[5-6 min read]
The beliefs that sound like common sense, and what’s true instead.
“When you hold onto a script that doesn’t serve you, you leave no space to write a new one that does.” ~ Jennifer Ho-Dougatz
The most convincing lies don’t sound like lies. They sound like common sense. A reasonable observation about who you are and how things work.
And because you’ve repeated them for years, they’ve been quietly promoted to fact. You don’t question them any more than you’d question your own shoe size. Most of the time you don’t even notice you’re telling them.
Which is exactly why they’re so good at running the show.
When it comes to limiting beliefs in midlife, four do most of the damage. Time to check their credentials.
You Can Appreciate Your Life and Still Want More From It
The lie: Wanting something different means I’m ungrateful.
You’ve spent decades being the grateful one. Grateful wife or partner, grateful mother, grateful daughter, grateful employee. Grateful for the job, the house, the kids, the health. And most of the time, you meant it.
So when a restless little voice pipes up with “Is this it?”, it feels like a betrayal. Decent life, people you love, roof over your head. Who are you to want more?
So you shush it. Call it a phase. Feel guilty for having it, then guilty for feeling guilty. It’s one of the most common things women tell me, and it almost always arrives with an apology up front. “I know I’m lucky, but…”
Wanting something different isn’t a verdict on what you’ve got.
Not because your life is terrible. Not because you don’t love your family. Not because you don’t appreciate what you’ve built.
But because you’ve changed, and your life hasn’t caught up yet.
Gratitude and wanting more can share a table.
Try this: Say the want out loud, specifically, and drop the apology at the front. Not “I know I’m lucky, but I sometimes wonder about…” – just “I want…” Write it down if out loud is a step too far for now.
You Don’t Have to Stay Loyal to an Old Version of Yourself
The lie: I’m just not that kind of woman.
“I don’t do things like that.”
“I’ve never been adventurous.”
“I’m not entrepreneurial.”
“I’m not sporty.”
“I couldn’t possibly speak in front of people.”
These sound like descriptions of your personality. Mostly, they’re old decisions about your identity. And most of them weren’t even yours to begin with.
They were handed out early. The sensible one. The creative one. The one who wasn’t sporty because she got picked last in a school PE class, once, decades ago. Nobody failed a test to earn these labels. They just stuck, and you’ve been loyally living up to them ever since.
Mine were the good girl, the agreeable one, the one who was easy to be around. Translate them and you get people pleaser. I wore that label well into adulthood, until I finally worked out I could be kind and still have boundaries.
Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert and his colleagues surveyed more than 19,000 people aged 18 to 68. At every age, people agreed they’d changed a lot over the past decade, and predicted they’d change very little over the next one. A 40-year-old can see exactly how different she is from her 30-year-old self, then assumes the woman she’ll be at 50 will be much the same.
They called it the ‘end of history illusion’. We all assume we’ve just arrived as the finished product. The data says otherwise. You’re still changing. You’re just not giving yourself credit for it in advance.
Try this: Write down one “I’m not the kind of person who…” sentence. Next to it, write how old you were when you decided it. If the answer is “about 14”, it’s overdue for a review.
Other People’s Confusion Doesn’t Make Your Choice Wrong
The lie: If the people around me don’t understand what I’m doing, I must be making a mistake.
You’re not the only one who’s been loyal to the old version of you. So has everyone who’s known you for twenty years.
They have a map of you. It was accurate for a long time. Then you signed up for the course, changed careers, sold the house, or started saying no to things you used to say yes to, and you drove clean off the edge of their map.
There’s a cruel little twist for women in midlife. Many of us feel invisible and over-watched at the same time. Ignored when we want to be heard, scrutinised the minute we try something new.
Their confusion is about their map being out of date. It says very little about your direction.
And if what you’re doing is something nobody in your family or friendship circle has done before, expect some puzzled faces. You’re not crazy. You’re just first. Being first tends to come with a few blank looks.
There’s a useful distinction to make here. Concern means someone knows something you don’t, so it’s worth listening to. Confusion means they’re catching up, and that’s not your job to speed up.
Try this: Explain your choice once, clearly. Then stop explaining. You’re keeping people informed. You’re not applying for their approval.
Good Things Aren’t Reserved for Other People
The lie: Things like that just don’t happen for people like me.
You’ve had years of watching other people get the thing. The promotion. The business that took off. The travel, the love story, the book deal, the late-life fitness glow-up. And somewhere along the way, a theory formed: good things go to a certain kind of person, and you’re not on the list.
Psychologist Richard Wiseman spent about a decade studying people who described themselves as either very lucky or very unlucky. In one test, he handed them a newspaper and asked them to count the photographs.
The unlucky group took about two minutes. The lucky group took seconds.
Why? On page two, in huge type, a half-page message told them to stop counting because there were 43 photos. Further in, another offered a cash prize to anyone who mentioned it to the researcher. The lucky people spotted the messages. The unlucky people were too busy counting to see what was right in front of them.
Wiseman’s conclusion was that luck has less to do with fate and more to do with attention. The people who felt lucky tended to be more relaxed and open, so they noticed chances. The ones who felt unlucky were more anxious and narrowly focused, so they missed them.
That’s what “good things don’t happen for people like me” does. It puts your head down. You stop looking, so you stop noticing, which proves the theory right. Neat little loop.
I had my own newspaper moment in my final year of school. I’d already been accepted into uni when the local TV station asked me to audition as host of their children’s show. They wanted me to start straight away. The sensible answer was “not now”. Instead, I deferred uni, finished the school year while presenting the show live to air every day, and went into TV full-time the moment I graduated. It became a long career.
Opportunities rarely turn up at a convenient time. The trick is noticing the one in front of you, and not dismissing it just because the timing’s wrong.
Try this: Next time you catch yourself saying “things like that don’t happen to me”, swap the ending: “things like that haven’t happened to me so far”. Then break one routine this week. Sit somewhere new at the thing you always go to. Chat to the person next to you in the queue instead of checking your phone. Say yes to an invitation you’d normally decline. And tell a few people what you’re after. A lot of luck arrives via other people, and they can’t hand you something they don’t know you want.
Consider the Source
None of these lies set out to hurt you. They kept you grateful, consistent, agreeable and realistic. But they were written for a younger woman playing a smaller part.
Every one of them fell apart the moment someone tested it. Yours will too. So next time one pipes up with its sensible little line, ask it for its source.
The dress rehearsal is over. Time for a script that fits.
Want the habits sitting on top of these beliefs? Episode 18 of the Hello Prime Life podcast, “5 Things Quietly Killing Your Confidence (And the Swaps That Bring It Back)”, walks through them, with a swap for each. Give it a listen.
Lies this old tend to come with habits attached. My free guide, 5 Ways You’re Hiding (Without Even Realising It), names the five most common ones, why they made sense once, and the first small move out of each. Get the guide.
