Episode #424 – When life looks great…. but doesn’t feel great.

This is episode 424 of the Brilliant Balance podcast, and today we’re talking about when life looks great, but doesn’t feel great. So welcome back to the show, my friends. Today, I want to talk about something that I hear about from so many women who I work with, especially on the front end of our working relationship, that I’m guessing you may feel as well. And it’s that paradox where you have built a life that looks absolutely fantastic from the outside, right? Everyone is looking at you and wondering how you do it. You have the career, the family, the home, the social calendar—you know, all the boxes are being checked. And yet somehow…

…it doesn’t feel right on the inside, right? Something feels off. Something feels like it could be better. It just doesn’t feel like it’s yours. And if that’s you today, I want you to know that you are definitely not alone, because I’m going to share this very real issue that’s kind of hiding in plain sight when this is how you feel.

And this particular issue is very prevalent among women who have a long history of achievement. We have essentially sort of become experts at making it look good—and often to our own detriment.

So let’s get into this. I think a lot of us spend time early in our lives—maybe even as early as middle school, high school—figuring out what’s going to make us look good.

And we read the room. We look at the social cues. We look at who’s popular, who is getting ahead. And we’re like, “I’m going to be like her,” right? More of what she is doing.

And I want to be clear: there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, developmentally, it’s appropriate, especially in adolescence. And we have to chase something, right? There has to be something that we’re pursuing. So at the front end, looking around at what seems to make other people happy or what seems to get them what they want isn’t really so much of a problem. The problem comes later, when the only measure of success that we can think of is how things look—like how they look to other people.

And when that becomes our primary, or our only, measure of success, we have a real problem because—spoiler alert—you may know this, but this is really all about our ego, right? It’s not about our essence. It’s not about who we actually are being served. It’s about our ego getting what our ego wants. And virtually all the time, what our ego wants is to look good.

And so if we have figured out how to create lives that look good, we get caught in this loop where what we’re doing is performing, right? We’re keeping up appearances and kind of twisting ourselves into shapes that look good to other people without really any regard for how does that feel to us.

And that gives us a situation where we end up measuring ourselves, I think, almost by the applause that we get, right? It’s like that Lady Gaga song, “I Live for the Applause.” We’re never really stopping to think about how does it feel? Because at first, the applause is enough—like that’s enough to feel good—but it’s not sustainable. It’s enough for a minute, and then it’s definitely not enough forever. Right.

So this is the outcome goal. This is what happens when we are building our lives on the wrong thing, right? When we’ve kind of built our life on being agreeable, doing what we think everyone else wants us to do—what we’re supposed to do, what we should do—

Instead of building our lives on what feels aligned for us with our path, right? And we’re never actually checking in to see if those are one and the same. Then we end up putting a lot of energy out, and not enough comes back in return. Right?

So think about this. I’ve told this story before in my own life: what seemed socially acceptable, expected, or like the logical path that I would take coming out of my Ivy League school and my MBA was to be working in a Fortune 500 company—or like a Fortune 50 company. And I did that.

And it was absolutely applaudable, right? Everyone who looked at it was like, “Yeah— I mean, that’s where you should be. That’s what you should be doing. Go to the prestigious school, cap on the graduate degree, go have a predictable, safe career path that anyone would look at and say, ‘Good for you.’”

And I did it until it didn’t feel good. At some point along my path, I looked around and said, “This ladder is like leaning against the wrong wall,” right? This ladder—when I continue to climb this ladder—the place where I end up is not even a place that I aspire to be.

Now, I wouldn’t have known that when I got on the ladder. Okay? So in fairness to me—like young me—and young all of us, I think often we get on those ladders and start climbing because we do think we want to end up at the top of it, right? Whatever quote-unquote wall it’s leaning against, we’re like, “Yeah, that’s my destination. That’s where I want to be.” And something changes along the way and we miss the memo. We miss the fact that there was an inflection point. Something changed around us or something changed in us.

And so at some point, we are just pouring out energy to climb the rungs of that ladder or to manage the lives that we’ve built, and there’s just not enough coming back. And that’s when overwhelm sets in first. And then I’ll tell you what follows overwhelm—and it’s surprising. It’s apathy, right?

