Ep 151:When the Life You Built Stops Fitting: A Body, Mind & Spirit Guide to Realignment After 40

Have you ever looked at your life, you know, the one that looks pretty good from the outside, and felt like something just doesn't quite fit? Not a crisis. Just that persistent sense that something's off and you can't explain why.

In this episode I get personal about my own experience with misalignment: imposter syndrome, people-pleasing, and the attachment patterns quietly running the show,  and why this feeling is far more common than we talk about.

I break down two kinds of misalignment most of us never distinguish, what your body, mind, and spirit are trying to tell you when something feels off, and practical starting points for closing the gap without overhauling your entire life.

If you've ever thought "I should be happier than this",  this one's for you!

Resources mentioned: 

➡️ Life Wheel Exercise

➡️ Values Exercise 

➡️ Wellness Wake Up intro program — $99 

Transcript

25,000 Downloads & Welcome

0:00

Hello, friends, and welcome back to Real Brave and Unstoppable. I'm your host, Kortney Rivard, and I'm so glad you're here with me today listening to the 151st episode of the show. I have to share something I'm really proud of. So last week, my podcast, Real Brave and Unstoppable, reached 25,000 downloads. I'm so excited about that. I think that's pretty cool. When I started this podcast, I guess I started it in 2020, so we were, in COVID. I guess I started it probably shortly after COVID was a thing. And, I knew nothing about podcasting, and I did what I always do is I dive in, I figure it out, and I've had a lot of fun doing it. I get feedback all the time that my podcast has helped people with certain things, and so I would really love it if, uh, you know, we could start working to the next milestone, which I think is, 50,000 downloads,

The Question Worth Sitting With

0:58

right? So moving on to today's episode, we're going to talk about when our life feels like it just doesn't fit us anymore. So I wanna start today's episode with a question, and I want you to sit with it for just a second. Don't let it just pff pass through you. But here's the question: When was the last time your life actually felt like it fit you? And if the answer is yes, today, that's amazing, and I love it. Now, I don't mean perfect or without problems or stress or hard days, just like it was actually yours. It reflected who you really are and what matters to you most. You're living it instead of just managing it. So some of you will be like, "Yeah, I feel like my life fits me." And some of you might be like, "Yeah, no, it really doesn't fit me, and I haven't felt that way in a while." And some of you might be somewhere in between. But if it doesn't resonate, stick with me 'cause chances are there's something in this episode that will. And for a lot of women, this question is really a lot harder to answer than it should be.

When the Problem Was the Version of Me Showing Up

2:08

So for me, I have had several moments in my life where I felt this way. And as I think about these times It's almost hard to articulate them. And actually, to be honest, when I really reflect on it, I think my life didn't fit me a lot of the time. I often had this sense that something didn't quite fit. But for a long time, I thought the problem was me, not the life. And, uh, so at work when I got out of college, I had imposter syndrome so deep that I convinced myself I didn't belong in the room, even when I'd earned my place there. In relationships, I kept showing up as whoever I thought I needed to be to... for someone to choose me, which meant I was rarely fully myself. I was really performing a version of me that felt safe and acceptable, that felt like it wouldn't, that felt like it wouldn't ask too much or push too hard or take up too much space. And I kept choosing relationships that confirmed what I believed about myself underneath all of it, that I wasn't quite enough just as I was, that I had to earn my place, and that love was conditional on how well I managed myself. So it wasn't really until I started doing some honest work on my attachment patterns, on those wounds that were underneath the surface really driving my relationship choices without me fully realizing it, it wasn't until then that I started to see the thread running through all of this. The misalignment for me personally wasn't just about my career or my relationships or my circumstances. It was really about the version of me that was showing up in all of it, a version of me that was built around fear of not being enough, of what people thought, or of being truly seen and, and really found wanting for something different. And when I finally saw that clearly, something shifted because I realized the life didn't fit because I hadn't been fully living it as myself. I'd been living it as a carefully managed, people-pleasing, imposter syndrome-riddled version of myself. And that version, as understandable as she was, wasn't who I actually wanted to be. That's the work that changed everything for me. Not changing my circumstances first, changing my relationship with myself first. And that's what today's episode is about, that feeling when the life you worked really hard to build just doesn't quite fit anymore. Sometimes it's 'cause you've grown and your circumstances haven't kept up, and sometimes, and this one's harder to see, it's because you've been living as a version of yourself that was never really yours to begin with So if you've ever thought, "I should be happier than this," or, "I thought I'd feel more something by now," just stick with me, 'cause I think at the end of this episode, you're gonna feel a lot less alone in that

Does Any of This Sound Familiar?

