Why Life Feels Empty When Nothing Is Actually Wrong

On outgrowing the life you once wanted, losing your sense of purpose, and learning to enjoy life again without having to make every day extraordinary.

Have you ever had mornings when you wake up hoping something unexpectedly good will happen? Something meaningful, fun, exciting, anything that would make your day different from yesterday. But then the day passes, you work, do the usual things, spend too much time on your phone, too little with your loved ones, and somehow it’s bedtime again. And when you’re lying in bed, disappointed with how the day turned out, you struggle to put the finger on what exactly is upsetting you, because really and truly, you have very little to complain about. Life is comfortable, your family is doing well, you’re healthy, and you have much of what you once wanted, if not all of it.

So why do you sometimes feel like you’re waiting for something more? Have you outgrown your own life, or have you simply become ridiculously difficult to impress?

What happens when you achieve the life you once wanted?

I grew up in Lithuania in the 1980s and 1990s, when many things I now take for granted seemed like ambitious dreams. Travelling abroad, living somewhere warm, becoming financially independent, having a successful career, choosing where to live, how to organise your work and being able to afford things without constantly counting whether by the end of the month you will manage to make the ends meet.

For much of my adult life, I had a clear understanding of what I needed to do next. I became a mother at 23, spent many years raising my daughter, worked independently and managed pretty much everything that needed managing. There were always responsibilities, problems to solve and decisions to make. I wouldn’t romanticise those years, because being responsible for everything isn’t nearly as empowering as some motivational speakers would have us believe. But there was something psychologically convenient about knowing exactly what needed to be done.

Honestly, I didn’t have time to question my purpose because my purpose was rather obvious. I had a child to raise, bills to pay, a career to build and a future to secure.

Today, at 42, I’ve lived in a few, beautiful countries, raised a daughter who is now building her own life, built my career, my relationships and created a lifestyle that would have seemed impossible to my younger self. Wonderful! Except that freedom comes with an unexpected question: Now that I don’t have to organise my entire life around the little fires everywhere that need my immediate attention, what do I actually want to do?

Jung’s uncomfortable idea: maybe we’ve outgrown our own ambitions

Carl Jung‘s work on the stages of life offers an interesting explanation for why the priorities that motivated us at 25 no longer feel as important at 40. You see, much of early adulthood involves establishing our place in society: we develop professional identities, build relationships, learn to support ourselves, raise kids and become the people our communities recognise us as. Jung called the social identity we present to the world the persona. For years, my persona was that of an independent, strong, “I can do it all” woman who somehow managed to make money and raise her daughter at the same time.

These things still matter to me, but they no longer occupy the same place in my everyday life. The things that motivated me to move forward did exactly what they were supposed to do back then, but they no longer drive me in quite the same way today.

“My life feels empty,” imagine me dramatically speaking to myself while doing laundries on Sunday evening! While Jung, in his essay The Stages of Life (1930/1931), suggests that the psychological priorities of the second half of life cannot simply be a continuation of those of the first.

The first half of life is mostly about creating ourselves in the external world. We pursue education, careers, relationships, financial independence, social acceptance and family responsibilities. We build a persona that helps us function successfully in society. In the second half, Jung suggests, our attention begins to turn inwards. And instead of focusing on what we want to achieve, we begin questioning who we are, what matters to us and whether the persona we have created still reflects the person we are becoming.

Jung wasn’t saying that we should quit our careers, abandon our families or give up our ambitions at 40. His point was that the psychological priorities motivating those goals may need to be reconsidered. For example, a woman might spend 20 years building a career, raising children, travelling every chance she gets and creating financial security. Once she has achieved those things, she may start feeling that continuing to live the same way no longer gives her the same satisfaction. Another promotion doesn’t interest her. She no longer wants to spend her evenings working. And instead, she’d rather spend time learning something that has absolutely no commercial value.

Has she got used to success? Started taking everything for granted? Lost motivation? Become less ambitious?

