The Day I Realized I Was Living Someone Else's Life

About four years ago, I sat across from my coach, feeling confident about our session. She'd been helping me navigate some career decisions, and I thought I had clarity about where I was headed.

Then she asked a question that seemed simple: "What do you want? Career wise. What is your vision for your future?"

I froze.

The silence stretched between us as I searched for an answer, any answer. I could tell you what made sense. What would impress people. What my family expected. What seemed logical given my experience and education.

But what did I actually want? I had no idea.

Even more terrifying, I had no answer that was authentic, that came from my heart, that came from me.

That moment was a wake-up call. A scary one. But it planted a seed in me, an extreme need for finding my passion and living a life that actually had purpose.

This seed grew over the years. Little by little, bit by bit, there were signs, opportunities, choices to make where this seed bloomed into a tree with roots deep in my core. I was on a journey of self-discovery which became my obsession.

I grew up in Curaçao, a beautiful melting pot of different cultures that created something completely unique; a culture that's extremely diversified with elements from warm, cold, and religious traditions from around the world. Your identity there was deeply tied to your relationships and roles. You knew who you were through your connections, your family position, your place in the community.

Moving to the Netherlands added another complex layer. Now I was navigating Dutch professional culture while trying to maintain my Caribbean warmth and values. I found myself code-switching constantly, performing a version of myself I thought would succeed here.

The exhaustion was real. And the strangest part? I didn't even realize I was doing it.

Fortunately, I was well underway in my self-discovery journey when that coaching session happened. But it wasn't until my journey turned into a self-leadership journey that I understood the difference between knowing my resume and knowing myself. Between understanding my external circumstances and connecting with my authentic desires and responses.

As my sight, focus, and approach shifted in many things and in many areas of my life, I became curious and passionate about helping other women who were going through the same thing. I wanted to share what I had learned, how I had changed my course by developing an internal compass guiding me through every decision.

I especially started noticing how what I had gone through was what many Caribbean and Latin American women were experiencing. Not that other women weren't struggling with this, but these women from warm cultures were particularly challenged by the different roles they were filling, especially roles within the Netherlands that came with expectations so different from what they were used to.

In my conversations with women from India, Indonesia, Colombia, the Dutch Caribbean, Venezuela, I heard the same struggles over and over. This became central and key in most of my 1:1 coaching and group coaching sessions.

One client, described it perfectly: "I can tell you everything about my job, my family, my schedule. But if you ask me what I genuinely want for my life? I freeze. It's like that part of me has been on mute for so long, I've forgotten the sound of my own voice."

This is what I call the role-versus-self gap, and it's costing us more than we realize. Every decision made from "should" instead of genuine desire. Every opportunity missed because we can't trust our instincts in Dutch professional culture. Every evening spent exhausted from performing a personality that isn't quite ours.

The foundation of everything, confidence, boundaries, influence, authentic success, starts with this: truly meeting yourself beneath the expectations.

It's not comfortable work. My own journey involved confronting how much of my life was built on borrowed values and others' expectations. But it's the only work that actually creates lasting change.

If you're reading this and recognizing yourself, if you're successful by external measures but something feels missing, you're not alone. And you're not ungrateful or difficult for wanting more than checking boxes.

You're ready for something most people avoid their entire lives: coming into your own.

If this resonates with you, I'd love to have a conversation about what authentic self-discovery could look like for you. Reach out through my website's contact form to schedule a Clarity & Connection Call—a no-commitment conversation where we explore where you are and what's possible when you lead from your authentic foundation.

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