5:06

So let me paint a picture, and I want you to tell me honestly in your own head how much of this sounds familiar. So you have a life that from the outside it looks pretty darn good. You worked hard, you've shown up, you've built something pretty real, and you have people who love you and things to be grateful for and, you know, all of that stuff. But yet there's this low level kind of restlessness that doesn't quite go away, a sense that something's off and you can't always name it. You go through your days doing all the things, checking all the boxes, and somewhere underneath all of it, there's this little voice that keeps saying, "This doesn't quite feel like me. Life feels like something is lacking." So maybe it showed up after a big transition, your kids leaving home, maybe a relationship ending or changing. Maybe you've hit a milestone at work that you thought would feel better than it actually does. Or maybe it just showed up one Tuesday afternoon with no obvious reason at all. You woke up, looked at your life, started to go through your day and thought, "Is this it? I really thought it would be more beautiful than this. And the thing that makes this especially hard is that there's often really nothing to point to. Nothing's falling apart. You're not in crisis, which makes it really easy to dismiss. You tell yourself you should be more grateful. You need to push it down and keep going. But that feeling, it is not ingratitude or weakness. It's not you being difficult or dramatic. It's actually one of the most common and least talked about experiences for women in their 40s and 50s. I hear it all the time from people I work with. "I don't feel like myself. I thought I'd feel happier than I do. Nothing's really wrong, so why does this feel off? I don't feel like my life has purpose or meaning." So you are not alone in this, not even a little bit. I talk to people about this stuff all the time. It's very common.

Why the Life You Built Stops Fitting

7:03

So let's talk about why this happens because I think when we understand it, we can stop blaming ourselves for it, and we can be a little more self-compassionate. And I wanna look at this the way I look at everything, through the lens of body, mind, and spirit because this isn't just one thing. It touches all three of them. But let's start here with something that I think is really important to hear. The life that you built, it was built by a different version of you. So think about that for a second. The decisions that shaped your current life about your career, your relationships, where you live, how you spend your time, what you're working towards, most of those were made by a woman with different priorities, different pressures, and a different sense of who she was really. Maybe she was in her 20s or 30s. Maybe she was navigating a different season entirely. That woman made the best decisions she could with what she had. But she was not you, not the you that exists right now. And here's somebody that nobody tells us. We're supposed to change. That's not failure. You know? It's growth. We're supposed to grow. But sometimes the life doesn't change with us, and that's when this gap starts to form that doesn't feel comfortable. Now I wanna talk about why high-achieving women are especially prone to this, and I say this with a lot of love because I am one of you. When you build a life based on what looks right, so what's responsible, impressive, what checks the boxes, what earns approval from the people around you, you can end up very far from what actually feels right. External success does not automatically equal internal alignment, and for a lot of capable, accomplished women, it takes until their 40s to even start asking the question And it takes even more to actually admit That maybe that external success doesn't equate to feeling internally aligned with what's important.

The Two Kinds of Misalignment (And Why It Matters)

9:18

And what I wanna add to that, 'cause I think it's really important, is that there are actually two kinds of misalignment. So we don't always talk about both of them, and I talked about it a little earlier. The first is external misalignment. So your circumstances have stayed the same, but you've grown. The career you chose at 30 no longer fits the woman you are at 45 or 50. The relationship you built in one season of your life doesn't reflect who you are in this one, and you're growing in different ways. The way you've been spending your time and energy stopped making sense somewhere along the way, too. But the second kind, and this one is harder to see, it's the one I talked about earlier, is internal misalignment. So you've been living as a version of yourself that was built around fear or old wounds or what other people needed from you, not because you chose that consciously, but because that's what felt safe and survivable. And remember, our brain's number one job is to protect its human. So whatever we need to do to survive, it's, we're gonna gravitate towards that. The problem is the things that our brain sees as threats are not really always threats. There's a lot of pseudo-threats, let's just call them. And that's a topic for another episode. But I lived with the second one for a really long time. The imposter syndrome, the people-pleasing, the attachment patterns that kept pulling me towards relationships that confirmed my worst fears about myself rather than my truest beliefs about what I deserved none of that was something I chose intentionally. It was just the version of me that had learned to navigate the world. And both kinds of misalignment deserve attention, but the internal one, that's the one that tends to run everything else, because until you start getting honest about that, the external changes don't hold.