First, we’re like, “I’m so overwhelmed. I cannot possibly do all of this. I’m just losing my mind with the sheer quantity of work.” And then we’re like, “You know what? Screw it. I don’t even care.”

I don’t even care anymore, right? And that’s apathy. That’s like when you’ve reached a point where you just don’t even care anymore, you are in trouble, right? So if that’s you, you’re in trouble because the next step on that little ladder is resentment, right?

And then you’re like, “You know what? Screw everybody who supported this—who told me this was a good idea. I don’t even want to be here anymore.” And then we’re just mad. And there’s a huge path of resentment that follows, right?

So if you know you’re in the overwhelmed part, watch out, because apathy and resentment could be on their way, right? You’re busy in this phase. You are achieving.

People see your success. They may even want to be you. They may even tell you that they want to be you. But inside, you’re like, “Why?” Because you are exhausted, right? You know how it feels. You’re frustrated. You’re completely disconnected from yourself, from any true sense of self.

And no one is going to argue with the choices that you’re making. If you are living this kind of a life where it looks really good on the outside, the challenge we have is it’s different than the person whose life is falling apart.

Because when we can look from the outside at someone’s life and go, “Wow, they’re in real trouble,” then we, like, stage an intervention, right? We have a conversation with them and say, “Hey, are you sure that this is what you want to keep doing?”

But we are so busy keeping up appearances, making everything look great, no one’s going to check in with us. Right? Remember: they want to be us. They’re not going to check in and say, “Hey, are you okay? Are you living the life you meant to live?”

Right? You have the beautiful house in exactly the right neighborhood. You’ve got the prestigious, high-paying job. Right? You’ve got the partner with exactly the right pedigree for everyone to approve of. And everyone’s like, “That’s a dream life.” The problem is those dreams aren’t yours.

And if you end up in that situation where you have somebody else’s dream life, it doesn’t feel very good. In fact, it feels really heavy, okay? So I want to give you a couple of signs that you might be able to tune into to see if this is the situation you’re in.

I mean, first of all, let’s be clear: you probably know from what I’ve said so far if this is your story. You probably know.

But I’m going to give you a couple of signs, just in case. Just in case you want to know with unmistakable clarity, okay?

The first sign that you have a life that looks good on the outside but doesn’t feel so good on the inside is you feel guilty because you know everyone would say you have it all, but you don’t like how it feels.

And that induces guilt because you feel like you must be doing it wrong, right? You should be so grateful for this life that you have. And you don’t necessarily—because what you are measuring is how it feels, and other people are measuring what it looks like.

Okay? That one I hear all the time. I hear it all the time, right? “I just—I should be so grateful for this and I shouldn’t want more. This should be enough.”

Okay. Another thing that I think is a signal is you find that you’re dreading things that you thought you would enjoy.

So I’ll give you a classic example. I had a client who always thought she would end up at a lot of charity events—kind of like galas, you know, where you get dressed up and go out to a fancy place and you have a gown and whatever. And she was like, that was a big part of what she thought was going to be associated with success in her chosen field.

And she got there. She was on the circuit, right? Like every couple of months, there was another dress to rent or buy and another event to go to. And she was like, “I can’t stand being at these events.”

But this is this thing that I thought I was going to want. And instead I’m dreading it every time I have to put another one of these events together.

That’s a great sign that—like, yeah, I thought I wanted this. I thought this was… it’s such a good example, right, of how it really shows up when you’re like, “I thought this was going to be great,” and it turns out: not so great.

And I think another example of that is you understood it at the title level. Like, “I want to be an attorney” or “I want to be a physician.” But you hadn’t really internalized what that meant day to day.

So while the title is still aspirational or impressive, the actual work—like sitting and doing research and writing briefs day after day—or the hours that you’re keeping with the very short patient visits and all of the administrative work, it isn’t adding up to what you thought it would be. That’s a good example.

Okay. Third sign would be: you just can’t imagine how you would say no to things that, quote, “anyone in their right mind would want.”

Right? So you’re holding yourself to a standard of what any reasonable person—or anyone in their right mind—would want. “How would I say no to that? Anybody would want this.”

