The Recipe I Was Following Was Not Mine

One morning, I found myself in deep despair. My thoughts would not stop, no matter what I did. I was exhausted and unhappy.

From the outside, it probably looked like I was doing well.

I had completed my PhD and found a stable job with a decent salary. The next steps were already waiting: climbing the promotion ladder, having children, buying a house, saving more and adding more to my CV.

Each one seemed to promise more security, more approval and a greater sense of worth.

I had built a life that made sense on paper, and I was expected to keep building in the same direction.

Yet something about it did not feel like mine.

The version of success I had learned had a fixed shape. I kept following it even as part of me resisted, hoping that if I stayed on the path long enough, it would eventually feel right.

At work, I acted as though I enjoyed being there. I smiled in meetings and tried to sound enthusiastic. When people asked where I saw myself in five years, I told them I would be further up the ladder, working harder and achieving more. I spoke as though that future excited me.

I knew how to present the ambitious and grateful version of myself people expected to see. Their approval made that future seem right.

My unhappiness began to feel like the part of me that needed fixing.

That version did not stay at work.

I remember a conversation with a friend about what we imagined our futures would look like. I told her about a better job I planned to apply for and said that perhaps my husband and I would buy a house.

As I spoke, my stomach tightened.

I could hear myself giving her the kind of answer people understood. It made me sound as though I was doing well and knew where my life was going. I was describing the life I thought I should want.

I could not tell her what I wanted instead, though I knew the one honest thing I could have said:

I did not want the life I had just described.

In 2018, during a lunch break in my office, I watched a video by Marie Forleo. She was talking about Everything Is Figureoutable, the book she was writing at the time, and the freedom to live the life you want rather than the one imposed on you.

Her words hit me.

I was unhappy with the way I was living my life because I had been following everyone else’s recipe.

I had organised my life around work and achievements, lived for weekends, taken one holiday a year and treated freedom as something that would have to wait until retirement.

I asked myself whether I could spend decades living that way.

The answer was clear and it frightened me.

If this sensible path was not mine, what was?

I still had no answer, but I knew how to live the life I already had. Rather than staying with the uncertainty, I returned to the familiar path.

My husband and I bought a house, even though I knew it was not what I wanted. I chose the furniture and made it beautiful, hoping that if I made the house feel right, I might begin to want the life it represented.

I could see that the recipe was wrong for me. I was still trying to make it work.

In 2021, a question on a podcast brought me back to something I had once known.

I was listening to a To Be Magnetic episode about living as your authentic self. We were asked to think about a book or film character we had loved when we were younger.

I thought of Wanderlust by Danielle Steel. Its main character left her family, travelled alone and met a writer who became her partner along the way.

I remembered how much I had wanted to be her.

I wanted to travel, discover the world and write.

Was this new information? Not entirely.

The longing had been there for years, buried beneath expectations, responsibilities and all the ideas I had carried about how I should live. I had allowed those ideas to shape my decisions while treating my own desires as unrealistic, impractical or unimportant for so long that I had stopped recognising them as part of me.

For the first time, I could name what I wanted instead, and I could no longer ignore it.

A few years later, I reached a point where I could leave my job. My husband and I sold the house I had spent so much time making beautiful and booked one-way tickets to Italy.

I still have no idea where this life will lead.

If my friend asked me the same question today, my answer would be less certain than the one I gave her then.

I would tell her that I want to keep travelling and writing, with more freedom over how I spend my days.

My stomach would still drop as I said it, this time from excitement.

I would recognise myself in the answer.

Sara

Author bio: Sara Mani is a psychosocial researcher, writer and author of Let It Count. She writes Mindset with Sara, where she explores how old expectations, approval and the need to belong shape the lives we build, and what happens when those lives no longer feel like our own.