17. Living With Knowing (The Space Between Insight and Action)

What happens after you realise something about yourself, but before anything actually changes?

In this episode, we explore the space between awareness and action, and why clarity doesn't always lead to immediate movement.

There are times when we know something has changed inside us, but our lives haven't caught up yet. We continue showing up, fulfilling our responsibilities, and carrying on as normal, while quietly living with a new awareness we can't quite ignore.

This in-between phase — where you know, but haven't acted yet — is far more common than we acknowledge. It isn't failure or indecision. It's often part of the process of change itself.

In this episode:

• What it feels like to “live with knowing”
• Why clarity doesn’t always lead to action
• The emotional reality of the in-between phase
• Internal negotiation, hesitation, and processing
• Why tension can be a sign that something is shifting

 Reflection for you:

What do you already know, but haven’t acted on yet?

If this resonated:

If this episode resonated, you might simply notice what you’re already aware of, without trying to fix or decide anything just yet.

And if you’d like to continue, you can follow the podcast, so you don’t miss what comes next.

Transcript

I’m Patricia Ezechie, and this is Proactive Empowered Careers, a space for thinking about careers differently, not as something separate from who you are, but as an expression of you and the life you want to live.

Hello everyone, and welcome back.

So over the last few episodes, we’ve been looking at careers and lives from different angles. We started by turning inward, not to figure everything out, but to begin noticing. Noticing the quiet questions, the sense of being stuck, what you might be outgrowing, who you might be becoming, and learning to listen to yourself again. Because without that, it’s very easy to make decisions that look right on the outside but don’t actually fit who you are now.

And then we widened that lens out to look at the life you’re living inside, your structure, the space you have, the environments you’re part of. Because even when something shifts inside you, your ability to act on that is shaped by the conditions around you. And all of that’s been deliberate, because this isn’t either/or, as we discussed in one of the episodes. It’s not just about you, and it’s not just about what’s around you. It’s about how those two things come together.

So today I want to talk about something that doesn’t get spoken about very often, and sits in this space. What happens after you realise something about yourself, but before anything actually changes? Because people talk a lot about clarity. They talk about insight, they talk about realisation. But they don’t talk about the bit that comes next, which is often this.

You know, and you carry on anyway. You still go to work, you still do the school run, you still show up to meetings, you still do the things you’ve always done. But inside, something has shifted. And that can feel very strange, because you expected that once you knew, something would happen. You’d act, you’d make decisions, you’d move.

And sometimes that does happen. Sometimes people do have a thunderbolt moment and everything changes. But a lot of the time, you just live with knowing. And that’s not as unusual as it might feel. In fact, it’s often what happens when something shifts internally before your life has caught up with it.

And that phase can feel really uncomfortable, because you can’t go back to not knowing, but you also might not be ready to change anything yet. So you sit in this in-between space. You notice things more. You notice when you feel drained. You notice when you feel switched on. You notice conversations that land with you very badly. You notice environments that don’t feel right anymore. And you notice how much effort some roles take.

You also notice how little energy some parts of your life give back. And you might not do anything with those observations immediately, but they’re still there.

Now here’s the part that I think matters. Because people often judge themselves quite harshly in this phase. They think, if I know this, why am I still here? If I see this, why haven’t I changed it? If I’m aware, why am I not acting?

And sometimes the answer is uncomfortable. Sometimes you’re scared. Sometimes you are avoiding. Sometimes you’re tired. Sometimes you’re overwhelmed. Sometimes you don’t know what the alternative is. Sometimes the practical reality of your life makes change even more complicated. Sometimes you’re not ready to disrupt things yet. And also, honestly, sometimes you just don’t have the energy.

All of those things are human. None of them is unusual. But they’re very rarely spoken about openly.

Living with knowing can feel like walking around with a quiet truth in your pocket. You don’t show it to anyone. You don’t talk about it all the time. But it’s there, and it changes how you experience things. You might be in a meeting and think, I don’t think I want this anymore. You might finish a conversation and think, that doesn’t even feel like me anymore. You might achieve something and feel strangely flat. You might imagine something else and feel unexpectedly alive.

I’ve experienced this myself at different points in my life, knowing something wasn’t quite right anymore, but still showing up, still doing what needs to be done while something underneath was changing. These experiences are not always dramatic, but they do accumulate.

And this is where I think we need more honesty in conversations about change. Because clarity doesn’t automatically produce action. Insight doesn’t automatically produce movement. Awareness doesn’t automatically produce courage. There’s often a lag. A gap. A period of living with the truth before you’re ready to reorganise your life around that truth.

And that gap is normal, because part of you has already moved, but your behaviour, your circumstances, your life haven’t changed yet. And that mismatch creates tension. Not because something is wrong, but because something is in the process of changing.

There’s actually a term for this. It’s called cognitive dissonance. That tension you feel when what you know and how you’re living no longer quite line up. And sometimes that feeling of dissonance can feel like failure.

You might also find yourself, when you’re in this situation, negotiating internally. Telling yourself reasons to stay. Telling yourself reasons to leave. Minimising what you know, then remembering it again. Distracting yourself, then noticing it again. This isn’t dysfunction. It’s processing. It’s integration.

It’s what happens when your identity shifts before your behaviour does, when you’re adjusting to a version of yourself that your life hasn’t quite made room for yet, when what you know and how you’re living are no longer fully aligned.

And I want to say something here that might feel a little uncomfortable. Sometimes people stay longer than they need to. They talk themselves out of things they already know. They wait for certainty that will never arrive. That happens. It’s part of being human.

But recognising that pattern is different from judging yourself for it. Because most people are doing the best they can with the information, the resources, and the emotional bandwidth they have available to them at the time.

So if you recognise this phase, this living with knowing, not deciding yet, not moving yet, just noticing, just carrying this awareness, you’re not unusual. And you’re not uniquely indecisive. You’re in a phase many people experience but rarely name.

William Bridges wrote about this in his work on transitions. He calls this the in-between. And the name is so apt, because once you can name something, you can relate to it differently.

And what often happens in this in-between space isn’t immediate change. It’s tension. The pull between what exists and what might be possible. The comfort of the familiar and the discomfort of feeling misaligned. The safety of staying and the curiosity of something different.

And that tension often reveals something. The patterns we’ve adapted to over time. The roles we’ve learned to play. The identities we’ve carried for years without questioning them.

And that’s what we’ll explore next.

So if this episode resonated with you, just notice something this week. Notice what you know.

So until next week, take the very best care of yourself.

This has been Proactive Empowered Careers. If today’s episode resonated, subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss what comes next. And remember, your career isn’t separate from who you are. It’s an expression of you and the life you want to live.