What Your Body, Mind & Spirit Are Trying to Tell You

11:20

So let's look at this through the three pillars, starting with spirit because I think this is where the disconnect lives most deeply for most women. Our values evolve as we do. They're not fixed forever, okay? They might overall be fairly similar as we get older, but what felt central and important at 32, like ambition, achievement, building something, proving yourself, it might not really be what matters most at 45, for example. Things like freedom, authenticity, connection, and meaning tend to really move to the front, and I see this a lot with my clients. My 20-something clients are very focused on, "What am I gonna build? Let me move up in my career." And some of my 40s and 50s clients are that way too, but some of them also are like, uh, actually most of them even if they are still really wanting to achieve and be ambitious in their careers, they do start to really value things like freedom and connection and things like that. Meaning really moves towards the front. Finding meaning in their lives, our lives. And when the life you're living doesn't reflect what actually matters to you now, everything feels like it's rubbing the wrong way, even the good stuff. Even the things that you worked really hard to create And then there's the mind piece because when something feels off, our minds tend to ask the wrong question. We ask, "What's wrong with me?" or, "What did I do wrong?" And those questions keep us spinning in self-criticism and confusion without actually going anywhere. The better question here, the one that actually goes somewhere, is what's changed in me and what does my life need to reflect right now? That's a question that's worth sitting with. And then there's our body pillar because chronic misalignment, living out of sync with who you really are and what you need, that shows up physically. Fatigue that sleep doesn't fix, a flatness in your energy, might be going through the motions of taking care of yourself and everyone else without it actually feeling restorative. When your spirit is offline and your mind is running on the wrong story, your body feels it. All three are connected. They always are.

Let's Clear Something Up

13:35

So before we talk about what to do with this, I wanna spend a minute on what this is not because a lot of women, I think, dismiss this feeling or feel guilty for having it, and I wanna address that directly. All of this is not ingratitude. I wanna say that really clearly because I know that's where a lot of women go first. "I have so much to be grateful for. Why can't I just be happy with what I have? I have an amazing life. Why do I feel so blah?" You can love your life and the people in it, you can be genuinely grateful for what you've built, and you can still feel like something needs to shift. Those two things can absolutely coexist. Gratitude and misalignment are not mutually exclusive. It's just like when I have clients who we talk about gratitude. And, you know, maybe implementing a gratitude practice. I'm always really careful to make sure that I clarify gratitude because gratitude is not just ignoring the things that are hard in our lives. It's making our brain look at the things that are good also. You know, life is 50/50-ish. We have good things, we have bad things, and we have a lot in between. And so when we practice gratitude, since our brain always wants to look at what's wrong, we're forcing it to sort of look at the other end of the buffet table, for example. So when we are feeling like something's off, it doesn't mean that we're not being grateful. Doesn't mean that. And questioning your life is not the same as rejecting it either. Noticing that something doesn't fit isn't the same as wanting to blow everything up. It's actually the opposite. It's the beginning of building something more honest to yourself. And this is also not a midlife crisis. Like I don't, really don't like that framing. It's dismissive, it's a little bit condescending, and it completely misses what's actually happening, which is a real meaningful signal that deserves to be taken seriously. It's also not permanent. This feeling is information. It's not a life sentence. The discomfort of this doesn't fit is actually a form of clarity trying to get your attention, and clarity, even when it's uncomfortable, is always a good thing. Whether it's circumstances that have outgrown you or it's a version of yourself you've been living that was really never yours, both of those are workable. Both of those are the beginning of something, not the

Where to Actually Start

16:04

end. Okay, so now what do we actually do with this? Now, I wanna be really clear upfront. I'm not gonna tell you to quit your job, or leave your relationship, or move somewhere completely different and start over. That might be right for some people, but most of the time a life that fits better is found much closer to home than that. So let's start with the most important thing, which is awareness before action. Before you change anything, before you make any big decisions or major moves, just notice where specifically does the misalignment live? Is it in your work, your relationships, how you spend your time, your relationship with your body, the story you've been telling yourself about who you are? You can't really close a gap that you haven't located yet, so just start there. Get curious. Where does your life feel the most friction? Not dramatic conflict, just that low-level sense of, "This isn't quite right." And one thing I really love for this is the life wheel exercise. I have a freebie, I'll link it in the show notes, that you can download, that helps you go through and kind of evaluate different areas of your life. And it's a great exercise 'cause it helps you break things down and really look at different areas, different domains of your life. So I would highly recommend doing that. The second thing is to get honest about your values. What matters to you? Not what you think you should value, not what you valued five years ago, but what actually matters to you right now in this season as the woman you are today. And I also have a values exercise that you can download that's really great. So I'll link that in the show notes as well. But when you know that, you have a compass. Decisions get clearer, the gap between your life and your values becomes more visible, and so does the path to closing that gap. I actually think values work is some of the most powerful work there is, and it's something I do with almost every person I coach at some point.

