When I asked my friend how she was, her answer was a bit shaky: “I’m good, yeah. It’s just kinda hard having moved back in with my parents ’til I figure things out with my business, you know. But, it’s fine and I was so happy when I came back here, so… It’s all good. “

It was obvious that she didn’t at all feel comfortable living at her parents’ place. Of course moving in with them made logical sense – she loved her parents and saving the money on rent & food really eased up some pressure on her finances.

The only problem was, that even though this move made tons of sense on a theoretical level, the reality of it sucked. It just wasn’t a lot of fun being around her parents 24/7, and she found herself questioning & procrastinating on her business more than she did when she was on her own.

But in between the moans and sighs she kept saying “But it’s fine, I’m fine.”

Do you do that too sometimes? Deep down we know that something isn’t working, but since we don’t know a solution, we don’t dare admit its suckiness to ourselves – because what if we find out that there really is nothing we can change about it, and then we won’t be able to ignore that it sucks and have to suffer FOREVER MORE?

Here’s the thing:

When we pretend that things are fine when we know deep down that they aren’t, we invalidate our feelings and make ourselves wrong instead of saying “I got your back, I’m listening”

And if we do that for long enough, guess what, we’re gonna stop believing in ourselves. We’re going to lose all that hard earned self-trust, because clearly, we don’t care about our own needs + feelings all that much, and we’re not willing or able to do what it takes to turn things around.

So please, stop saying you’re fine when really, you feel like crap on the inside.

Admit when things suck and then bask in the feeling of relief that comes with it.

The cool thing is: You’re now able to make it suck less. Once you declare that something’s off, you’re essentially giving yourself permission to seek solutions.

But if you keep pretending that “it’s not toooo bad”, you won’t get anywhere.

With my friend, I lovingly pointed out that she didn’t seem so fine to me. She exhaled a big sigh of relief, nodding her head in agreement. And now that things were clear between us, we spent the rest of our conversation playing with possible solutions.

She might move in with a friend, or backpack her way back to Guatemala. She doesn’t have all the answers yet, but having clarity around what she doesn’t want gave her the courage to take the first step, and then the next, to get herself out of the suckiness and into a better situation.

She’s learning how to trust her intuition and follow it even when it’s uncomfortable.

And that’s what I want for you, too.