Life Left Me Speechless.

Which is inconvenient, because I usually have a lot to say.

There are periods in life when you have a very clear narrative. You know what happened. You know how you feel about it. You know what you learned. You can package the whole thing beautifully into a lesson about growth, add a clever sentence at the end and move on. This is not one of those periods.

Lately, life has left me a little… speechless. Not because nothing is happening. Quite the opposite. Too much has happened. Things I wanted happened. Things I didn’t want happened too. People surprised me. I surprised myself. Plans changed. Some things ended. Other things started without asking whether I was ready. Very rude, actually.

And somewhere in between all of that, I realised I didn’t have a clear conclusion. For someone who spends a lot of her life making meaning out of things, this has been an interesting development.

I Usually Want To Understand Everything

Occupational hazard, perhaps. I love questions.

Why did I react like that?

What does this mean?

What pattern is hiding underneath this?

What am I supposed to learn?

What happens next?

My brain would happily turn a slightly strange Tuesday afternoon into a 3-part psychological investigation. And most of the time, I love that about myself. Curiosity has changed my life. Self-awareness has changed my life. Asking better questions has helped me understand myself, make difficult decisions, leave things that no longer felt right and create things that once existed only as slightly chaotic notes on my phone.

But I’m learning there is another side to self-awareness. Knowing when to stop analysing. Because sometimes life doesn’t need an immediate interpretation. Sometimes it needs to be lived first.

Maybe We Are Too Obsessed With Making Everything Meaningful

We love a transformation story. Especially online. The breakdown becomes the breakthrough. The rejection becomes redirection. The terrible boss becomes the reason you started your business. The heartbreak becomes the best thing that ever happened to you. Everything gets tied together beautifully in the final paragraph. And sometimes that is what happens.

But sometimes something difficult happens and it is simply difficult. Sometimes something beautiful happens and you don’t need to turn it into a strategy. Sometimes you change your mind. Sometimes you outgrow a version of yourself without immediately knowing who comes next. Sometimes you are standing somewhere between this no longer feels like me and I have absolutely no idea what does. That space is uncomfortable. But I’m starting to think it might also be one of the most interesting places we can be.

The Space Before The Answer

We talk a lot about clarity. I talk a lot about clarity. I literally help people find it. But perhaps clarity isn’t always knowing exactly where you’re going. Sometimes clarity is much smaller:

I know I don’t want that anymore.

I know this feels good.

I know I need more space.

I know I miss this part of myself.

I know I’m curious about what happens if I try.

No 5-year plan. No dramatic reinvention. Just small pieces of truth. And maybe that’s enough information for the next step. Just the next one.

Life Is Quite Bad At Following Our Project Plans

Annoying, considering how much we love making them. We create timelines for careers, businesses, relationships, bodies, money, healing, success. By 30, this. By next summer, that. Six-month strategy. Three-year vision. Q4 goals. New year, new me.

Meanwhile life is somewhere in the corner laughing. Because life moves. People move. We move. And the version of you who created the plan is not necessarily the version of you who has to live it. I used to think changing direction meant I had failed to follow through. Now I think sometimes changing direction is the evidence that you were paying attention. That is a very different thing.

And Then There Is The Part Nobody Really Prepares You For

You can be grateful and confused. Ambitious and tired. Excited about what’s coming and nostalgic for what is disappearing. Proud of yourself and still wondering what on earth you are doing. You can love your life and want to change it. Two things can be true at the same time. Actually, five things can be true at the same time. Humans are inconveniently complex like that. And perhaps we create unnecessary suffering when we force ourselves to choose one clean emotional headline.

I am happy.

I am lost.

I am successful.

I am struggling.

Maybe the sentence is allowed to contain an and.

I am happy and something needs to change.

I am scared and I want to do it.

I don’t know what happens next and I trust myself.

That last one has become particularly important to me.

I Don’t Know What Happens Next

There. A Business Psychologist has said it publicly on the internet. Please remain calm. I don’t know exactly what the next version of my work looks like. I don’t know which ideas will become something and which will remain beautifully overambitious Notes entries. I don’t know which people will stay. I don’t know which rooms I haven’t entered yet. I don’t know which version of myself I haven’t met yet.

And strangely, I’m becoming less interested in forcing the answer. Because perhaps the point isn’t to predict your life perfectly. Perhaps the point is to build enough of a relationship with yourself that when life changes (because it will) you trust yourself to meet it. To notice. To respond. To choose again. To say no. To say yes. To leave. To begin. To rest. To become someone you hadn’t planned for.

So, yes. Life left me speechless

For once, I don’t have a framework. No 7-step process. No downloadable PDF. Devastating for the personal development industry, I know.

I just have this:

Some chapters of your life are not asking to be understood while you are inside them. They are asking to be experienced. Maybe the meaning comes later. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe one morning, months from now, you’ll be drinking coffee and suddenly realise: Oh! That’s what that was.

Until then, I’m trying something slightly unfamiliar. Living the question instead of rushing towards the answer. Watching what feels alive. Paying attention to what feels heavy. Leaving a little room for surprise. And trusting that being speechless doesn’t mean having nothing to say.

Sometimes it means life is still writing the sentence.

To be continued, I suppose.