the things that genuinely matter. If you're at a turning point and would like support working out what comes next, I'd love to help you explore what might be possible. It could be the beginning of a very different conversation, one that is finally about you.

Why the biggest changes in our lives often begin by changing the way we see ourselves

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 15:23:06 GMT

Have you ever reached a point where you knew something needed to change, but couldn't quite work out why you felt so stuck? Perhaps you've found yourself at your desk on a Monday morning wondering how you ended up in a career that no longer fits. Maybe you've noticed a quiet restlessness you can't quite explain.

For some people it's their career. For others it's a relationship, their confidence, or a growing feeling they've drifted away from the person they once imagined becoming.

Here's the interesting part: recognising that something needs to change is rarely the hard bit. Most people already know that. The challenge is taking the first step.

I've had many conversations with people who tell me they're ready for something different, yet months or years later they're standing in exactly the same place. They're intelligent, capable people who've read the books and listened to the podcasts. They're not lacking motivation. They're simply stuck.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is trying to change their results without changing the map that's creating them.

Every one of us carries an internal map of the world, built from our beliefs, our experiences, and the stories we've come to believe about ourselves. Some of those stories serve us well. Others quietly keep us exactly where we are. We rarely stop to question whether they're still true, so we keep making decisions from the same map and wonder why we keep arriving at the same destination.

It's a little like setting off on a journey with an outdated map. You can drive faster, work longer, become more disciplined - but if the map is pointing the wrong way, all that extra effort just gets you to the wrong destination more efficiently.

Our brains aren't sabotaging us – they are protecting us

One of the most useful shifts in psychology has been moving from "what's wrong with this person?" to "how is this person's brain trying to solve a problem?"

Take procrastination. Most people write it off as poor time management. Often, though, it's protecting us from the possibility of failure or judgement - or the task simply feels so overwhelming that delaying it feels like the safest option. The behaviour may not be helping us, but that doesn't make it irrational.

The same is true of perfectionism, overthinking and self-doubt. These often start out as protective strategies, not character flaws.

Understanding creates compassion. And compassion creates change.

When we stop seeing ourselves as broken and start getting curious instead, change starts to feel possible rather than impossible.

Beliefs like "I'm too old to start again" or "I've probably missed my chance" can feel like objective facts. Often, they are just stories we've repeated so many times they have become part of our identity, and our brains are remarkably good at collecting evidence to support whatever we already believe. It's not searching for the truth. It's searching for consistency, because consistency has always felt safer than uncertainty and change.

The world has changed. Our brains are still trying to keep us safe the old way.

Comfort zone or just familiar?

If our brains are trying to protect us, why do so many people stay in situations that don't make them happy?

I think the phrase "comfort zone" has given us the wrong impression. It isn't necessarily a place where we feel comfortable; it is a place that feels familiar . I've met people who are exhausted, frustrated and quietly disappointed with how life has unfolded, yet they stay. Not because it's comfortable, but because it's predictable.

The unknown carries questions that can't yet be answered: What if I fail? What if I regret leaving? What if I'm not as capable as I thought?

Fear rarely announces itself dramatically. More often it disguises itself as sensible thinking: "I'll wait until things settle down." "I should probably get another qualification first." Occasionally that is genuine caution. More often, people aren't searching for more information they are searching for certainty, which life rarely offers.

If we wait for fear to disappear before we act, we may be waiting a very long time.

Confidence doesn't come first – confidence comes with action is taken

One of the biggest misconceptions about confidence is that we believe it has to arrive before we act. In reality, it is usually the other way round. Think about the first time you drove a car - very few of us felt confident beforehand. Confidence was the result of driving, not the reason we started.

Each time we do something we previously thought we couldn't, we quietly update our internal map. That is why small actions matter more than they seem to - one conversation, one application, one small experiment. Looking back, those unremarkable moments often turn out to be the turning points.

Purpose is built, not found

So many coaching conversations start with, "I just don't know what I want anymore." I don't think that's usually the real problem. Very few people are disconnected from what matters to them, more often they have become disconnected from trusting themselves , after years of prioritising everyone else's expectations over their own.

Purpose isn't hiding somewhere, waiting to be discovered. It's built. Through paying attention to what gives us energy, what leaves us depleted, and which conversations we naturally gravitate towards. Self-understanding comes before purpose.

That is what coaching is really about. My role isn't to hand someone the answers – it is to help them ask themselves better questions that create awareness instead of judgement and reveal the stories they've mistaken for facts. Because once you can see the map you've been following, you finally have a choice: keep travelling in the same direction or start drawing a new one.

