When Life Looks Good But Something Still Feels Missing

What if the feeling you've been trying to fix isn't dissatisfaction at all?

What if it's grief?

Not grief for something you've lost.

Grief for something you haven't yet lived.

In this episode, Melissa explores the quiet tension that can arise when life looks good on the outside, but something deeper keeps whispering that there is more.

Together we explore:

• The difference between dissatisfaction and soul longing
• Why this feeling often appears after we've built a successful life
• Grief as love with nowhere to go
• The hidden agreements that keep us playing small
• Why comparison can sometimes be a clue
• What your soul may be trying to express through you

This conversation is an invitation to stop asking:

"What's wrong with me?"

And start asking:

"What wants to come through me?"

Companion article:

The Grief of a Life Unlived:
https://open.substack.com/pub/themelissaamos/p/the-grief-of-a-life-unlived?r=2cwz2j&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Learn more about Success Codes: https://melissa-amos.com/the-success-codes/

Memoirs of a Mystic In Training, by Melissa Amos is available on Amazon

Learn more about Melissa by visiting her website melissa-amos.com and download a free hypnotherapeutic series, Intuition Rewired. 

Follow her @themelissaamos across the platforms 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Mystic in Training podcast. With me, your host, Melissa Amos. Life is a funny game, and never is it truer when you get reflective and when things seem to be going well. I am reminded of Alanis Morissette when she sang Ironic that life is serving you a lemonade, and then all of a sudden you realize that actually what was sitting under it was some pretty sour lemons, and it was the sugar, the artificial sugar that you put on top, which is the thing that's been making life sweet. Wow, I don't know where that metaphor came from, but as I said it, it feels so true in my body. This is not to say that the lemonade that was served was bad, but it's to say that sometimes it's not true. Sometimes what we're experiencing in our lives is not necessarily built from nature's architecture, and it's built from things having to be added on top, artificial flavorings and colourings that make something look like it's meant to be that, but really underneath it's not. So, what on earth am I speaking about? Well, I've been diving deep, as always, into purpose and actually what it means to live a life that is a line that's following the golden thread, and actually what happens when we don't. Because it's often the case that we've spent all of our lives building up to something, we've taken the career, we've had the relationship, we've built the home, but then we get to a point and we think, is this what I really wanted? Is this the life that has always been pulling me? And actually, if I was to make the decision now, would I still choose the same thing? And I think when we get really honest with this question, we can begin to understand that what was true for us when we were at school, when we were choosing our GCSE or our major options, when we were graduating, when we were picking our first job, or so often, I hear this so often, we fell into a job which then became our career because we were pretty good at it and it had the prospects. And then we get to a point and we look around for a little bit longer than we've usually allowed ourselves, and we're like, whose life am I living anyway? Is this really made with lemons, or are we drinking some artificial flavoured plastic? And it's a question that for you brave souls, I suggest you ask. This is not life is wrong. This is not, oh my gosh, dissatisfaction. This isn't unhappiness, this isn't depression, this is this soul-level unease. And I think what the difference is that when we are looking at dissatisfaction or unhappiness, it's normally a case of what wants to be changed. It's normally a case of what do I need to stop? What is no longer working for me in that way? And I think that this can be part of it, but the difference with what I'm talking about is actually the driver of this, is the something else that wants to come through me. This isn't like, oh, well, I don't like this relationship because they're bad for me, or I don't like this job because I'm unhappy. This is the something else that wants to come through me, and I'm denying myself that. That's something very different. That's a very different driving force than trying to move away from something. I think the soul can give you that symptom sometimes. But that's the first question that I'd begin to ask myself. Is it just that this is something that I don't like? Or is there something sitting underneath it that's going, there's an expression, there's something coming through. The thing is, is this often happens when life is really good, when we have built the thing. You know, I even think back to when I was working at Mercedes. I had worked really hard to get to where I wanted to be. I had built the experience and the reputation and the money and the clients and all of the things that I needed. And it seemed to me that the most logical choice was I carry on moving in this direction. I'll have a good pension, I'll be well paid, I'll be respected in the community. I definitely had a very nice car. But one of the symptoms was this dissatisfaction. But it wasn't until there was this other force, after I'd taken my Reiki training, actually, that wanted to move through me that was like, yeah, this isn't working, and yeah, this isn't working, and really you want to be in a space where you're doing something different. Lucky for me back then, I listened to that voice pretty quickly. But when life is going well, when you've got, when it looks like you've got everything figured out, when everyone around you is going, oh my god, your life's amazing, you're so lucky, and inside you're thinking, oh, if only you knew. This might have surprised you as much as it surprised me, because I always thought that grief was something that happened when you lost somebody, when a relationship changed. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized that the medicine to this feeling of there's something that wants to come through me, the underlying frequency and feeling is grief. Because what's grief? Grief is love which has nowhere to go. Grief is love that can't be expressed in the way that you knew how to express it. Grief is often this overwhelming feeling, this flooding of what's coming on, but that's not grief, that's a symptom of grief. The grief that sits underneath is it is love with nowhere to go. And when you think about your soul and how your soul is driving you, what is your soul? Your soul is the pure embodiment of love. The soul is your aspect of the greatest love that you have. And all the while, where we're looking outside of us and going, and my life is perfect, I can't change anything, leave me alone. I don't want to dismantle what I've already built. People rely on me, people have a version of me. It will be highly inconvenient for me to listen to you. Then that is your purest expression of love with nowhere to go. And the feeling that sits underneath that, the feeling that comes from that when we stop for long enough and go beneath the anger and the frustration and the disappointment and the denial, which by the way, are all easier feelings to deal with, is grief. And who wants to feel that? Especially when your life is good. Because when your life is good and you start to get this itch, we start to tell ourselves stories like, well, I'm really ungrateful, or there must be something wrong with me. I remember when I was at Mercedes and I had on paper everything that I could need, yet I had this sadness that sat underneath me, and I thought I was broken. I'm like, well, there must be something wrong with me. I must be depressed because there's no reason for me to be sad. But the reason why I was feeling like I was feeding is because there was something underneath me that wanted to be expressed that could not be satisfied in the role that I was in. For years, actually, I denied some of that. It was when I took the Reiki training that was the catalyst to me actually saying no. I quit my job very quickly after that. Why I think because my soul got bigger in that moment. During that achievement, I had this expansion and I could no longer ignore it. But for years, I denied that. I told myself that it would it would be stupid to leave. And I asked myself questions like, why can't I just be happy? Why can't I just be satisfied with this? People are always telling me how amazing it is, the life that I live. But I'm not sure I really felt it. And you know what? I could have stayed. And I think for so many of us, we do stay because our conditioning and our programming, the things that our parents tell us is important, the thing that society tells us is important, the thing that actually our safety mechanisms that sit underneath that are like, we're good, right? Like we've got the house, we've got the job, we've got the finances, we've got, we've got survival, survival box ticked. Why should we rock the boat and change that? And so we keep on building and building and building from this life that is actually going further and further away from this voice, from this love from our soul, that all it wants to do is express through us. Your soul is your highest authority because your soul is the part that wants you to evolve. The soul is the part that knows that we're here for a reason, and that reason is needs to be expressed. It needs to be expressed, but our conditioning is so entrenched in this is what I should be doing. And so we build our life from the version of us of when we were at school, or when we were 20, or when we fell into this job, or when we found that relationship, and it can look like the perfect life, but what if it's not the perfect life for you? What if it was the perfect life for who you were 20 years ago? But now, now with your experience, now with the power that your soul has been growing, now with the healing that you've done, now with the evidence that you've seen outside of yourself, with people that you might follow on Instagram or Facebook, or that you see and that you admire in the world, you see that they can do it, and then you're left feeling like, well, that's not fair. It's all right for them. And you look at them and think, well, this isn't possible for me, and you doom scroll and end up feeling more depressed. But what if those lives that you were seeing that were activating that thing in you actually was a clue to what it is that you want to be doing? Was the universe relating to your soul and going, hey, hey, hey, this is possible. But your psyche, your safety mechanisms, your codings and your hidden agreements are all looking at them and going, that can't be for me because that can't be for me because the soul doesn't say that can't be for me because the soul goes, hey, try this. But all of the while that the soul is trying its best, through the frustrations that you are feeling, through the universal coincidences that are coming your way, through the desires that you have in your being, through the talents and the strengths, through the things that activate you, through the things that trigger you, all the while that we ignore it, we're shutting it down. And that love has nowhere to go. That love gets compressed into this. And we layer it up with I'm just going to be busy. We layer it up with what my life is. We layer it up with the things that are immediately around us because that somehow feels safer. Because that somehow feels familiar. And I am sorry to say it, but as a psychotherapist, I know that this is what our psychology is designed to do. It's designed to keep us safe. And you know what? That's the clue for you that this isn't coming from like some weird experience of oh, well, I'm gonna do this. Like this, this is not coming from that part of you. This is coming from the non-logic. This is coming from the greatest part of you, this is coming from