It's Not a New Life — It's a More Honest One

18:00

And then I wanna offer you a reframe that has really shifted things for a lot of the women I work with. There's a big difference between I need a completely different life, and I need to reconnect with myself within the life I already have. Those two things feel similar on the surface, but they actually, they lead to very different places. One is running away from discomfort. So our feeling, our emotion, our discomfort is really running the show there. The other is moving toward alignment, and most of the time, not always, but most of the time, what's actually needed is the second one. Not a new life, a more honest version of the one you already have. That might mean adding things that are missing, space, joy, creativity, connection, things that got pushed to the side in the business of managing everything else in your life. That might mean releasing things that no longer serve you: commitments you made out of obligation, roles you've outgrown, family dynamics that don't work for you anymore, stories about yourself that stopped being true a long time ago. And it might also mean some harder things too. It might mean honest conversations or boundaries that feel really uncomfortable at first. It could mean making choices that prioritize you in a way that you're not used to. For me, one of the most significant shifts came when I stopped trying to fix my relationships and started looking honestly at the patterns that I was bringing to them. I had attachment wounds, most of us do, honestly, in one form or another, and for a long time, those wounds were really kind of running the show underneath everything, and they were really driving the choices I made about who to be with, how much of myself to show up with, how much space I allowed myself to take up. And as long as that was happening beneath the surface, nothing I changed on the outside was gonna fix the feeling of misalignment or choosing the wrong partners. So when I finally started doing this internal work, really looking at the patterns, understanding where they came from, making different choices, even when the old ones felt safer and more familiar, things started to shift. Not just in my relationships with other people, but also in my relationship with myself. And I wanna be really honest with you, that work is uncomfortable. Choosing differently when the old pattern is deeply grooved is not an easy thing to do. It requires sitting with some feelings that the old version of you would have done anything to avoid. But on the other side of it is something that I can only describe as finally feeling like yourself. So that's what closing the gap actually feels like. Not perfect, not without hard days, just more like you. It's a pretty good deal.

The Reframe That Changes Everything

20:48

And so let me zoom out for a second and say the thing I really want you to take with you from this episode. The feeling that your life doesn't fit isn't the problem. It's actually the beginning of something. It's normal. It's the moment that you start building a life that's actually yours, not the one that you inherited, not the one that looked right from the outside, not the one built by a younger version of you who didn't yet know what she knows now. It's the one that reflects who you actually are, what you actually value, and what actually matters to you right now. And here's what I want you to really hear about that. You didn't do anything wrong by building the life you built. You did the best you could with who you were then, and you built a life that worked for you then, with the information you had, the pressures you were navigating, the version of yourself that was making those decisions at the time. And now you just get to do it again with more self-knowledge, more clarity, more honesty about what actually matters. And that's not a setback, if you think about it. It's really a remarkable advantage. So the people I work with who do this work, who get honest about where the misalignment is and start making intentional shifts towards a life that fits, they don't just feel better. They feel more like themselves than they have in years, and that changes everything, like how they show up in their relationships, how they take care of their bodies, how they move through their days, all of it. You built this life. You can also shape it. And the fact that something doesn't fit right now doesn't mean you failed. It doesn't mean you're in a crisis. It means you grew, and growing is always worth paying attention to.

Questions to Sit With

22:34

Before I let you go, I wanna leave you with a few questions to sit with. You don't have to answer them right now. Just let them float around in the back of your mind and just see what comes up. Get curious. The first question is: Where in your life do you feel the most friction right now? Not a crisis, just that undercurrent or sense of this isn't quite right. What did you used to value that no longer feels as central to you, and what matters more to you now? If you stripped away what looks right and just asked yourself what feels right, what would change? And, what's one small adjustment, just one, that would bring your life a little closer to fitting? You don't have to have those answers today. Just asking the questions is a really powerful place to start

Work With Kortney + Until Next Time

23:23

All right, my friends, that is what I have for you today, and I really hope this one landed. If you heard yourself in this episode, if some part of you is sitting with that yes, that is totally me feeling, I just want you to know that this is exactly the kind of work I do with women inside of my coaching practice. I do a lot of things in my coaching practice. This is one thing that we work through. So it's not just identifying where the misalignment is, it's actually figuring out what to do about it in your body, your mind, your spirit, in a way that feels real and doable for the life you actually have. So a really good place to start is my Wellness Wake Up intro program. It is 99 bucks. It's personalized, and it's designed to help you get clear on what's actually going on and what your next right steps are. It's a great way to sort of test out working with me and get some really good steps for you to start moving towards something that feels good. I'll link it in the show notes if you wanna check it out. And as always, if this episode resonated with you, the best thing that you can do, and I so much appreciate it, is share it with someone who needs to hear it. Or, leave me a rating and review. It helps other people find the show, and it really means so much to me. So thank you for being here, friends. Thank you for being part of my community here. I will see you next time