You've been trying to answer the biggest questions of your life entirely on your own. Today, we talk about why that is the very thing keeping the answer out of reach. Welcome to the Midlife Reinvention Podcast, a podcast helping women in career and life transitions achieve clarity on their next steps so they can transform uncertainty into an energizing next chapter. I'm your host, Kavita Ahuja, and the founder of It's My Time Now Coaching. If you're wondering what's next in your career or life, you are in the right place. Through solo and guest episodes, you'll gain practical tips, tools, and inspiration to help you uncover blocks, gain confidence, and be, do, and have what you want. I rediscovered myself after the age of 50, and I know you can too. It's my time now to help you do just that. I'm so excited you're here. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome back to the Midlife Reinvention Podcast. It's your coach Kabita with your Thursday check-in. On Monday's episode 322, we looked honestly at what AI can and cannot do for you when you are searching for your reason for being. And if you haven't heard it yet, do go back to it because today's episode grows right out of it. And what I want to talk to you about today is not really about AI at all. It is about something much older than any chat window, and it is something I see in almost every woman who comes to me. You've been trying to work it out on your own. And I don't mean that as a criticism because it is one of the things I understand most deeply. When something is unresolved in us, when we are quietly unhappy or restless or lost about what comes next, we tend to take that inward rather than outward. We turn it over at night, we research it and re reread about it and think about it and think about it some more. We don't want to burden anyone with it, we don't want to look ungrateful or unstable, or as though we don't quite have it all together, when everyone around us is relying on us to have it together. So we carry it privately, sometimes for years. And the screen at midnight, the search bar, the chat window, that is only the newest version of a very old habit. It is, once again, trying to solve the most important questions of your life entirely by yourself. But here is what I've learned watching this happen for years now. The recognition, the moment your reason for being or purpose finally comes into focus, it almost never arrives while you are alone with your own thoughts. It arrives in conversation. It arrives when someone asks you the question underneath the first one. And it arrives when someone asks you the question underneath your first answer and waits. And doesn't quite let you off the hook. It arrives when you say something out loud that you have never said out loud before, and you hear yourself say it, and something in your body responds before your mind has caught up with it. And I want to talk about that feeling for a moment because it is one of the most underrated experiences there is. Think about the last time you finally told someone the truth about something you've been holding quietly for a long time. Not a dramatic confession, just the honest thing. Like, I'm not happy, or I don't want this anymore, or I think I want to do something completely different. And do you remember what happened in your body the moment those words were out? That loosening in your chest, that breath that you didn't realize you had been holding for months. That is real and that has a name. That is anabolic energy, which is the expansive opening energy that comes when we stop contracting around a truce and finally let it into the light. The energy it takes to hold something is enormous, and you've been holding it for years without noticing. And when you say it out loud to another human being, all of that energy comes rushing back to you, and you finally use it for something positive. That is why saying it out loud matters so much more than thinking it. Thinking keeps it circling. Saying it to a person sets it free. I want to read to you again a line from the woman whose words I shared with you on Monday because this client says it better than I can. She said that when she found this podcast she was at an inflection point in her life where the fear of nothing ever changing had finally outgrown the fear of the unknown. Sit with that phrase that the fear of nothing ever changing had finally outgrown the fear of the unknown. She had all of that inside her already. She had lived every moment of her own life, but it took saying it out loud to another person before it became something she could actually move on. And I think of the woman I had told you about before, the one who had reached the very top of her career and couldn't see her own greatest strengths until I questioned her about it. She had all the information she needed about herself, and yet she could not see it because she was standing inside of it. It took another person sitting across from her, listening and asking, and going back to the thing she had waved away before she could finally see what had been there the whole time. So your invitation this week, my friend, it is small, and it is a little brave. Take one of your questions, one of the real ones, the one you have been carrying quietly and bring it to a human being. Not to a screen, but to a person. That does not have to mean a coach, although you know I would love to be that person for you. It might be a friend you trust, and you simply say to her, Can I think out loud with you about something? It might be your sister or your partner, or the woman you walk with in the mornings. It might be someone who has already made the change you have been contemplating who could tell you honestly what it actually took and it might be someone at work whose judgment you have always respected. What matters is that you say the thing out loud to a face, and that somebody asks you a question back. And then notice what happens. Notice what you say when you're speaking rather than thinking, because you will surprise yourself. Notice whether something rises in your chest when you get to a particular part of it. And notice how you feel afterwards. When the thing you have been carrying along is finally out in the room and someone else knows about it too. That lightness is not your imagination, that is your energy coming back to you. You have carried this alone for long enough, and you really do not have to. And if you want a gentle place to begin building the confidence to have that conversation, a free twenty eight days to building confidence guide is there for you, with simple daily practices that make it easier for you to speak up for what you want one day at a time. The link is waiting for you in the show notes. Thank you for being here, and remember, my friend, you get to decide what comes next. So say it with me and say it with confidence. It's my time now.