What To Do When You Genuinely Don’t Know What To Do With Your Life

Many people wake up in their 40s and quietly think:

This isn’t the life I imagined.

Not because life is terrible.
 But because something feels… misaligned.

You’ve done what was expected.
 You’ve built something responsible.
 You’ve achieved things.

And yet a quiet question appears:

How did I get here?

In this episode, Vicky explores why feeling lost is rarely about lacking direction — it’s about losing connection with who you truly are.

You’ll discover:

• Why many people feel unfulfilled after achieving what they thought they wanted
• How childhood expectations quietly shape the life we build
• The difference between external success and inner alignment
• Why you can’t actually “lose yourself”
• A powerful shift that helps you reconnect with direction and purpose

If you’ve ever felt like you’re going through the motions rather than living your life intentionally, this conversation may help you see yourself — and your path — differently.

Because feeling lost is not failure.

Sometimes it’s the moment you start remembering who you really are.

Transcript

The Midlife “Is This It?” Moment

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hi, and welcome back to Rise Up and Live Podcast. My name is Vicky Ross. I am your host here, and today I want to talk about what to do when you genuinely do not know what to do with your life. This is a podcast for people who are thoughtful, capable, intelligent, and are just quietly asking themselves, is this it? Like here we are, and this is the big hype. So today I'm going to talk about something that doesn't get said out loud enough. And it's about what to do when you wake up and you kind of go, Is this it? When you genuinely do not know what to do with your life. So think about it this way: you're not in your 20s where you're still discovering and you know finding yourself and finding your vacation and finding your thing. You're probably definitely in your 40s, maybe mid-30s, but they're about mid-life. And you know, you've been building something, you've achieved a lot of things, and after you've done what you thought you were meant to do, you kind of feel empty. You wake up and think, this is not what I expected. You don't feel lost because you have no life, because you have a life. So you're not lost because you have no life, but you feel lost because the life that you've built doesn't match the life that you imagined, or it doesn't match the satisfaction that you thought you were going to get from life by doing all the things that you were told to do. You know, you went and you studied and you worked hard, you got your university degree, or whatever other sort of qualification, and then you worked in your job career, and then you saved and you did all the things that you're meant to do. And you wake up and you think, is this it? This is what the big hoo-ha was about. So I'm guessing that when you were younger, you dreamed freely, you know. And when I'm saying younger, I'm talking like below 10, maybe even below eight years old. So I'm talking about the time in your life where you were dreaming

Expectations We Inherit And Absorb

SPEAKER_00 2:36

and before there was meaning assigned to you. Like nobody said you are. So there was no meaning assigned to you. Before success was defined to you, you know, like parents are very quick to say to their kids, this is what you need to do to be successful. In fact, parents are very good at saying, if you don't do this, if you don't do that, if you keep doing this, you will not be successful. So they put the fear of God in you. It's before you learned what is a good man or a good woman or a successful adult and what does it all look like. So before all of that, you had some dreams about what you would be one day. It was an internal picture. And now when you are looking at your actual life, you're thinking, how did I get here? You didn't fail life, but you failed a deep unconscious internal expectation that you made. So you didn't fail somebody else's expectation of you, you failed your own internal expectation, and what you've created is not a failure, but it's not your desire, it's not what brings you joy. So you failed an expectation, and most of those expectations were never consciously chosen. They were absorbed from parents, from your culture, from money stories, from phrases like life is hard, money doesn't grow in trees, you have to be sensible, don't waste your talent, save security first, all of that kind of stuff that gets given to you. So you build something safe, something that is acceptable, something that is respectable, and somewhere in that process, you disconnect, and now you feel disconnected. And as a result of that, you feel dissatisfied, and that's why you feel lost. So feeling lost is not lack of direction per se, it's more a lack of identity. It's waking up at 4045 and realizing I don't actually know who I am outside of my role. So a lot of people, if I say to them, Who are you? They'll say I'm a manager or I'm a business owner, I'm a mother, I'm a father, I'm a this, I'm a you know, they identify with their professional role, with being a parent, being a provider, being the responsible one, being the high achiever. So you too have achieved and yet you feel empty because

Achievement Without Alignment Feels Hollow

SPEAKER_00 5:20

achievement without alignment will feel hollow. Now, if you're not 45 already, but you're already starting to feel that needling discomfort, it's where you're heading, and it's probably what you're already experiencing. So you go through the motions, you pay the bills, you do what needs to be done, you and it's not because of what you want to do, but it's because you feel you have to. It's like an obligation. So it's not that you've lost your direction at this stage, but you've lost your authorship. In other words, you've lost your sense of me. So you tried to be who you were told you should be. You measured yourself against the external definitions of success. And here is the quiet damage of that. When your bank account dips, you feel like a failure. When your hobby doesn't turn into income, you feel not good enough. When your business struggles, you think that you are the problem. And in some ways you are. But I just want you to look at the way that we measure ourselves, look at it as two things. The one, for instance, if you look at a business, the one is your craft and the other one is a business skill. And you may be excellent at your craft, but you haven't learned how to run a business properly. The failing isn't because you're not good enough, it's because you haven't learned how to do something. So instead of separating those two, you collapse them together and you decide I'm just not good at this. And then you feel lost because you followed something that you really, really wanted to do and didn't succeed. So when you have that kind of identity, it's not truth that you're not good enough, it's an ego identification. So let's go a little bit deeper in this whole sort of aspect of being lost and who are we? Most people still believe that they are that identity that they have created, that they are their minds, they believe that they are their thoughts, they believe they are their bodies. But listen carefully to your own language. You will say, my house, my car, my shoes, my hand, my foot, my mind, my thoughts. So instinctively, you speak as if you know who those things are. You know when you say my house, that you are not a house. You know that the house belongs to you. Or when you say my car, you know you're not a car. So in the same way that we say

