Hello, and welcome back to The Happya Life Podcast. I’m Clare Deacon.
In today’s episode, I want to talk about something that I know many of you will recognise immediately, even if you’ve never quite put words to it before.
Do you ever feel like you’re on hold in your own life?
Not stuck exactly. Not falling apart.
But paused.
You’re doing what needs to be done. You’re showing up. You’re functioning. On the outside, things probably look fine maybe even successful but internally there’s this quiet sense that something is waiting. Or perhaps that you are waiting.
If that resonates, you’re very much in the right place, because today we’re going to be talking about what it really means to choose yourself and why so many intelligent, capable people feel like they need permission to do that in the first place.
And as always, if anything I talk about today brings up questions for you, you’re very welcome to reach out or leave a comment. These conversations are never meant to end when the episode does.
There’s a particular feeling I want to name, because once you notice it, you can’t really un-notice it.
That sense that you’re waiting.
Not waiting for time because let’s be honest, you’ve spent most of your adult life making time when it mattered.
Not waiting for confidence you’ve built entire chapters of your life on doing things without feeling confident.
But waiting for permission.
Permission to choose yourself.
And I don’t mean that in the Instagram-quote sense of “choose yourself and everything will magically align.” I don’t mean the kind of January energy where people announce bold intentions, new identities, and ambitious goals, only to quietly feel worse a few weeks later when life doesn’t cooperate.
This isn’t about declarations or reinvention.
I mean choosing yourself in the smaller, more uncomfortable ways the ways that actually cost something.
The moment you hesitate before saying no.
The moment you adjust your needs because it feels easier than explaining them.
The moment you notice that something doesn’t quite fit anymore, but you carry on anyway because, technically, it still works.
If you’re listening to this, I’m not talking to someone who is fragile or lacking resilience. And I’m certainly not talking about you I’m talking to you.
You are intelligent. You are capable. You are emotionally literate.
You have handled responsibility for a very long time.
You’ve held a career, or several.
You’ve led people.
You’ve made decisions that carried real consequences.
You’ve managed situations that required you to stay steady when things were anything but.
You’ve been the one others rely on.
And because of that, when something starts to feel off, it doesn’t arrive as a breakdown.
It arrives as friction.
A low-level resistance you can’t quite explain.
A sense of being slightly misaligned inside your own life.
An awareness that continuing as you are now takes more effort than it used to not because the demands have increased, but because your tolerance has changed.
And almost immediately, the internal negotiation begins.
“Nothing is actually wrong.”
“I should be grateful.”
“This is probably just a phase.”
“I don’t have a good enough reason to disrupt anything.”
So you wait.
You wait for a clearer signal.
You wait for circumstances to change.
You wait until it feels justified enough to act.
The difficulty is that your nervous system doesn’t wait politely.
From a nervous system perspective and I want to be clear here, not in a vague or fluffy way, but in a very real, physiological one what often happens is this.
When you’ve spent years prioritising responsibility over responsiveness, output over attunement, the system adapts. It becomes efficient. It keeps things running. It does exactly what it’s designed to do.
But it does that by dampening signals that aren’t immediately useful for performance or survival.
Longing.
Restlessness.
Desire.
That subtle sense that something needs to change.
Not because those signals are unimportant, but because at earlier points in your life, listening to them wasn’t practical, or safe, or rewarded.
So the body learns to keep them quiet.
Which works.
Until it doesn’t.
What I see again and again is that the system doesn’t collapse it constricts.
Motivation narrows.
Joy becomes selective.
Emotional tolerance reduces.
You still function. You’re still capable. But you don’t quite feel like yourself while doing it.
And because you’re intelligent, you analyse that experience rather than listening to it.
“Why am I so tired?”
“Why does this irritate me now?”
“I used to cope with much more than this.”
That phrase “I used to cope” is particularly revealing.
Because it assumes that coping is the benchmark.
From a positive psychology perspective, coping is not the same as thriving, and it’s certainly not the same as living in alignment. Coping is about maintaining function under strain. It’s a short- to medium-term strategy not a long-term identity.
But many people build entire lives on it.
Especially those who learned early that competence creates safety.
So when the urge to choose yourself finally appears, it rarely feels empowering.
It feels destabilising.
