There’s Nothing Particularly Wrong With My Life. So Why Do I Want Something Different?

And what a canary has to do with all of this.

Have you ever admonished yourself with the thought:

“I should be grateful”?

This, to me, is a warning call.

We all know by now that gratitude can positively affect our feelings and appreciation of life. Gratitude practices, journalling and meditations can all help shift our emotions towards the positive.

Gratitude is also the foundation of Joanna Macy’s group work, which I sometimes share through her Spiral of the Work That Reconnects. It helps us cope when the world feels very messy, and find hope when we feel despair. All of this demonstrates the individual and collective power of gratitude.

But when we’re “shoulding” all over gratitude, it can get a little toxic.

When gratitude becomes another way to silence yourself?

Sometimes gratitude becomes a compelling justification for the status quo. It becomes a duty, with the unwritten subtext that perhaps you’re a bad person if you’re not grateful for something that looks good on the surface.

It’s often accompanied by thoughts such as:

• I have a lovely house.

• I have two lovely children.

• I have a great relationship.

• I’m successful. I have a great job.

• I’m so lucky I don’t have to work.

  
  

If gratitude is so helpful, why can it still feel so rubbish, so off-kilter and often so lonely when we try to be more appreciative?

Are we simply selfish, greedy and plain ungrateful?

I don’t believe so.

These inner complaints can be the early-warning canary in the coal mine of your heart, signalling that something is not quite right. And your mind may threaten to extinguish her song unless you listen a little longer and a little more deeply.

Because this canary is on to something.

She doesn’t deserve to be gaslit by the bullying voice of “should”.

This bright little yellow bird is trilling her heart out and directing you towards your next opus.

Let me explain.

How we learn who we should be

Our “social selves” include the parts of us trained to behave well in society and be polite, useful mechanisms for getting along just fine with other people.

They also contain the thinking we have internalised from our families, culture, leaders, teachers and friends. I’m guessing I now have to include social media and AI in that list too.

Much of this conditioning begins when we are tiny, when fitting in helps us survive.

To be loved by our family of origin, early-years teachers and other significant adults, we learn to behave in ways that generate approval. Our parents and teachers might be the most loving and attentive beings ever, but even with such a delightful background, we pick up clues about how we need to behave to be loved, fed and secure.

About 30 years ago, I sat on a beach in Yorkshire. I can’t remember which one, but I was living up there and would pop out for a weekend day in nature.

The slope down to the beach had a café on the left and a concrete path wide enough for cars towing boats. One part was extremely steep, and slippery to boot.

As I ate my ice cream, I watched tourists slip and slide their way down. One small boy stuck in my mind. He was about two or three years old and trotting down the path, clearly loving the sensation of running downhill, fearless in his enthusiasm for movement.

As he reached the steepest incline, he predictably slipped and fell. Nothing serious, but a bit of a bump and perhaps a small graze.

As the cool dairy crystals melted in my mouth, I expected him to cry out.

He didn’t.

He turned around and looked for his dad. His dad laughed, said something like “Upsy-daisy”, picked him up and swung him around.

The boy chuckled along with him and, moments later, was back on his feet, trotting down the final part of the ramp.

So far, so good, you might think.

Intrigued, I watched similar falls again and again. What the smallest people did next was more interesting.

Each child fell and paused.

Then they looked towards the adult in charge and responded to the expression on that person’s face.

Horrified? Aghast? Worried? A split-second pause, then usually a loud cry.

Smiling? Confident? “Oops! Come on, let’s go!” The child would usually laugh or get up and keep going.

It was my first lesson in the power other people have to shape our responses, broken down into slow time thanks to toddlers working it out.

The rules we carry into adulthood

Over the years, we learn many ways of responding to elicit the reaction we hope for. If we learn them before the age of seven, they are usually subconscious.

It may begin with a chance conversation or a moment of frustration when a parent says, “Stop being so loud” or “Don’t be so shy”. Perhaps a teacher praises us for being “good” or tells us off for leaving food on our plate.

We learn how to fit in with our community. Our herd.

This runs deep.

As we grow older, we internalise the rules about what success looks like, what we should be grateful for and what a successful, functioning, probably aspirational life is supposed to look like.

And for a long time, these rules may fit.

I spent four years in the corporate world as a PR and marketing executive. There were meetings, travel, salary and the high of a presentation that went well or a press conference that produced huge column inches, the 1990s equivalent of going viral.

