Nothing Is Actually Wrong. So Why Doesn’t This Feel Right Anymore?

Dear Beautiful Soul,

I’ve been thinking about what happens when you get the thing you wanted.

Not when it goes terribly wrong. When it actually works. When you make the brave decision. Build the new life. Get to the place you once imagined yourself reaching. And then, sometime later, a question you weren’t expecting begins to creep in.

Is this really what I want?

I know that question well. There was a point, a few years ago, when I got almost exactly what I had asked for. I had spent more than 25 years building a successful corporate career. I was good at it. Really good at it. I had the title. The salary. The responsibility. The team. The recognition.

And eventually, I didn’t want it anymore.

So I did something that, from the outside, probably looked either incredibly brave or slightly unhinged.

I left.

We moved our family to Nova Scotia. We bought a little motel on the Eastern Shore and began building an entirely different life. Then we opened a café. There were renovations and contractors and rooms to design and menus to create and approximately nine million decisions. It was hard.

It was exciting. And it was mine.

I had done the thing so many of us imagine doing when we wonder whether there might be something else for us. I changed my life.

And then something happened that I wasn’t prepared for. A while after the dust settled, that question started creeping in.

Is this really what I want?

And this time, I didn’t want to hear it. Because I had already used my permission to change my life. At least, that’s how it felt. I had already walked away from something successful because I wanted something different. I had moved my husband and children across the country. They had left people they loved. Familiar places. Routines. Things that felt safe. We had invested money and time and energy into building this new life.

And now?

Now I was questioning this one too?

The voice in my head was not particularly gentle about it. "Oh my God. This is exactly like you. You wanted more. You got more. And now you’re dissatisfied with that too. Can’t you just be happy?"

And on the particularly cruel days: "Here we go again. You moved your entire family here because you got bored with your successful career, and now you’re reconsidering all of this at everyone else’s expense."

That one hurt.

Because underneath it was a fear I didn’t really want to admit. What if I’m simply incapable of being satisfied? What if I’m always going to want the next thing? What if I mistake boredom for intuition? What if I keep changing and everyone around me has to absorb the consequences?

What if I don’t actually know what I want?

For the better part of the last two and a half years, I have circled those questions in one form or another. And I think that’s what made this change so different from the first one. Questioning my old life required courage.

Questioning the life I had deliberately built felt like betrayal. Because this time I couldn’t tell myself someone else had chosen it for me.

I chose it.

I wanted it.

I fought for it.

And there are still parts of this life that I deeply love.

Which somehow made the question even harder to understand. Because we tend to imagine change beginning with something obviously wrong.

The terrible job. The unhappy relationship. The life that clearly doesn’t fit.

But sometimes nothing is catastrophically wrong.

Sometimes there are beautiful things everywhere.

People you love.

Work you’re proud of.

A home you’ve created.

A life you once desperately wanted.

And still, somewhere underneath all of it, there is a quiet little voice asking:

Is this all there is?

I used to hear that question as an accusation. As evidence that I was ungrateful. Restless. Difficult to satisfy. Maybe even selfish. Now I’m beginning to wonder if I misunderstood the question. Because something can have been exactly right for the woman who chose it…and still not remain right forever. That doesn’t make the choice a mistake.

My corporate career wasn’t a mistake because I eventually left it. Moving to Nova Scotia wasn’t a mistake because my relationship with what I built here has changed. The motel doesn’t become a mistake because I’m imagining something different for it now. And whatever I build next doesn’t have to become the final version of me either. Maybe that’s the part I’ve been learning.

We are allowed to keep becoming. Not recklessly. Not without considering the people our choices affect. And not because every uncomfortable feeling means we need to blow up our lives and start again. But we are allowed to notice when something inside us changes.

And I wonder if you’ve felt that too.

Maybe you’ve never moved across the country or walked away from a career. Maybe, from the outside, your life looks almost exactly the way you hoped it would. Maybe you love your partner. Maybe you’re proud of the family you’ve raised. Maybe you’ve worked hard for the career you have, the home you live in, the business you’ve built, the friendships you’ve kept.

Maybe there isn’t one obvious thing you can point to and say, There. That’s what’s wrong.

And yet.

Every once in a while, something catches you.

A Sunday night when the weekend disappeared and you aren’t quite sure you were actually in it. A conversation that makes you realize how long it’s been since someone asked what you wanted. A photograph of yourself from years ago that makes you wonder where that version of you went. A trip where you suddenly feel more alive than you have in months. A quiet moment when everyone else is taken care of and, for once, nobody needs anything from you.

And there it is.

Not necessarily unhappiness. Not a crisis.

Just a flicker.

Is this all there is?

And maybe your instinct is the same as mine was. To shut it down. Don’t be ridiculous. Look at everything you have. You should be grateful. Other people would love this life. What exactly do you have to complain about?

Maybe nothing. Maybe that’s why the question can be so difficult to admit.

Because what if nothing has to be terribly wrong for you to wonder whether something could be different? What if you don’t have to justify the question before you’re allowed to ask it? What if you don’t need to immediately know what it means?

You don’t have to quit the job.

Leave the relationship.

Sell the house.

Start the business.

Book the flight.

Become an entirely different woman by Tuesday.

Maybe you don’t have to do anything with it yet. Maybe the first thing is simply allowing yourself to hear it.

Can we stay here for a minute?

With the discomfort.

With the contradiction.

With the gratitude for what is and the curiosity about what else might be.

Without rushing to turn the question into an answer.

Because maybe Is this all there is? isn’t an accusation. Maybe it’s not telling you that you’ve chosen wrong. Maybe it’s simply asking you to notice that something inside you is speaking.

And perhaps the question isn’t: What am I supposed to change?

Perhaps, for now, it’s simply: What am I noticing?

Cheryl

Founder, Sacred Soul

Sacred Spaces for Transformation