I know something needs to change, but I don’t know what comes next.

There is a strange period between recognising that something needs to change and knowing what you want to replace it with.

We tend to be much more comfortable with change when we can describe the whole journey. I am leaving this job to take that one. This relationship has ended and I am ready for another. I used to want this, but now I want that. There is something reassuring about being able to explain where we are going, perhaps because it makes leaving where we have been feel more deliberate.

Real life is not always that tidy.

Sometimes we become certain about what we no longer want considerably earlier than we become certain about what we want instead. That gap can feel unsettling because there is nothing obvious to move towards, and staying where we are can begin to look strangely sensible simply because it is familiar.

But not knowing what comes next does not necessarily mean that what you have already noticed is wrong.

I think we sometimes ask the future to justify a change before we have allowed ourselves to fully understand the present. We become so preoccupied with finding the next job, relationship, ambition or version of ourselves that we skip over the more interesting question of what has changed enough to make the current one feel different.

There may not be an immediate answer. In fact, trying to force one can simply give us another thing to commit to before we have understood why the last one stopped making sense.

So perhaps the question for now is not, “What am I going to do next?” It might be, “What do I already know that I keep trying to unknow because I don’t yet have an alternative?”

And if you temporarily removed the pressure to have a plan, what would you be more willing to admit about where you are now?