Because choosing yourself means no longer organising your life primarily around other people’s needs, expectations, or approval and that can feel surprisingly threatening, even when you’re successful.
I know this personally.
Before my life changed in the ways many of you already know about, I had a solid, successful corporate career. I understood systems, pressure, performance. I knew how to operate in environments that rewarded reliability and composure.
I wasn’t lacking drive.
I wasn’t lacking agency.
I wasn’t avoiding responsibility.
But there came a point and it didn’t arrive dramatically where I realised that continuing as I was would require me to go numb to something essential.
And that realisation wasn’t empowering in the moment. It was deeply uncomfortable.
Because when you’re used to being competent, self-choice can feel oddly indulgent. Almost suspicious.
You start asking questions like, “Who do I think I am to want this?”
Or, more quietly, “Who would I disappoint if I did?”
That question matters.
Because what blocks self-choice for most people is not selfishness.
It’s loyalty.
Loyalty to roles you’ve outgrown.
Loyalty to expectations you never consciously agreed to.
Loyalty to versions of yourself that kept everything running.
And underneath that loyalty is usually a belief that was learned, not chosen.
That harmony requires self-suppression.
That needs are negotiable.
That being valued depends on being manageable.
Those beliefs were adaptive. They worked. They kept things stable.
But identity is not meant to be static.
Psychologically, identity is reinforced by what’s rewarded. If being accommodating, capable, and emotionally steady earns approval, the system learns quickly and repeats the pattern.
The difficulty comes when your internal world evolves, but your external identity doesn’t update at the same pace.
You’re still behaving like someone whose needs come last while feeling like someone who can no longer tolerate that arrangement.
That creates friction.
It shows up as irritability.
As withdrawal.
As a low-level resentment you don’t quite recognise yourself in.
Which is inconvenient.
But also meaningful.
Because that friction isn’t failure. It’s information.
It’s your system telling you that the old pattern no longer fits.
And, annoyingly very on-brand for the nervous system the moment you consider changing that pattern, your body may react as if you’re threatening survival.
Anxiety when you say no.
Guilt when you prioritise yourself.
A strong urge to explain, justify, or soften your boundaries.
That doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. It means your system has learned that predictability equals safety, and self-choice disrupts predictability.
Understanding that doesn’t instantly make it comfortable but it does stop you turning on yourself for it.
There was a point for me where everything externally still looked fine.
The structure was intact.
The routines were familiar.
The expectations were clear.
But internally, something had shifted.
The same meetings felt heavier.
The same conversations felt thinner.
The same compromises felt more costly.
And I remember thinking not dramatically, just honestly if I keep choosing what’s expected, what am I teaching myself about my own worth?
That question doesn’t come from weakness.
It comes from self-respect beginning to wake up.
And self-respect is rarely loud.
It doesn’t usually announce itself with bold exits or dramatic declarations.
More often, it starts with small internal refusals.
Not replying immediately.
Not over-explaining.
Not automatically reshaping yourself to fit.
It’s the shift from “Can I justify this?” to “Does this honour me?”
And if you’ve been valued for your compliance rather than your truth, that shift can feel deeply uncomfortable.
If, as you’re listening, you notice a tightening in your chest, or an urge to jump ahead to solutions, just pause.
Nothing here needs fixing right now.
This isn’t a call to action.
It’s an invitation to clarity.
Pressure shuts down insight. Safety allows it.
Choosing yourself is not a single decision. It’s a pattern change.
And pattern changes happen slowly, through repeated internal permission.
Often, the most profound shifts begin when you stop asking for permission you were never meant to need.
You might find yourself reflecting later without forcing answers on questions like:
Where in my life am I still waiting to be chosen, and by whom?
What parts of myself have I been managing rather than listening to?
And if self-respect were guiding my next chapter, what would quietly need to change?
These aren’t questions to solve. They’re questions to notice.
If you want to explore this further, you’ll find related articles, podcast episodes, and resources on my website under the section focused on you your identity, your needs, and how you show up in your life. For this episode, the most relevant place to start is happyacoach.com/explore/self.
And if you’ve been waiting patiently, responsibly, quietly for permission to choose yourself…
This is it.
Not because you’ve earned it.
Not because it’s justified.
But because it was never required in the first place.
Until next time.