Or maybe she’s still measuring her life through achievements that were so important to her in the past, expecting a more mature version of herself to continue wanting the same things that mattered so much to her younger self. Maybe the second half of life needs its own meaning. And by the way, the second half doesn’t necessarily begin at 50, as we tend to think, as if everyone lives exactly 100 years. It’s far more individual than that, and this psychological transition may begin around 40, or earlier or later.

There are very high chances that the discomfort she’s experiencing isn’t a sign of a personal failure, but an opportunity for further psychological development.

Our generation’s dreams have become someone else’s ordinary Tuesday

There’s another reason I think finding satisfaction has become so complicated. Many of the things our generation (millennials) once considered major achievements are now much more visible and, for some, more accessible than they were a few decades ago.

We can study at universities abroad without moving countries, work from anywhere, travel relatively cheap, start businesses with little capital and communicate with people across the world. And of course, social media has changed what we consider impressive.

I remember when someone moving abroad or travelling somewhere exotic was something people would write articles about. Now I open Instagram and see someone buying a villa in Dubai, another person spending six months in Japan, someone becoming a millionaire at 29, someone building impressive abs and getting incredibly fit at 60, or someone running a marathon at a speed many couldn’t even dream of, without even training that much.

Some of it is real. Some is exaggerated. Some is probably completely fake. But even when I know that, it still influences what I consider an impressive life. And what happens to our satisfaction with our own achievements when the standards against which we evaluate ourselves keep rising every day?

We used to compare ourselves primarily with people in our communities, families and workplaces. People from backgrounds similar to our own. Now our reference group is practically unlimited. Whatever we’ve achieved, somebody has already achieved more. And when extraordinary lifestyles become something we see every day, packaged as just another ordinary day in someone’s life, our own perfectly comfortable lives can begin to feel incredibly unimpressive.

It’s not that we’ve stopped appreciating our achievements. It’s just that, as social creatures, we naturally compare ourselves to others. And the “others” we see every day now include everyone from billionaires’ sons to AI-generated beauties. Somewhere in this social media mess, we’ve started confusing really wanting something with wanting to be the sort of person who has it.

Can we feel same satisfaction in completing task with AI help?

I use AI myself and appreciate its help. But I also wonder whether we experiencing same amount of satisfaction from creating something with AI. A 2024 study by Nikolova and colleagues, examining workers across 20 European countries, found that greater industrial robotisation was associated with reduced meaningfulness and autonomy at work.

This research concerns industrial automation, not today’s generative AI, so we shouldn’t pretend it answers every question about how AI affects motivation. But it does raise an important issue: efficiency and meaningfulness are not necessarily the same thing. Some of the satisfaction we once experienced came from being involved in the process, solving difficult problems, making mistakes and solving again, seeing how our imput affected the outcome.

And when our working lives become increasingly focused on producing more in less time, we may need to stop and think of whether we’re still enjoying the work itself. And what exactly are we trying to achieve by becoming so crazy efficient?

More time for ourselves? Scrolling?

Why we need to revise our purpose instead of improving motivation again

When we lose enthusiasm for the things we used to enjoy, our first instinct is to try to recover the motivation we once had. We want to become ambitious again, feel excited about work again, regain the energy we had ten years ago. But what if our motivation has changed because our circumstances, responsibilities and priorities have changed?

In a 2024 study, Pfund and colleagues found that our experience of purpose varies even from one day to another, with meaningful engagement fluctuating more than our perceived progress towards long-term goals. So we shouldn’t expect purpose to remain permanently fixed.

Sometimes we think we’ve lost our meaning because the role through which we can achieve it has changed.

For example, my goal may have been to raise an independent daughter, my role was being her mother, but the meaning behind it included love, responsibility, helping another person develop and knowing that I was contributing to her future.

A goal is something we want to achieve. Raising an independent child, becoming financially secure, developing a successful career. A role is a position we occupy in relation to other people and society. Mother, manager, partner, entrepreneur.