And something in you is screaming, “But I don’t.” But you can’t reconcile that dissonance. And so you just keep saying yes to the things that you think you’re supposed to want. Right? That’s a good signal.

And another one that I think is a signal is if you feel like you constantly have to be “on,” like you’re almost performing in a play of a life instead of living a life, right?

Think about that. If you’ve ever had that sensation where you’re going out into your day and you’re like, “I am performing this life,” right? Like as though I am in a play. I am a character in this drama and I am playing it out for other people to watch and observe, but I’m not really dropped in and living it.

That is a good example. That is a good sign you might be in this situation. So if any of that resonates with you, I promise that is a signal.

Your truest self is trying to tell you something that is really important. And what it is likely trying to tell you is: girlfriend, you have stayed on this road for too long. Right? You may have missed your exit. You kept driving and you were supposed to get off a long time ago. Or there was a turn you missed.

And you might even, at this point, be in the passenger seat of your own life instead of the driver’s seat. Those signals are really important to pay attention to.

And I think we try to turn them off and make them quiet down, and we try to ignore them. But we really want to pay attention to those signals when they come through.

But here’s the good news: you can always take back the wheel, right? You can always get back on a road. You can make that turn. You can make a U-turn by making choices that are right for you starting today.

And you actually don’t need permission from anyone else, right? You don’t need anyone’s permission but your own. And not only can you do this, but you actually must—at least if you want to feel fulfilled, if you want to have a chance of feeling fulfilled. Because fulfillment, which is what so many of us are actually chasing, isn’t built on how things look, is it? It’s built on how they feel.

It’s built on how they feel. So when you can start making choices day in and day out that are really aligned with who you are, or who you want to be, or who you’re becoming, right— with your values, with your actual desires—you can start to feel better pretty quickly.

Right? And you don’t have to do big, giant things first. I’m always talking about careers here and relationships and homes, and those are big things. But even small shifts can make a really big difference.

And so just figuring out, like, “You know what? I’m going to eat for lunch what I want to eat for lunch instead of what everybody else seems to think I should eat for lunch.” Right? Little things like that can start to just tune you back in with your own inner knowing. And that’s a very, very powerful attunement.

Okay. So I want to give you three ideas—three things you can do that actually will make a real difference here—if you find yourself in this situation where you’re like, “My life looks great. Everyone would look at it and say, amazing, but it doesn’t feel so great.”

Three practical things you can do.

First—and this is imperative. You cannot skip it, and you’re probably not going to like it—get clear on what you actually want.

And so many of us, particularly women (I am sad to say), so many of us override our own desires in order to meet the expectations of others.

I’m going to say it again for the people in the back, right? We are overriding our own desires to meet the expectations of others. But if your life is going to feel good for you, you need to know what you truly want and you have to own it.

And so you could start by just putting it in writing. Just write it down somewhere that only you can see: “Here’s what I actually want.”

Right? You could say it out loud to yourself, to someone you trust, to the mirror. But if you can get this into words—here is what I actually want—powerful forces kind of get set in motion.

Okay? This isn’t indulgent. It’s not selfish. This is clarifying. And knowing what you want gives you the first shot at creating the possibility to go have it.

If you can’t say what you want, if you can’t even think what you want, you’re not going to get what you want. Okay? So learning to write it down or say it out loud, to really declare—right—get clear on what you actually want: step one. Okay?

The second thing you can do is kind of under the bucket of figuring out what’s in your way. So I’m going to say: you can audit what is stealing your energy, right? What is making your life not feel so good? You can audit that.

And kind of pay attention. When I say “audit,” I just mean pay attention over time. Take a week, take a couple weeks, and pay attention to: what is making me feel ick, right? Right?

There’s a technical term for you: ick.

I think that a lot of very successful women, like the ones I’m often talking to in this work, are juggling—I don’t know—hundreds of commitments, big and small.

Many of them invisible, right? Much invisible work is happening. And a lot of that work that we are doing, a lot of those roles that we are playing, are unnoticed but draining.

And they really can make a good life start to feel not so good. So I think paying attention—or doing this audit—of what is draining your energy, stealing your energy, right, kind of dulling your energy, really does start to give you a clue about: how can you shift your life in the direction of feeling better?

