The Real Reason You Feel Stuck in Midlife
PODCAST · EPISODE № 12
Before you search for more advice, there’s one question you need to ask first — what do I already know?
In this powerful episode of Create Your Midlife, Dr. Oksana Skidan explores why so many intelligent, capable women over 40 still feel stuck — even after reading the books, listening to the podcasts, and doing the work.
If you’ve ever found yourself Googling “how to find purpose in midlife” or wondering why clarity feels close but never solid, this episode will meet you exactly where you are.
Through personal insight and psychological depth, Dr. Skidan unpacks the “external answer habit” — the reflex to look outward for direction when the real shift is internal. She explains why midlife isn’t a knowledge problem, but an authority shift. And why rebuilding self-trust after decades of conditioning changes everything.
This episode is an invitation to pause the noise and return to your own lived experience — your disappointments, strengths, lessons, and quiet truths that have been waiting to be heard.
🧭 In This Episode:
• Why women over 40 often feel stuck despite success
• The hidden cost of constantly looking for advice
• How preparation mode keeps you from real decisions
• Why midlife is an identity shift, not a crisis
• The one question that restores clarity and self-trust
Useful Resources:
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Transcript:
Oksana Skidan (00:17.122)
Why do I keep looking for advice when I feel stuck in midlife? Let me tell you something I noticed about myself recently. The other day, I typed a simple phrase into Google: how to find your purpose. In less than a second, hundreds of results appeared.
Quizzes, five-step frameworks, personality tests, career changes, spiritual awakenings, master classes promising clarity in 30, 20, 10 days — you name it. And I sat there thinking, if so many results exist, it means one thing: we are asking. Women everywhere, especially in midlife, are sitting in quiet moments of uncertainty and typing the same questions into search bars.
Not because we want to be dramatic, not because we're incapable, but because something inside feels unsettled. And the fastest reflex is to look outward for answers. It usually starts small. You feel stuck, but you can't fully explain why. Something just feels off. Maybe it's your work.
Maybe it's your marriage. Maybe it's a deeper question about who you are becoming after 40 or 45, 50. Before you sit with this discomfort, your hand reaches for your phone. You start searching. Why don't I know what I want? How to find purpose in midlife? What should I do next with my life? Why do I feel stuck in my 40s?
Or you open a podcast app, you scroll, you look for someone who sounds confident, certain, clear. You read another article, you bookmark another guide, you ask for advice, information, other people's clarity. And yet there is one thing many of us rarely do.
We don't pause long enough to ask ourselves. And this isn't about intelligence. It isn't about discipline. It isn't about weakness. It's a pattern.
When you don't know something, you automatically look outside for the answer. I call this the external answer habit.
So let me tell you what the external answer habit is. It's simple. It's the reflex to believe that clarity lives somewhere outside you — in a book, in a podcast, in a course, in an expert who sounds more certain than you feel. When you feel stuck in midlife, this reflex becomes automatic. Instead of sitting with uncertainty, you search. In a world full of how-to content, it feels completely normal to assume the answer must already exist somewhere. If you just read one more article, listen to one more episode, you'll finally know what to do next.
Oksana Skidan (04:01.836)
And here's why this is so powerful. This habit feels responsible. It feels productive. It feels mature because gathering information is intelligent. Learning from others is how we grow. That's why this pattern is difficult to see. It doesn't look like avoidance. It actually looks like effort. But the problem is not that outside advice is wrong. The problem is that we use it for the wrong kind of question.
When you need something practical — how to, well, let's say, negotiate a salary, improve your health, learn a new skill — external answers are useful. But when the question becomes, who am I now? What do I actually want? What is my purpose after 40?
No amount of outside content can replace your own internal clarity. At some point, the issue is no longer a lack of information. It is a lack of self-trust. Now, here's the deeper layer. Why are we so conditioned to look outside in the first place? Why don't we trust ourselves?
Because that's how we were trained from childhood. If you didn't know something, you asked your parents. Curiosity was answered by someone older, someone more certain. All those why questions. The message was simple: if you don't know, someone else does. At school, the pattern continued. If you didn't understand, you asked the teacher. If you wanted good grades, you studied the book, you did your homework.
The answers were in the authority at the front of the room. Learning meant looking outward. Progress meant observing what had already been defined.
Oksana Skidan (06:32.364)
And as adults, the structure continues. You ask experts about your career, doctors about your health, advisors about your finances. And there is nothing wrong with that. External expertise is necessary in a complex, fast-paced world. But over time, this practical habit becomes something deeper. It becomes a belief:
If I don't know the answer, it must exist somewhere outside me. That formula works beautifully for technical questions, but it fails when the questions become personal, especially in midlife. When you ask, why do I feel stuck? What do I want now? Who am I becoming? You're no longer looking for information. You're looking for identity. And identity cannot be outsourced.