love, and when we don't listen, there's a feeling underneath. And if we're not careful, we try and soothe it, or we try and medicate it, or we try and placate it, but that feeling, that grief, you're not meant to heal it. This is the sort of grief that's meant to be coming and letting you unravel. This is the sort of grief that's going, hey, pay me attention, you need to feel me now in my fullness, and that is scary. Why would we walk headfirst into grief? Are we mad? Because as we move headfirst into grief, what does grief tell you? Life is never gonna be the same again. When you lose somebody and you feel that grief, that's what we're feeling. Life is never gonna be the same again. How am I gonna cope without this? Everything that I knew to be true about me, about this relationship, about this person, about life, about how I move through the world is different. It's changed. And at this point, you don't have the conscious resources to go, yes, it's cool. I'm gonna be able to do this. When you're in the throes of grief, the experience is I'm I'm never gonna be the same again. I'm never gonna be able to handle this. So why why would we step in? Well, there's one reason why because this grief is love with nowhere to go. And so actually, what we're stepping into is the deepest love for ourselves. What we're stepping into is not the unraveling of us, it's the unraveling of the aspects of us that we have built based on a version of us that no longer exists. What we're unraveling are the constructs of what we have decided is true about the world, what is possible for us. We're living our lives for other people, and the soul goes, Yes, we're here to impact and to relate. We're not meant to do this alone, but you've got your own soul signature, and all the right while you're signing someone else's name, that love that sits underneath, that grief that has nowhere to go, has nowhere to go, and it's gonna keep on showing up for you, it's gonna keep on showing up for you in longing, it's gonna keep on showing up for you in like lack of energy. You can imagine it as you can imagine this soul as like a boy, not like a young child, like a boy in the water, and it's full of air, it's it's it's designed to float. Yet you're spending half of your life, or maybe more, pushing it down with one hand, going, don't emerge, don't come up here. And so you've got one hand on this, and the other one's desperately trying to keep you afloat. And that is tiring, that takes a lot of energy. That means that you're only available with like half your resources. And so if you're trying to then build your dream from where you already are, then then you're like, Well, I have got nothing else to give. I've got this like perfect life, she says with quotation marks. I've got this perfect life that's it's fine, it's fine, everything's working, it's fine. Don't rock the boat. Meanwhile, you can't even steer the boat because you've got one hand on the boy, the other hand's trying to navigate, and you've got no energy left. So you'd be mad to try and change anything until you let go and you breathe, and you let the water ripple around you as the boy comes to the surface and starts to bobble on, and you let yourself relax fully in the water, and you're like, Oh cool. I actually don't need to effort here because the water's holding me up, and when you're in that space, the question then becomes, what now? Now that my energy is freed up, now that I can feel the support of the universe and me and what I'm built of and everything around me, what becomes possible. Now that I've allowed my soul to become free and available and become my authority, become the thing that I'm listening to the most, then what you're tapping into is an infinite form of love, which now has somewhere to go, which now has the greatest journey to go on, which is now fully expressed without being pushed down, and now from when you build that life, it's coming from the sweetest, juiciest, freshest Sicilian lemons freshly squeezed for you in that moment, which has the nourishment, which has the cleansing factor, which has the delight, which has the life force, which is just gonna keep on going without leaving a bit of taste in your mouth. But the way through it is to be very honest with yourself and to just ask yourself those questions what version of me built this life? Is this still true for me? Does this still resonate? And the answer isn't okay, well now just go and burn everything down and start again. The soul doesn't really want that for you. That's when you know that you're coming from the pendulum swung too far, you're coming from the mind. When you come from the soul, and we allow ourselves to feel and tap into that love and to feel the sadness of the life that we hadn't lived yet, the denial that we'd had, and just let that energy come through and express us and ask yourself what you're really longing for. Ask yourself what wants to come through me. Ask yourself if I was really here for a reason, then I could do anything. What would it be? What would I do? And let that inform the next decision, let that inform the next action. Your soul isn't meant to lead you towards hurt and disarray, and it's also not meant to disappoint everybody, but it's you are meant to be put first every time. And when we learn the difference between what the soul is trying to communicate and what the rest of us is trying to communicate, your life becomes a different story. Life that you are here to live starts to emerge, and there's a freedom with that that goes beyond anything that you've ever really dreamed of because you've not allowed yourself to do it so far. So, dear listener, if some grief has come up, if this episode is resonating with you, I recommend you go onto my substack. You'll find it at the Melissa Ramos. I'll link it in the show notes. And just know that even this grief isn't something that is gonna tear you down. This grief is something that wants to move through you, and when you allow yourself to feel it, you'll unlock the next level of you. I will see you next time.