Separating Craft From Business Skill

SPEAKER_00 8:15

my hand, you know that you're not a hand. And then we say my mind and my thought, oops, and there you go. I believe those to be me when they're not. The big question is: if it's not you, if you're not the body, if you're not the mind, if you're not the thoughts, then who are you? Who's the one that is having the thought? So just pause here a little bit. Because this is where feeling of being lost begins to dissolve. You cannot lose what you are. So when we feel lost, it presupposes that you are somewhere outside there and you need to go and find yourself. And in fact, you hear people say, I'm going to go on a gap here, and I'm going to go and look for myself. I'm looking for myself, I'm searching for me. When actually you you know where you are right now. You don't need to go and look for yourself because you're not out there, you're right here, right now. And this is why people will also say, wherever you are or wherever you go, you take yourself with you. And that's how it goes. So you can't lose who you are. So if you think about an elephant, an elephant cannot lose its elephantness. It might not know it's an elephant, but it still is one. So you cannot lose your essence. You can just believe and think and feel that you don't know who you are, that you've lost your essence, but it's only because you forgot it. When I was 19 years old, my sister had a freak accident and was killed. And I was one of the people that went to dress her. And I remember walking into the room to dress her, and I had this overwhelming feeling, undeniable feeling, that she's not here. That there was a body, but she wasn't in the body.

You Are Not Your Roles Or Thoughts

SPEAKER_00 10:26

It became very, very clear to me in that moment that this body was just a vessel, that she, whatever she was, the energy, the soul, the spirit, used. And anyone who has been with someone who has passed will know that feeling. That when that soul, that energy, that spirit leaves the body, there's something gone, something missing. That something is not in the body, it's not the brain, it's not the personality. It's the animating presence. So if you are not your body and if you're not your thoughts and not your mind, I ask you again, who are you? And what if you are a presence, an energy that can never truly be lost? So I want to tell you that you're not lost, you're not disconnected from your essence. You've identified with your ego roles, with your performance, with your expectations or other people's expectations. And when ego can no longer maintain the illusion of this is what success looks like, it panics. And that panic feels like I don't know what I'm doing with my life. But I want to tell you that underneath it, there's something else, it's a whisper, there's more, and here's where you'll get your shift. Stop asking, what should I do with my life? Start asking who is the one that is asking the question and sit with that and then ask yourself this or tell yourself this. I'm not that thought. I am not that fear, I am not my bank balance. What do I actually want? What's my passion? What am I driven? What am I what's the desire inside of me? How do I follow that? Because if I'm not my thought, and if I'm not my fear, and if I'm not my bank balance, then what do I actually want? Not what makes sense, not what is safe, because you're always safe. Not what maintains an image to the outside, but what do I want? And here's the key. You don't need to know the full plan. You don't need to know what the whole next 20, 30, 40, 50 years is like. You just need to know what's your next honest move. Just one step. It's a conversation with yourself, it's a boundary, it's a course, it's a pause, it's a no. Maybe a yes. Direction comes after identity, not before. Once you know who you are and you can truly allow

Presence, Essence And The Animating Spark

SPEAKER_00 13:41

yourself to respond to a desire, direction will come, not before. So you can rebuild your self-trust by remembering something very, very, very important. You're not fragile. You are not your circumstances, you're not your current story. You are the awareness behind it. You are that awareness that is indestructible, you're powerful, you're magnificent, you're magical, and no matter what happens externally, you will always be okay. And when you know that deeply inside of you, that no matter what happens, I'll be okay, and I can trust that, then decisions stop feeling fatal and they start feeling creative. So if you're waking up to the thinking of this is not what I expected, that's a good sign. When I was teaching Akashic Records, there's a thing about negative path, so that each soul comes here, each spirit, each energy comes through, it gets given a human body to express itself, the vessel, and comes here for a purpose. And as long as you're walking on that path for your purpose, it feels good, it feels like flow, it feels right for you. It just comes in, it makes you feel good, it makes you feel alive, it makes you feel like you're living with purpose. When you step out and you walk a different path, like somebody told you, go and do this, follow this, whatever, and you walk on that path. It's not that the path is bad, it's not that it's evil, but you are negating your path. And by negating your path, the other path is negative. That's how it comes to be. So it's not negative because it's evil or bad, it's negative because it's not yours. And when it's not yours, it will not feel like flow. So if you're in that space where you're not feeling that flow, it's good. It's your soul trying to wake you up, either with a crisis or an uncomfortable feeling inside. And that awareness is not failure, it's consciousness returning. So I'd just like to say to you, you're not lost. You're remembering. And remembering always feels disorientating, uncomfortable, and wrong at first. Because your body's trained. Remember, you've got your whole brain system that likes to just follow

From Panic To The Next Honest Move

SPEAKER_00 16:35

what it's learned to do, that doesn't make it right, so it will feel uncomfortable. And sit with this question for this week. Who am I? If I'm not my role, so get rid of all your roles. What are you left with? If I'm not my history, what am what what am I? If I'm not my thoughts, what am I? And let that question work on you. Just keep going back, journaling, just just keep going at it, and then take one honest action, just one. And I'm not sure what that one action is, but let it be one step towards something that makes you come alive. So I wish you well with this, and I'd love to hear some feedback. So please send me some feedback. I'd really, really want to hear how your journey's going. And if this episode resonated with you, please share it with somebody who quietly needs it or loudly needs it, I'm not sure. And remember to rate the show, like it, and if you want to go deeper into your own authorship identity, rebuilding self-trust, building a life that's living on your terms. You can find me at vicyross.com. I've got a beautiful membership where we meet every Tuesday, and you are welcome to come and join us. Links are in the notes. So until next time, rise up and live, and yes to your success.