There were glowing feelings of success.

But once we have achieved that version of success, if it isn’t true to our heart, aligned with our values or creating genuine joy and aliveness, it can quickly become stale.

I loved the freedom the money bought me. The choices I could make!

I remember reading a Guardian survey at the time that ranked income twenty-eighth on its readers’ list of what really mattered in a career, once a certain baseline had been met.

[Admittedly, the result might have been different in The Telegraph or the Financial Times.]

But I remembered the statistic because it shocked me and resonated deeply.

Once I had found money and success, I realised that having them was less compelling than the feeling of wanting them had been. A sense of lack and scarcity had driven me towards something I could then see was not particularly important to me.

So I took my life in a different, less well-paid direction, where my inner canary could sing and sing and sing.

Why we stay when something no longer fits

I often meet people who keep going with something that used to fulfil them, or which was driven by a sense of lack and wanting.

Financial reward is attractive and validating. It offers external recognition for our achievements and pays the bills, mortgage, car payments or school fees that support our current choices.

I have met many people stuck in a job to maintain those commitments. With a fresh start, they might choose a smaller house or less expensive car in return for greater freedom.

Or there is the dangling lure of promotion, just around the corner, recently achieved or still far off, seducing us to stay.

Our minds love a challenge. They love success. And they are BRILLIANT at giving us reasons to remain where we are and explaining why what we’re doing matters.

Sometimes it has nothing to do with money:

Who would I be if I stopped being a teacher, CEO, HR manager, professor or naval officer?

Perhaps it is the status attached to the role.

Or perhaps you are simply TOO BUSY to think about any of it. You’re juggling a career, children, ageing parents, married life or divorce. Can everyone please leave you alone while you crash on the sofa at 9 p.m. on Friday, too tired even to enjoy the weekend?

Pass the wine and chocolate NOW!!

These reasons, and many more, are brilliant at keeping the canary of our heart just that little bit quieter.

Be grateful. This is what you wanted.

Be grateful. Other people have far less.

What else would you do anyway?

My role is to look after our children, partner or dog.

This is what good people do.

I don’t know what else I could be doing.

The canary retreats. Subdued. Admonished.

After all, we should be grateful, shouldn’t we?

Gratitude and yearning can coexist

The answer is yes. We can be grateful.

We can be grateful for what we have achieved. That we have more than many. That we have wonderful children, partners, friends or dogs.

And I’m sure that, if you’re reading this, you’re a good person at heart.

But this can be a Yes/And, just like improvisation:

• YES, I am grateful AND my heart is yearning for something more, even though I don’t know what it is yet.

• YES, I am grateful for all that I have AND I would like to try something different in my one wild and precious life.

• YES, I am grateful AND, even though I don’t yet know what I want to do with my life, I am willing to take myself seriously and explore it.

• YES, I am grateful AND it’s time to stop postponing myself.

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If you know what your true self, your heart or your canary is yearning for, you are partly there. Choosing and implementing are your next steps.

If you don’t know, that is fine too.

Acknowledging it and giving yourself permission to remain in the unknown for now are important. Learning how to dream and scheme in slow time may be your next step.

This is often where a Wayfinder Coach comes in: helping you unblock your inner ears to the song of your personal canary, release the “shoulds” and navigate towards a new life at the pace that is right for you.

Even if you currently believe change is impossible.

Listen for your canary

Perhaps nothing is particularly wrong with your life.

And perhaps something within you still wants to sing.

You don’t have to blow everything up. You don’t have to know the answer today. In fact, you don’t even have to be certain that change is possible.

But you can stop gaslighting the canary.

Listen.

Allow gratitude and longing to sit alongside one another. You don’t have to choose between them.

When you stop arguing with what your heart is trying to tell you, you will find something begins to ease.

The tension softens.

The canary’s song becomes clearer.

And, little by little, you can begin to follow it.

What is your canary trying to tell you?

If this has stirred something in you, but you’re not sure what no longer fits, where you’re stuck or what you genuinely want instead, (or can't hear your canary - or doubt her entirely!) you don’t have to work it all out alone.

You’re warmly invited to book a free Explore Call. We’ll talk about where you are now, what may be keeping you there and what a more alive, meaningful and genuinely yours next chapter might look like.

If it feels as though I could help, we can also explore whether one-to-one coaching or the next Your Next Chapter programme would be the right kind of support. No pressure. No pushy sales. Just some time to listen to what your canary may be trying to tell you.

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