Is This It? The Ache That Means You've Outgrown Your Life
Prefer to listen? This is Episode 10 of the No Bullshit Spirituality podcast. Go and have a listen, link below.
I once sat on the end of my bed in England, putting my shoes on for work, crying. Not because my job was bad or because I hated my boss. Not because anything was technically wrong. I just couldn't work out how I was going to get to five o'clock.
Nothing was wrong with the job. It just didn't fit anymore. And I didn't have the words for that yet, so I put my shoes on, cried, and went to work anyway.
If you've had a version of that morning, this is for you.
Why You Feel Unfulfilled Even When Life Looks Fine
The question shows up differently for different people, but it's always some version of the same thing. “Is this it for me?” What else is out there for me? What am I actually meant to be doing?
You might feel trapped. Smothered by a life you technically built yourself. Disconnected from the people around you, from your work, from yourself. Nothing sparks you up anymore, and when passion does show up, it's for something small and slightly ridiculous, and you know it.
You might notice you're arguing with your partner more, your family, people at work, even with yourself. Why am I never satisfied? Why do I feel so angry at things that shouldn't matter this much?
I used to get into trouble for this. I questioned things. I went against the grain. I was the one who never just fell into line, and I was constantly asked why I couldn't just be happy with what I had. I didn't have an answer. I just wasn't. There was something in me saying there's more than this, and I couldn't switch it off, even when everyone around me wished I would.
None of that means something is wrong with you. It means something in you already knows the truth, and it's not going to shut up until you listen.
You Were Sold a Life, Not a Truth
School, qualifications, job, partner, house, kids, car, repeat. You never once gave yourself the time and space to sit and consider what you actually wanted. You were handed a checklist and told this was the path, and if you followed it properly, you'd be fine.
So you did it. Maybe you did it well. And you're still sat there wondering why it's not enough.
It's not because you're ungrateful. It's because that checklist was never yours to begin with. It's a construct, built to keep you aligned to somebody else's goal, not your own. And when you're living inside a construct that isn't you, of course it feels hollow. That gap between what you were told to want and what you actually want is exactly where that ache lives.
The Bathroom Floor Moment
You probably know the one. It might be the bathroom, the car, or your desk, or lying awake at 3am. The middle of the night or the middle of the day, and you break down because it hurts. The arguments, the boredom, the frustration, the wondering, all of it finally catches up with you at once.
That moment of uncontrollable tears whilst laying on the bathroom floor is when you realsie that your life is out of alignment with who you came here to be.
Why Ignoring It Doesn't Work
If you don't listen to this feeling and do something about it, it will just get louder and harder to bear. That ache that you feel, the dissatisfaction and the yearning for something else, is your soul creating chaos in your life so that you will finally stop and listen to it.
It’s not necessarily dramatic chaos. Sometimes it's just more of the same, low-grade dissatisfaction that never gos away, arguments that come from nowhere, days that blur into each other with nothing feeling right. Your soul isn’t punishing you; it's poking you, the way something keeps poking until you finally turn round and deal with it.
Your soul is asking you to wake up to the fact that you are more, that you can become more, that you have more potential as a spiritual being and a human in this world.
What to Do When You Feel Like Something's Missing
Creating a vision board isn’t going to cut it, I’m afraid. Neither is "just follow your bliss." What you need to do is actual, unglamorous inner soul-searching work and hard choices.
Here is a list of reflection questions you can ask yourself to help you figure which bloody way to turn when all of this is kicking off.
How do you want to feel? How you want to feel, day to day. Free, powerful, in control, excited, whatever it is for you. Most people have never once sat down and properly answered this.
What are your values? How do you want to show up, for yourself and everyone else in this world? What are your guiding principles? For example, excitement, health, honesty. You might be able to list three things or twenty-five. What matters is knowing them clearly.
What are you actually good at? What are your strengths and skills? What do people thank you for? What do they come to you for? What feels easy to you and hard to most people?
What lights you up? The thing that gives you that spark nothing else touches. For me it's public speaking, teaching, being creative, exploring new places. You'll know it when you feel it, not when you think about it.
Once you've got those four things down, look honestly at your life and ask these questions:
What helps you to achieve or have what you listed?
What do you need to do to bring more of them in?
What in your life diverts you or takes you away from what you want?
What do you need to eliminate from your life because it gives you something other than what you truly want?
For me, that meant leaving my corporate job because nothing was aligned to what mattered to me or who I wanted to become. It was slowly sucking the soul from me and had been for years. It meant stepping back from certain people too, not dramatically, just no longer showing up for relationships that weren't giving me anything real. It also meant honouring my year and curiosity to go and explore the world.
This Can Take Time
It took me some time to work this out properly. Not only did I need time and space to connect to what I really wanted but I also needed to practice connecting to my Higher Self and my deeper knowing.
Give yourself the time you need. It isn’t something that can be rushed. You may find you get to your conclusion quickly, but you may also find you’re ruminating for weeks, months even. It all depends on how connected you already are to your truth.
The ache doesn't necessarily disappear completely either. You're always growing, so you'll keep hitting new edges. But it does lessen. It gets quieter, because eventually you stop asking Is this it”, and start knowing exactly what it is and what you need to do about it.
You Already Know This
Nobody on their deathbed wishes they'd made more money. They wish they'd lived closer to their truth. You already know this. Knowing it was never the problem.
The problem is knowing it but settling for where you are, wondering, ache included.
If you want proper space to work through the four questions above, my Come Back to You Practice takes you through exactly that. It's the process I use with my own clients to get clear on what actually lights them up, so they can stop waiting for permission and start choosing it. Download it, sit with it properly, and find out what you already know but haven't let yourself say out loud yet.
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