Meaning/purpose is what makes those things personally significant.

When my daughter became independent, the goal has been achieved and my role changed. But does that mean the meaning has disappeared? Not necessarily. Maybe through motherhood I developed a meaning in helping someone become capable, confident and independent. And I can continue to express in other relationships, professional activities and personal interests.

Because if we recognise what was meaningful about that experience, rather than motivation or loss of that role, we may discover that there are other ways to express to follow the same meaning.

Frankl’s logotherapy: meaning doesn’t have to be impressive

Viktor Frankl described the existential vacuum, a sense of emptiness that can arise when people struggle to find meaning or direction in their lives. He also discussed what he called Sunday neurosis, when the usual demands of the working week disappear and people become more aware of an underlying sense of emptiness.

I find this very relevant to the way we live today. We’re very good at keeping ourselves busy, but being busy doesn’t necessarily mean we’re doing things that matter. Frankl’s logotherapy proposes three broad ways in which people can discover meaning: through what they create or contribute, through what they experience and whom they love, and through the attitude they adopt towards situations that cannot be avoided.

Meaning can exist in very ordinary experiences. But there’s an important difference between meaning and motivation: Motivation is something we often experience as a feeling. We feel interested, excited or driven to do something. Meaning doesn’t always come with those feelings.

There were plenty of days when motherhood involved laundry, school responsibilities, preparing meals and repeating the same instructions approximately fifty times. Not exciting at all. But not meaningless either.

So what if we stopped expecting meaningful things to make us happy all the time? What if we stopped assuming that a day without excitement was somehow a day wasted? That doesn’t mean we should ignore exhaustion, depression or circumstances that need changing. It means that we can often discover meaning through participating in life, rather than waiting to feel motivated enough to participate.

How do you build a new sense of purpose without turning it into another project of productivity?

I don’t believe we need another set of ten ambitious goals and a promise to ourselves become a completely different person by Monday. If anything, I think that can only create an artificial purpose, that would give you even harder time to leave your bed these mornings. Finding purpose begins with becoming curious about something or ourselves again.

Start by understanding what has actually changed. If I were trying to understand why my life suddenly felt less meaningful, I’d begin by looking at what had changed over the past few years. Not just the obvious things, such as work, family or where I live, but the psychological responsibilities attached to them. Who used to depend on me? What was I working towards? Which achievements once mattered so much, and how do I feel about them now? What opportunities now become available that weren’t possible then?

Give yourself time to see how much in your life has already happened and time to understand what the old one meant to you.

Pay attention to what still interests you, even a little

We’re told to find what we love, discover our calling and pursue whatever makes us feel alive. That sounds like a lot of pressure. But what if we started with curiosity instead? There’s something you’ve been reading about more frequently. Someone whose work interests you. A subject you’d like to understand better. A place you’d like to visit or a conversation you’ve been postponing.

You don’t have to be crazy passionate about any of it, nor good at it. Curious is enough!

I returned to studying psychology in my forties, twenty years after I graduate my bachelor and what I enjoy about it isn’t the possibility of another qualification. It’s having questions I want to explore, discover ideas or believes that challenge what I thought I understood and discovering how much there still is to learn.

Notice what you want to contribute, not only what you want to achieve

Much of our earlier adult life may be wrapped around achieving things that improve our life: education, income, independence, security. Once those needs are somehow met, it’s worth asking whether I can find meaning through helping others to achieve same goals. What experiences or skills would I like to share? What problems really interests me? And which of those things would I still care about even if nobody would ever recognise my effort?

For some people, this may mean mentoring, volunteering, building social media account, speaking publicly, becoming more involved in their community or even politics. For others, it may mean investing more attention in relationships they have, but maybe abandoned while trying to achieve it all. And some other people may discover that they don’t want to contribute more at the moment. Perhaps they’ve spent decades being responsible for everyone else and would like some space to experience life without being useful.

