The #1 Thing Holding You Back (It's Not What You Think)

Ask most women what's stopping them from making a big change, and you'll hear the same three answers: time, money, circumstance.

I don't have the time right now. I can't afford to make a change like that. My situation is just too complicated.

I used to take those answers at face value. Now, after sitting across from so many brave, capable women, I've learned to listen past them — because underneath almost every "I can't" is a story. And it's rarely the practical story it pretends to be.

It's not the circumstance. It's the sentence you keep repeating.

Here's what I mean. Two women can have nearly identical circumstances — same amount of time, same bank account, same complicated family situation — and one will build something new from it while the other stays stuck for years. The difference almost never comes down to resources. It comes down to the story each of them is telling herself about what's possible.

I'm too old to start over. I've never been the kind of person who does things like this. It's selfish to want more than what I already have. People like me don't get to reinvent themselves.

These aren't facts. They're sentences — repeated so many times they started to feel like the truth. And a sentence, no matter how old or familiar, can be questioned.

From "I can't" to "How can I?"

Here's the reframe I come back to again and again, with clients and in my own life: "I can't" is a closed door. "How can I?" is a door left open.

Let me give you a real example. A client came to me convinced she couldn't start the consulting business she'd dreamed about for a decade — "I don't have the money for that right now" was her exact sentence. We didn't argue with the sentence. We got curious about it instead. How could I start this with almost no money? That single shift in phrasing took her from stuck to in motion within one conversation. She didn't need a full launch budget. She needed three founding clients, a laptop, and a Saturday. Six months later, she had all three — and a business.

The circumstance hadn't changed. The story had.

"I can't" ends the sentence. "How can I?" starts a new one — and your brain, remarkably, will start hunting for the answer the moment you ask the question honestly.

What story are you ready to let go of?

I want to ask you something, and I'd genuinely love for you to sit with it rather than rushing past it:

What's the sentence you've been repeating to yourself — about your age, your timing, your money, your worthiness — that's been quietly running the show?

Maybe it's I've missed my window. Maybe it's I'm not the kind of person who does bold things. Maybe it's something smaller and quieter that you've never said out loud.

Whatever it is, I'd love for you to name it. Out loud, in the comments, in a journal, to a friend — it doesn't matter where. What matters is that a story you've named is a story you can finally examine, instead of one running silently in the background of every decision you make.

You are allowed to ask a better question than the one you've been asking. Start there. The rest tends to follow.