What’s Wrong with Me!

I was with a group of people I’d recently met, all of us getting to know one another the way people do — where you live, what you do. Someone got curious when they learned I was a life coach and naturally, the way we do as humans, they tried to equate it to something they already knew.

“Oh, you focus on changing behavior.”
Not exactly.

Behavior is often the thing a person wants to change when she hires a coach like me. But behavior is the effect — the output. Belief is what needs the inquiry. It is belief that drives our behavior, not the other way around.

A client who wishes for connection but believes she is uninteresting, boring.

A client who procrastinates and tells me how bad this is, how bad she is, at completing things.

A woman who has kept something undisclosed for twenty years that she can no longer hold, suffers as a result, and fears she has ruined a relationship.

Almost all of my clients arrive with the same question underneath everything else: what’s wrong with me?

Each one believes there is something wrong with her — something broken, something that needs fixing or improving. But when we begin to understand the belief beneath the behavior, I feel them exhale, even if only for a moment. And in that moment, something shifts. Something new has been known, and it cannot be unknown.

The Beliefs We’re Protecting

Our beliefs often hold patterns of protection — ways of being we learned long ago to keep us from feeling hurt, disappointed, or abandoned. Every one of these women was standing in the first passages of midlife. At the threshold. Being invited to step away from old beliefs that once protected them but now only limit their expansion and self-expression.

In midlife, we are often reclaiming parts of ourselves buried under thirty years of being responsible, productive, practical, needed — years of staying boxed into what the world wanted us to be. And now, the truest part of us is awakening to the charade. The soul is no longer willing to stay quiet.

Midlife will cost you something, because it’s when women start telling the truth. It is nearly impossible not to, without living in dis-ease. And truth changes marriages, friendships, families, bodies, identities. It shakes things up. You stop pleasing others and start owning your power.

This doesn’t mean there was something wrong with you. It is simply the unfolding of a life. Everything that came before brought you here, prepared you for this. And now it’s your time to step into that truth.

What Happened Next

I know you’re curious about these women, so let me tell you a little.

But first — it’s important to remember: you and I decide who we are, and we give ourselves what it is we desire. This has always been true, even when it didn’t seem so. And in midlife, that truth can no longer be denied.

The woman who felt uninteresting was invited to be interested. If you want connection, give it to yourself first. Connect. As she grew curious about others, they became curious about her. 

The woman who procrastinated discovered she kept pushing things off because she didn’t feel she was important enough to deal with them. Once she saw that, she was in charge of whether she did or didn’t do something — without making herself wrong for it.

The woman who could no longer keep her truth buried found her way to forgiving herself, recognizing that she was a different version of herself then. And that truth ended up strengthening the very relationship she feared would end.

Coming Home

Often, the very idea that something is wrong with us is the only thing standing between us and the authenticity we crave. Midlife is the doorway. 

Orientation — the way we look at things — matters. We can hold onto the cultural narrative of what midlife is supposed to mean — decline, invisibility, running out of time — or we can let that story go and orient ourselves toward what’s actually possible. This is a time to deepen our inner authority, to step into our wisdom, to come home to ourselves.

If you hear yourself asking: what is wrong with me? Know this: there is absolutely nothing wrong with you, my love. Not a single thing. There never has been.

And if that question haunts you, it might be time we sat down together. A simple clarity session can change everything.

With love,