There is often an assumption that confidence should increase with age. By the time you reach your 40s or 50s, many people believe you should know exactly who you are, feel secure in yourself and have life figured out.

But for many women, the opposite happens.

Confidence can drop in midlife, often at the exact time you thought you would feel more settled and more certain of yourself.

You may begin to question yourself more, compare yourself to younger versions of yourself, or stop trusting your own instincts.

You may feel unsure about your appearance, career, relationships or future. You may begin to wonder why you no longer feel like yourself. And the difficult part is that, on the outside, life may still look fine.

You may still be working, looking after everyone else, keeping everything going and appearing capable to the people around you. But underneath it, something feels different.

This is one of the most common questions women bring to coaching. Not because their lives are falling apart, but because something no longer fits. They feel a disconnect with where their lives are and where they want them to be, and there is a good chance that if you are reading this, you are feeling the same.

Many women reach a point where they are functioning well on the surface, yet feel disconnected underneath. Life carries on, responsibilities are met, but there is a growing sense that something is missing or misaligned.

I know this feeling; I felt like this a few years ago, worried that there was something wrong with me or my life, that I needed to create change in my life, but I just didn’t know what to do.

The truth is, feeling lost doesn’t always show up as a crisis. Often, it shows up as frustration, flatness, or a lack of direction.