When questioning your life doesn't mean something is wrong

When someone begins questioning the life they've built, they often assume something has gone wrong. Goals that once motivated them suddenly feel empty. Sometimes they even feel guilty for wanting something different, especially when life looks fine from the outside.

I've come to believe these moments aren't signs we're failing. More often, they're signs we've changed and our internal map simply hasn't caught up yet. The beliefs that built a successful career in your twenties aren't necessarily the ones that will create fulfilment in your forties or fifties.

Does this life still fit the person I have become?

It's not always a comfortable question. But perhaps you've outgrown your work or been chasing someone else's definition of success. None of that means you've made a mistake. It means you've grown and growth has a way of asking us to redraw the map.

The question isn't whether your old patterns were right or wrong. It's whether they're still serving the life you're trying to create now. That single shift from "what's wrong with me?" to "is this still working?" — changes everything.

Ready is a decision, not a feeling

Our brains are constantly gathering evidence for the identity we believe to be true. Positive thinking alone rarely changes that; our minds are far more persuaded by experience than by affirmation.

When someone who believes they're "not confident" finally has the conversation they have been avoiding, they create new evidence. When someone who believes they are "too old" successfully changes careers, they create new evidence. Little by little, the map begins to change. And as the map changes, so does the destination.

I rarely encourage people to wait until they feel completely ready, because ready rarely arrives on its own. Most meaningful chapters begin before we feel ready, while we're still carrying uncertainty. Then, gradually, the confidence we were waiting for starts to grow because we have finally given our brain something new to believe.

If you have recognised parts of your own story in this, a few questions worth sitting with:

What belief about yourself have you been treating as fact, even though it might just be an old story?
Which decisions in your life are being guided by familiarity rather than possibility?
Where might your brain be trying to protect you, even though that protection is now keeping you stuck?
If you stopped following the map you created years ago, what might become visible today?

The quality of our lives is shaped by the quality of our choices, and the quality of our choices is shaped by the beliefs we carry about ourselves. Change those beliefs with curiosity, understanding and new experience, and the destination begins to change too.

If you know something in your life needs to change but you are not yet sure what the next step looks like, you're not alone. Coaching provides the space to understand the beliefs and patterns that have shaped your map for years; then to begin drawing one that reflects who you are today.

Your future doesn't change while you are waiting for certainty. It changes the moment you begin seeing yourself differently.

4 Reflective Prompts

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 08:42:24 GMT

To Close Out this Year & Step Confidently into Next Year

As we inch toward the start of a new year, many of us naturally look back and review what we’ve done, what worked, and what definitely didn’t. But here’s the thing: when we reflect, we often default to replaying the missteps. It’s human nature - we try to learn by avoiding past mistakes. While that has its place, focusing only on the negative gives us an incomplete story of the year we just lived.

2025 was full of experiences, lessons, and moments - both big and small - that deserve to be acknowledged. Celebrating what went well, even tiny wins, reinforces that our efforts matter. When we only dwell on what didn’t happen or what went wrong, it’s easy to slip into the mindset that progress isn’t worth pursuing. But recognizing our wins, however modest, tells a different story: effort fuels growth, and growth is always worth the investment.

Interestingly, for every one success we allow ourselves to see, we’ve usually had three to six thoughts about what we didn’t do well. That’s why intentional reflection matters.

Below are four prompts to help you reflect on 2025 with a more balanced lens—and step into 2026 with clarity, appreciation, and momentum.

1. What were the highlights of your year - and what went well?

Write down everything that comes to mind. Then pause, and ask yourself, “What else?” Give yourself permission to acknowledge the wins, even the small ones. Often those are the ones that matter most.

2. What did you find challenging in 2025?

List the tough moments but set a timer for five minutes before you begin. When the alarm goes off, stop. Humans are experts at dwelling on the negative far longer than necessary. The practice of setting a timer helps you keep the reflection productive, not draining.

3. What did you learn about yourself this year?

Looking at both your wins and your challenges, what insights emerged? What did these moments reveal about how you show up, how you work, and what you need? Reflection becomes powerful when it helps you understand your patterns.

4. What habit - no matter how small - did you begin that you want to carry into 2026?

Growth often shows up in tiny, consistent steps. Identify one habit you started this year that supports the person you want to be going forward.

Use these prompts to give yourself a fuller, kinder view of your year. Reflection isn’t about judging - it’s about understanding. And with understanding comes a stronger, more intentional start to 2026.