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.

Are you the sort of person who says “Yes” to everything when every fibre of you wants to scream” No!”? Do you feel delegated to do everything, whether at work or at home, and you end up feeling taken for granted and used, yet you do it anyway?

If either of these scenarios resonates with you, you are suffering from a lack of assertiveness, fearing the reaction of other people instead of standing up for yourself.

This is a very common problem many people suffer from, but the good news is that once identified, you can rid yourself of it.

Struggling to be assertive often stems from a fear of conflict, rejection, or the desire to be liked.

Many people were never taught how to express their needs confidently, especially if they grew up in environments where being passive or overly accommodating was encouraged.

This can lead to internalized beliefs that speaking up is selfish or rude. However, assertiveness is about balance—honouring both your needs and the needs of others.

Start by noticing situations where you remain silent even when you have something important to express

We should all have some boundaries in our lives so we can live the way we want to live. Boundary setting in relationships is one area in particular we need to address.

We need healthy boundaries to maintain positive relationships and to have self-respect. Therefore, it is important to fully understand what a healthy boundary is and how to implement them.

To have healthy boundaries you need to understand your limits and values and be able to communicate them clearly and assertively to people around you.

We all experience many emotions during the day. But what happens if one recurring feeling keeps coming through? Especially if it is a negative one.

If you are someone who is feeling lost, sad or hopeless, you may find your whole life is being affected and you are struggling to cope.

Feeling sad and lost can stem from a variety of reasons. It could be due to undergoing a significant loss, facing major life changes, experiencing a lack of purpose or direction, feeling overwhelmed by responsibilities, or struggling with unmet expectations.

Do you have a good opinion of yourself? If you were to honestly say “ Yes I really like myself and I feel I have many great attributes” then you would undoubtedly think highly of yourself and be doing well in your world.

What if you have the opinion you are awful, no one likes you and you pretty much suck at everything in life, you would be saddled with highly toxic self-limiting beliefs and would probably not be doing as well as you could be.

These kinds of beliefs could cause you to self-sabotage everything you do in your life. But what exactly are self-sabotaging beliefs?