For a long time, I told myself I was stuck because I didn't know what I wanted next. That explanation was convenient. It saved me from admitting something more uncomfortable. I knew what was not working. Managing people drained me in ways I had not anticipated. The workload was manageable, but the difficulty lay in the dynamics. There were political undercurrents in the team that I recognised and addressed directly. Resistance showed up in missed deadlines, incomplete work, a

What if what’s limiting you isn’t what’s happening in your life, but the explanation you keep returning to when you think about it? This is the midlife malaise narrative and it's harder to see than anything happening around you. Understanding Why You Feel Stuck in Midlife Everyone carries a narrative about how their life works. It’s the story you rely on to explain why things turned out the way they did and what you expect will happen next. You don’t sit down and revise it. I

Mid-life malaise is a strange thing. It doesn’t announce itself. You realise, almost by accident, that you’ve been running on muscle memory for far longer than you’d like. You’re working hard, busy, doing what you’ve always done, but the spark that made it feel worthwhile has slipped out of reach. Understanding Mid-Life Dissatisfaction That was my experience of it. Not a crisis, but a growing sense that the work I was pouring myself into no longer connected to anything that m