Why Choosing Yourself Feels Like Breaking a Rule — And What to Do When Guilt Shows Up

Speaker A: 00:00:00

So here's what I know about the moment you're in. It doesn't arrive with fireworks, it doesn't come with a plan, and it definitely doesn't come with permission. It usually shows up quietly.

Maybe it happened while you're listening to this podcast. Maybe it came late at night when the house was finally still.

Or maybe it hit you in the middle of a completely ordinary Tuesday, loading the dishwasher, answering another email, doing the thing you've done a thousand times when you thought, I can't do this exact version of my Life for another 20 years. And once that thought arrives, everything changes. Because now you can see things you can't unsee. You feel the pull towards something more.

More truth, more alignment, more you. And almost immediately, the fear rushes in. What if I choose wrong? What if I can't undo it?

What if this blows up everything I've worked so hard to build? Okay? And suddenly, instead of moving forward, you freeze. We freeze.

I know this moment intimately because when I first felt the pull towards writing, towards something that was just mine, I didn't leave. I didn't announce anything. I didn't sit my family down and say, hey, I'm reinventing myself.

I wrote in Secret early mornings, 5am before anyone else was awake, a private Google Doc that I had password protected, which, looking back, feels almost absurd. But that's how scared I was.

Scared that if anyone knew I was doing something just for me, they'd see, see me differently, judge me or worst, talk me out before I even knew what it was. A year stolen of moments no one else knew about. Because before I could change my life, I needed to know one thing.

Could I want something without everything falling apart? Today we're talking about what I call the first safe how to start choosing yourself in a way your nervous system can actually handle.

Because here's what I've learned my own midlife reinvention and in coaching women just like you. Change doesn't have to be catastrophic to be real. And choosing yourself doesn't have to feel like destruction. Welcome to the joy shift.

I'm Kylie Suarez. Let's get into it. By the end of this episode, you'll understand why big leap thinking actually keeps women stuck.

How to take what I call a quiet, reversible step instead. And three specific ways you can begin choosing yourself this week without blowing up the life you've built.

We've been sold a mythology about transformation, like quit the job and the relationship, move across the country, burn it all down and rise from the ashes. And listen, it Makes for a great movie montage.

But for high achieving women, women who have built families, careers, systems, stability, that narrative is paralyzing. Because when the only version of change you can imagine feels catastrophic, your body will choose staying put every single time.

Not because you're weak, not because you lack courage, but because your nervous system is wired for survival. And survival says, do not destroy a life that is technically working. I see this all the time with the women I coach. These are accomplished women.

Executives, doctors, attorneys, entrepreneurs, stay at home moms. Women who have spent decades building something real.

And when they feel that pull towards more, towards something different, their brains immediately go to extremes. Client recently, let's call her Sarah, who came to me wanting to explore a career pivot.

She'd been in corporate finance for 25 years, successful by every external measure. But she kept feeling this pull towards teaching, towards mentoring younger women in the field. And here's what her brain told her.

If you want to teach, you have to quit your job, give up your salary, start from scratch. And what about the retirement plan you've been building? Either or, all or nothing. That's the achievers language. I know it well.

I spent decades speaking it fluently. When I first started wondering what else I might want, my achieving self, the one we talk about in episode two, went straight to extremes.

Like if you wanna write, you'd have to quit managing the practice. I do the billing and insurance for my husband's urology practice. I've done this for years. It's how I contribute.

It's part of my identity and my CPA brain. Trained at Arthur Andersen so many years ago to see everything in spreadsheets and balance sheets.

Couldn't compute wanting something that didn't fit, fit neatly into the system I built. If you want something for yourself, you're abandoning your family.

Never mind that I was still coordinating my adult son's care, still supporting my daughter through med school, still showing up for every person who needed me. If you want more, you're ungrateful for what you have. Sounds familiar. But real change doesn't happen in the extremes. It happens in the middle.

