“I’m Doing Everything ‘Right,’ and Still Something Feels Wrong”
“I’m doing everything “right.” I’m working hard, keeping up with responsibilities, being kind, staying healthy, trying to stay grateful. I’m following all the advice, all the routines. And still—something feels off. I don’t know what I’m missing. I just know this isn’t how I thought it would feel.”
Dear Nina,
That feeling—of doing everything “right” and still sensing that something’s off—is one of the most quietly disorienting experiences you can have. Because it’s not about failure. It’s not about crisis. It’s the kind of ache that exists in spite of your effort. And that’s what makes it so hard to name.
You’re showing up. You’re checking the boxes. You’re practicing the behaviors that are supposed to lead to fulfillment, balance, maybe even peace. But inside? There’s a gap. A mismatch. A question you can’t quite form but can’t quite silence either.
And what makes this harder is that the world tends to reward you for exactly what you’re doing: for being consistent, composed, emotionally literate. From the outside, your life might look like a blueprint for success. But from the inside, something vital feels... uninhabited.
That disconnect deserves your attention. Not because you’ve done something wrong, but because your life may have become more aligned with expectations than with your own internal truth. You’ve followed the path—but maybe it wasn’t drawn by you.
It’s easy to mistake structure for satisfaction. Easy to believe that if you just do the right things, you’ll eventually feel the right feelings. But the soul doesn’t respond to checklists. It responds to aliveness. To meaning. To resonance.
And sometimes, what feels “wrong” isn’t dramatic. It’s subtle. A sense that your life has been curated more than created. That you’re living by habit, not by hunger. That you’ve traded off spontaneity, curiosity, even joy in order to keep things functioning smoothly.
This is where the discomfort starts to whisper. It says: You’ve built something that works—but is it something you love?
It asks: Who are you underneath all the performing of wellness and balance and achievement?
You don’t have to burn it all down. You don’t have to abandon the routines or quit the job or disappear into the mountains. But you do have to start listening to the small, subversive voice that keeps asking for something more honest.
That voice might not want more productivity. It might want more play. More intimacy. More beauty. More rest. Or more meaning that isn’t externally rewarded.
It might ask you to disappoint a few people in order to stop disappointing yourself.
There is nothing wrong with having structure. But a life made entirely of structure can become a cage if your soul doesn’t have room to breathe.
You’re not broken for feeling this way. You’re not ungrateful. You’re not missing anything obvious. You’re simply arriving at the edge of the map that got you here—and realizing it’s time to start drawing your own.
Let that be a beginning.
–RJ
Not every misalignment is loud. Some just whisper, this isn’t it.