Wanting more from life: what to do when you think, is this it?

I started this podcast to avoid an existential crisis. I got to my forties and realised I knew nothing of any real importance. So when Nadia Patel and I sat down in front of a live audience at Home, Life & You at ExCeL London, the question felt personal: what do you do when you look at your life and think, is this it?

The career's fine. The relationship's alright. You're kind of happy. And still there's this pull towards something more, followed straight away by guilt, because we're told to be grateful for what we have.

Nadia spent ten years as a financial adviser before retraining as an identity coach. She now works with founders, leaders and people like me: people who want more from life but don't know how to get there.

You can be grateful and still want more

Nadia's view is that women are wired to read everyone else's needs: our children, our partners, our families. Most of us spend very little time asking what we want for ourselves. And what we want changes, especially around midlife, so it often isn't what we thought it would be.

Good women are grateful. Good girls are grateful for what they have.

That's where people get stuck. You can be grateful and want something different at the same time. I spent 25 years in a corporate job, climbed the ladder, got the promotion, got to the top, and realised I didn't want any of it. Nadia quoted the line about climbing to the top of the ladder of success and finding it's against the wrong wall. You've ticked the boxes and it doesn't feel the way you thought it would.

How to figure out what you want in life

Nadia stood in a hoop on stage to explain it. Around each of us is an invisible boundary. Inside it sits who we think we are, what feels normal and safe, and what “someone like me” gets to have. Our ambition and capability sit outside it, but we only go for the things inside.

She gave the audience three sentences to finish. Answer quickly, without overthinking:

• Someone like me doesn't get to…
• The most money someone like me will ever earn (or have) is…
• The thing that I want that I never say out loud is…

Is this actually true or is it just familiar? Because familiar is not the same as true.

Awareness is the first step. The second is sitting with desire: if anything were possible, what would I really want? Nadia says very few people let themselves ask that, and everything you create starts there.

If you can't answer it, look at other people. Who do you look at and think, I wish I had that? Nadia separates envy from jealousy. Jealousy is “I don't want you to have it.” Envy is “I wish I had it too.” Used honestly, envy shows you what you want. The trap is putting those people on a pedestal and deciding they can do it because they have the contacts, the confidence or the right past. “You can't win the game being on the stands,” she said. “You have to be on the court.”

She also pointed out that most of us build the future from the past, predicting what will happen from who we've been. Her advice is to build it from the future instead. You can be someone different from who you've been.

Money: wanting it and feeling guilty about it

Nadia and I picked three subjects people find hard to admit to: money, sex and desire. I went first, with a vulnerability hangover already on its way.

I want to be disgustingly rich. I want the house and the car, and I want to use money to fund women-led businesses. I also think about money about 20 times a day, worry that I'm spending too much, and discount my own fees as a consultant before the client has even spoken.

Nadia's response was that two conflicting beliefs cancel each other out. “I want it” and “I shouldn't” can't both win. You have to decide whether you're someone who allows yourself to have it, or someone who apologises for it.

I asked how to act like that without feeling like a fraud, because I'm not there yet. She said “I'm not there yet” is the problem: it assumes you have to arrive before you're allowed to behave differently. Her mentor once asked her whether she always ordered the cheapest thing on the menu. Start there. Order the thing you actually want. Small daily reps.

How to feel sexy and desirable again

Then sex. I'd love to have hot sex all the time, but most of the time I can't be bothered. After IVF and a complicated pregnancy I became angry with my body for failing at the one job it was meant to do. My head and my body started to feel like two separate things. I don't know what turns me on anymore, because I've never given myself the time. Sex became something I should do, rather than something I want.

Nadia said a lot of women she works with feel their body let them down, whether through IVF, divorce, redundancy or grief.

Often the pain isn't the event, it's the meaning that you give to it.

She also named something most of us feel. We used to raise children with a village, and now we do it alone. When you're a mum, wife, daughter and sister, the woman you are ends up at the bottom of the list, depleted and exhausted. Desire takes energy.

Her second point landed hardest. Many of us wait to be desired, and leave it to a partner to make the move. Nadia says desire starts from the inside. She loves silk and satin nightwear, not for anyone else, but because of how she feels in it. Women tell her their husband doesn't care about lingerie. She tells them it isn't about him. If you want to feel sexy again, start by asking what makes you feel good in your own body, and where sex, intimacy and passion sit on your priority list.

How to put yourself first without feeling guilty

For me that list puts sex dead last, after everything else. That's partly why I'm on a mission to reclaim the word selfish. Putting yourself first means asking what gives you joy and what fills your cup, and leading with that.

Nadia agreed. When you meet your own needs, you show up better as a partner, parent, daughter or colleague. The mistake is outsourcing our needs to other people. Work out what you want, give yourself permission to ask for it, and then bring other people in.

When you change and the people around you don't

About five years ago a friend told me I'd changed and she didn't recognise me anymore. I took it badly. Listening to Nadia, I realised that was the point.

She uses the idea of friends for a reason, a season or a lifetime. When you start keeping boundaries, saying no and not over-giving, you can become a mirror for people who aren't changing, and they can feel uncomfortable around you. That isn't your fault. “I'd be super disappointed if I was the same person I was at high school or in my twenties,” she said.

How do you know it's not just a phase? Nadia says it keeps niggling. The same question comes back again and again. If you slow down enough to listen, it's telling you something.

First steps: identity reps

Nadia's practical steps:

• Go back to your three sentences and ask whether each one is true, and whether you want it to be.
• Remember where self-image comes from: childhood and early adolescence, from what your parents said, what was normal and how you were compared. You didn't choose it.
• Write down what you now want in money, health, sex and relationships.
• Ask what the woman who already has that believes, and how she behaves.
• Practise one small version of it. Can't fly first class? A lounge pass costs fifty to eighty pounds, not thousands.

Someone in the audience said she struggles with “fake it till you make it”. Nadia prefers “faith it till you make it”. You're not pretending, you're practising being that person until it becomes normal. It feels fake because it's outside your comfort zone, and that doesn't mean it isn't who you're becoming. She sees an “identity lag” in many women she coaches: they're far more capable than they realise.

So if you're sitting with “is this it?”, it doesn't have to be. Wanting more doesn't make you ungrateful. Nadia's book, Breaking the Good Girl Code, is for anyone who plays small, over-justifies or over-gives and wants something different.