In episode four, we talk about the messy middle, that disorienting space between who you've been and who you're becoming. What we didn't talk about yet is how to enter that space without your whole system slamming on the brakes. That's what today is for.

If you've been rewarded your whole life for getting it right, and I know many of you have, this part matters. We learn to wait for certainly before we move, gather the data, make the plan, know the outcome. That's how we succeeded. That's how we earn safety.

That's how we built everything. I get it. I really do. My entire professional identity was built on certainty. CPAs don't guess. We verify. We document.

We make sure the numbers tie out before we sign anything. Think straight, talk straight. Everything was about precision.

So when I started feeling this pull towards creative writing, towards romance novels, of all things, my brain kept looking for the business case. Where's the ROI in this? What's the five year projection? Who's the target market? And here's the thing. There's no business case. There was just wanting.

But reinvention doesn't work like a balance sheet. There is no rubric for becoming more yourself.

No gold star for the right next step, no certificate that says, congratulations, you've officially figured out your second act. Clarity comes from movement. I didn't know writing would crack something open in me.

I. I didn't know it would lead to publishing under a pen name, then coaching, then this podcast, then helping other women through their own reinvention. I just knew I wanted to try. I wanted to see how it felt. That was the shift from, I need to know where this is going to. I'm willing to find out.

One of my clients, a physician who's been practicing for seven years, told me recently, I've spent my whole career making evidence based decisions, and now I'm supposed to just, what, feel my way forward? Yes. And also no. Because there is a way to move forward that honors both your need for safety and your desire for change.

There's a way to gather evidence, just not the kind you're used to. Your achieving self hates this. Your survival self hates this.

But your original self, the one we unearthed in episode three, she's been waiting for this exact invitation. So instead of asking what's the right next chapter of my life, which is overwhelming, I want you to ask something gentler.

What's one quiet test I can run? This is something I developed working with my clients because I kept seeing the same pattern.

Women who were ready to make changes, but couldn't figure out how to start without it feeling like they were detonating their lives. A quiet test has three rules. First, no identity announcements. You're not declaring anything. You're not becoming someone publicly.

You're just trying something. This was huge for me. I didn't tell anyone I was writing a romance novel. I didn't announce on Facebook that I was pursuing my creative dreams.

I just Wrote in secret because I needed the space to explore without it having to mean anything yet. Second, it must be reversible. If you can't stop, it's not a first step. Reversibility tells your nervous system. We're not trapped.

I had a client who wanted to explore leaving her corporate job to become a therapist. The big leap version. Quit her job, enroll in a master's program, completely upend her family's finances. Her quiet test.

Instead, she signed up for one online psychology course. Just wanted to see if the material actually lit her up the way she imagined it would. Turns out it did. And she's now two months into her program.

While she's still working. Still working. The reversible step gave her the data she needed to make a bigger commitment. And third, it has a time boundary.

Not forever, just for now. 30 days is a magic year. Long enough to actually learn something, short enough that your brain doesn't spiral into. But what about the rest of my life?

That's how safety creates momentum. Let me give you three specific moves you can make. Move one, the private yes. Something no one else needs to know about.

No explaining, no justifying, no posting. That's how I started writing private mornings. A yes that belonged only to me. I remember that feeling of those early mornings so vividly.

The house quiet, my coffee getting cold because I was so absorbed in what I was creating. And this strange, almost giddy feeling like I was getting away with something. Something like I had a secret life. And in a way, I did.

For the first time in decades, I had something that was just mine. One of my clients did this with painting. She hadn't picked up a brush since college. 30 years ago.

Her private yes was buying a small set of watercolors and giving herself permission to be bad at it. No Instagram posts, no telling her family. Just 30 minutes a week with paint and paper. Six months later, she. She has a small Etsy shop.

But that's not the point. The point is, she remembered what it felt like to want something just because she wanted it. And moved to the 30 day test.