And those can often be micro choices—very small things that you can do to free up some bandwidth and start to have life feel a little bit lighter.

And the third thing that I would have you think about, in addition to those first two, is to experiment with just dropping one obligation.

Right? One thing. One commitment that has become a habit or an expectation at this point. What if you just lay down that one?

And I think the insight here is: you don’t have to do every single thing you’ve ever done. We kind of get in these patterns, don’t we, where we’re like just adding, adding, adding, adding. And every week, life is bigger and heavier and more demanding. And we never stop to take anything out—to lay something down—to say, “I think this has run its course.”

And in order for me to pick up a new thing that I’m excited about, I’m going to have to get rid of one.

So just experimenting with dropping one obligation, one habit, one thing that’s become routine—and that you’re maybe carrying out because you feel pressured to keep doing it—just ask yourself: what happens if I don’t?

Right? And maybe just skip it for a day or a week as an experiment.

And usually the outcome is, in my experience, far less consequential than you think. Like we’re carrying around a lot of fear that the world’s going to end. And this little exercise can show you that you can make small changes and get some big relief.

And kind of stacked together, this really is what makes life feel lighter, you know, and more manageable.

So what’s one thing that you’re doing routinely? You’re like, “Well, this is just how I do it now. This is my habit. I guess I’m going to do this every day or week for the rest of my life.”

Could you try laying it down and see if it gives you a little bit of ease?

This kind of work that we’re talking about today—this kind of awareness—is so important. I think it’s so central to what I’ve been teaching within Brilliant Balance for a decade plus.

And I’ve seen the real effects of women making these kinds of changes in their lives. I mean, I’ve seen them in my own life when I’ve made these changes. So I really want to embolden you to give it a shot. Don’t just listen to the words today.

You know, maybe let today be the wake-up call day where you’re like, “I’ve got to actually do something about this. I have to try something here.”

And I want to tell you: you’re going to get scared.

It’s really normal to get scared when you start thinking about making these changes. Like, “Am I allowed to do this?” Right? We’re looking around for the imaginary permission slip. It can be scary. And that’s why it’s such a big part of what we’re doing inside of Brave.

So I mentioned Brave last week. If you listened to that episode, this is the newest program that I have in the Brilliant Balance Collective. It is really designed to help you develop the courage to make these kinds of choices—the choices that are right for you—so that you can have a life that feels as good as it looks.

Right? So if the things I’m saying in this episode are resonating with you, you want to pay attention to what’s going on in Brave.

The doors are not even open yet as I record this episode, but we do have the waitlist open. So if you didn’t go last week, it’s brilliant-balance.com/Brave. And that’s where you go to get on the waitlist.

And that will give you first dibs when we open the doors in January, right? I’m going to be sharing all the details in the coming weeks about the elements of Brave, why we put inside of Brave what we did, and exactly what’s in there for you. And it’s robust. I’m pretty stoked about what we’re building and about how it’s going with our initial members who’ve been in this fall.

But when we open those doors in January to you as podcast listeners, what I want you thinking about is: what would be my reason for being there, right? What are the courageous moves that I need to make?

And how can I leverage the resources inside of Brave to help me do those things?

Too many of us are just playing too small. Okay, friends: having a life that looks great but that doesn’t feel great is a really big signal that you’re either constrained by your life or you’re just on the wrong path.

Right? And that is changeable. Your body, your energy, your intuition—you’re getting signs. And when you start noticing them, and then you start honoring them, and then you start acting on them (even in small ways), everything begins to fall into place.

And I want you to remember that ultimately, the real metric of success isn’t how your life looks from the outside.

It’s not, right? It’s how it feels to you on the inside. And when you start really living in alignment with what you want—like your most authentic self—what do you actually like and what do you actually want? Life starts to feel lighter, right? More satisfying and, honestly, just more fully yours, which is the whole point. You only get one.

So I want you to practice some of the things that I shared in today’s episode. I would also love it if you shared this episode with someone who needs to hear it. Just forward it straight over to them.

And that is all for today, my friends. Till next time, let’s be brilliant.