So why does feeling stuck get stronger in midlife? After all, we have experienced stuck states before as well. Because the questions change. By the time many women reach their 40s or early 50s, the culturally approved path has often been completed. We earn the degree, we build a career, we raise the children. From the outside, the milestones are in place.
Life looks stable, quite often even successful. But then a different kind of question rises. Who am I now? What do I want next after all these successful completions? Why do I feel stuck when everything looks fine from the outside? What actually matters at this stage of my life? These are not practical questions. They are identity questions.
Oksana Skidan (08:36.246)
Identity is shaped by lived experience. Your personal disappointments, your strengths, your silent desires you never fully named. You can Google how to change careers in your 40s. You cannot Google whether that change will feel meaningful to you.
Oksana Skidan (09:12.414)
You can Google how to change careers in your 40s. You cannot Google whether that change will feel meaningful to you. You can search for how to find your purpose in midlife. No search result can tell you what will genuinely satisfy you. You can listen to experts discuss reinvention, confidence, courage, but in the end, you are still the one who has to decide.
So what do many women do when they feel uncertain? We consume more. More books. More advice. I did this for years. Whenever I felt restless or unclear, I assumed someone else must have figured it out better than I had. The problem wasn't that those voices were wrong. Many were actually wise, thoughtful, insightful.
The problem was that they were describing how they would navigate their lives. Their clarity was shaped by their personality, their history, their values, and as a result, it could not be a blueprint for mine. I was using an information tool for an identity search, hoping someone else's certainty would replace my own self-trust.
Oksana Skidan (13:40.302)
Now, there is another cost we pay for constantly looking for advice. And you don't notice it at first. You read the books, you listen to the podcasts, you follow the experts, and yet you still feel stuck because instead of moving forward, you remain in preparation mode. And to be honest, personally, this is my favorite one. While collecting all the external information, you feel productive. You're learning. You are busy. But you're not deciding. You're observing.
You're not moving forward. You're collecting ideas about how to live without fully choosing your own direction, without acting upon it. Over time, this creates tension. You feel informed, but not settled. You understand many strategies for change, but none of them feel fully yours. Decisions get postponed because there's always one more angle to consider, one more book to read, one more opinion to weigh.
Clarity feels close but never quite solid. And this is not fear. It is not incompetence. It is misplaced authority. When you expect answers to come from outside yourself, your own voice begins to soften.
The more external opinions you collect, the harder it becomes to hear your own perspective clearly. You begin to doubt what you already know because it hasn't been validated by someone else out there.
Oksana Skidan (15:43.51)
And here's the truth: by midlife, you carry decades of lived experiences, insights, consequences, lessons. This is not a stage of starting from zero. The shift begins when you notice you have been trained to trust outside voices more than your own. Even when something inside you quietly knows the direction, you still hesitate. You pause, you reach outward first instead of listening inward.
But what if the answer is already inside you? What if the answer isn't missing? What if you were simply never taught to ask yourself first? Many women who feel stuck in midlife assume they need better advice, a better plan, a stronger strategy, more expert guidance. But what if clarity isn't something you go out and find? What if it is something you finally allow yourself to hear?
Oksana Skidan (17:09.866)
What if the reason you feel stuck isn't confusion, but outside noise? Noise from too many opinions, too many strategies, too many voices telling you how to live your life.
So what if, before you open another tab, before you search for more advice, you ask yourself one simple question: What do I already know? That question feels uncomfortable because it shifts authority back to you. And midlife is a perfect time for it. It's not a knowledge problem. In our 40s and 50s, we have lived long enough to carry real experience. We have made decisions, we have seen consequences, we have succeeded, we have adjusted, we have rebuilt. Midlife is the time of recognizing that your lived experience has value.
Self-trust does not activate automatically. For decades, we were trained to look outward first. So when we feel uncertain, we search. When we feel stuck, we ask for advice. When we feel restless, we look for someone else's clarity. Shifting that pattern is subtle, slow, but it is powerful.
It is the movement from external answers to internal ones, from asking, what do they think I should do, to asking, what feels true for me now? What do I already know? This does not require another method. It does not require another framework. It begins with awareness. Before you search for advice, notice the impulse.
Oksana Skidan (19:30.348)
Before you outsource your uncertainty, sit with the question. You may still choose to seek guidance later, but you begin with yourself, with your experience, with your knowledge. You do not need more information to move forward in midlife. You need to stop assuming your answers live somewhere else. Self-trust grows when you allow your own experience to count, not because you reject outside wisdom, but because you no longer place it above your own. And maybe you're not confused. Maybe you have just been listening everywhere but yourself.