Frame it like an experiment for the next 30 days. I'll try this and see what I learn. Not who I'm becoming, just what I'm noticing. The language matters. Here. I'm becoming a writer. Feels heavy.

I'm seeing what it's like to write for 30 days. Feels doable. Move three. The smallest honest step. Not this whole staircase. Just one brick. Buy the book block. 20 minutes. Write one paragraph.

Sign up for a free webinar, send One email. These aren't small things. They're how trust gets rebuilt. Trust in yourself. Trust that you're allowed to want things.

Trust that wanting doesn't mean destruction. Now, here's something I get asked constantly, by clients, by listeners, by women who DM me on Instagram.

How do I know if this is a fear I should push through? Or my intuition telling me this isn't right? It's such an important question. And here's what I've learned. Fear is loud, urgent, panicked.

It catastrophizes. It speaks in absolutes. This will ruin everything. Everyone will judge you. You'll lose it all. Alignment is quiet. Alignment is quieter. Grounded, steady.

Even when it's scary. When I was writing in secret, I felt fear all the time. Fear of being found out, fear of judgment. Fear that I was being selfish.

But underneath all that noise, there was something else. Something steady. A quiet knowing that this matters, that I was supposed to be doing this, that I was finally touching something real.

You can feel fear and be aligned. Fear doesn't disqualify the knowing. I worked with a client this year who was terrified to start a podcast.

Now I'm a life coach, so I understand that every fear you can imagine. My voice is annoying. Who would listen to me? What if my colleagues hear it and think I'm ridiculous? Oh, my God, I sound like myself. But then.

But when I asked her to sit quietly and imagine herself recording an episode, actually doing it, her whole body relax, she smiled. There was fear, yes. But there was also this underneath the fear. Yes, that steadiness underneath. That's your original self. She's not in a rush.

She's not panicking. And she just knows. She's been waiting. I want to leave you with something important. You don't need to burn your life down.

You don't need permission from anyone else. And you don't need certainty about where this leads. You just need one honest, safe step. That's how this happens. Quietly, slowly. Truthfully.

That secret you're writing, it changed everything for me now. Not because it led to a book deal or a new career, but because it taught me that I could want something just for myself and just for me.

That choosing myself didn't mean abandoning everywhere else. That I could be the bookkeeper and the writer, the caregiver and the creative, the responsible one and the woman with a secret, delicious dream.

Both, and not either or. I see this transformation in my clients all the time. The executive who starts pottery classes.

The empty Nestor who takes one improv class and discovers a part of herself she's forgotten the the woman who finally writes the book proposal that's been living in her head for 15 years. They don't blow up their lives, they expand their lives. That's the Joy Shift.

If you're in this season where something is waking up but clarity hasn't arrived, stay here with me this week. I want you to choose one. Private yes. Don't announce it, don't explain it. Just notice how it feels.

Maybe it's waking up 30 minutes early to read something that has nothing to do with productivity. Maybe it's signing up for a class you've been curious about. Maybe it's just sitting quietly and asking yourself, what do I actually want? That's it.

That's the whole practice. Now, I have a few favors to ask, and I don't ask lightly because I know your time and energy are precious.

First, if this episode resonated, share it with one woman who needs to hear it. Maybe she's been stuck in either or thinking maybe she's waiting for certainty that will never come. Send her this episode.

Sometimes just knowing there's another way makes all the difference. Second, if you've been listening to the Joy Shift and it meant something to you, would you take 30 seconds to leave a review?

Those reviews help other women, women just like you find this show when they're searching for exactly this kind of support. And third, hit that Follow or subscribe button so you don't miss what's coming.

We're going deeper into practical rebellion, reclaiming your time and building a life that actually fits who you're the Midlife Reinvention Starter Guide is waiting for you in the show notes. It's the perfect companion to everything we talked about today.

You're not late, you're not broken, and you're allowed to move at the speed your nervous system can trust. That's the Joy Shift. I'll see you next week.