That deserves respect too!

Meaningful contribution should be freely chosen, not another social obligation disguised as personal fulfilment.

Allow your priorities to change without treating them as failure

I think this may be one of the hardest parts, particularly for ambitious women. We’re taught to think that progress means moving forwards without changing direction. We study, work, develop professionally, earn more, take on greater responsibilities and become increasingly capable.

But what if progress sometimes involves deciding that you no longer want more? Or changing careers, working fewer hours, spending more time with your family, taking up something unrelated to your professional identity?

If you’ve always been ambitious, people expect you to remain ambitious. If you’ve always been the reliable one, people expect you to keep managing everything. And if you’ve worked hard to build a successful career, stepping away from some of your earlier ambitions may feel like abandoning all the effort you’ve invested.

But maybe now that you have more choices, more self confidence, more knowledge, you allow yourself to make different ones?

But what if the emptiness doesn’t go away?

I don’t think every days needs to become an opportunity for personal growth. Sometimes you’re tired, sometimes you’ve spent too much time working, haven’t seen your friends for a while or simply need a change of environment. Sometimes you don’t know what’s wrong, and that’s frustrating enough without accusing yourself of failing to live properly. But there’s an important difference between questioning your purpose during a period of transition and experiencing a persistent loss of interest or pleasure in life.

If nothing feels enjoyable anymore, you struggle to get through ordinary responsibilities, experience persistent hopelessness or notice significant changes in your sleep, appetite or energy, it’s worth speaking to a qualified mental health professional or doctor. Depression doesn’t require an obviously unhappy life, and comfortable circumstances don’t protect everyone from experiencing it.

The National Institute of Mental Health identifies persistent loss of interest or pleasure as one of the central symptoms clinicians consider when assessing depression.

So while Jung and Frankl offer valuable perspectives for understanding meaning and personal development, their ideas shouldn’t be used to explain away symptoms that may need clinical attention. And if feeling that life lacks meaning becomes a wish not to be alive, that deserves immediate support, not simply another exercise in self-reflection.

Perhaps the next part of life isn’t about achieving more

I started thinking about this because of that familiar disappointment at the end of an otherwise perfectly ordinary day. The strange expectation that something interesting should have happened, followed by the uncomfortable feeling that somehow I had missed it. And the more I think about it, the less convinced I am that the answer is to make every day more exciting.

I don’t want to stop being ambitious. But I also don’t want to spend the next forty years pursuing goals simply because they made sense to me when I was in my 30s. The freedom I’ve worked so hard to achieve also includes the freedom to reevaluate what I want from life: stop being interested in something without feeling that I’ve failed; discover new interests without having to turn them into achievements; spend more time with people whose company I enjoy, rather than simply maintaining relationships because we’ve always had them.

And to accept that some days will be wonderfully exciting, while others will involve work, laundry, dinner and unreasonable amount of time spent trying to find something to watch on Netflix.

A meaningful life isn’t necessarily one that looks extraordinary or is thick with achievements. It’s one where our goals, roles and sense of purpose reflect the people we’ve become. After all, we created the personas we once wanted to be. Surely we’re allowed to change our minds about who we want to become next!

References and further reading

• Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press.
• Jung, C. G. (1966). Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Princeton University Press.
• Jung, C. G. (1969). The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (Collected Works, Vol. 8). Princeton University Press. See particularly The Stages of Life.
• Godard, R., & Holtzman, S. (2024). Are active and passive social media use related to mental health, wellbeing, and social support outcomes? A meta-analysis of 141 studies. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 29(1).
• Lee, C., Sain, D., Harari, L., & Kürüm, E. (2023). Social mobility and sense of purpose from midlife to old age: Examining the role of major life events. Research on Aging, 45(7–8), 550–562.
• Pfund, G. N., Burrow, A. L., & Hill, P. L. (2024). Purpose in daily life: Considering within-person sense of purpose variability. Journal of Research in Personality, 109, 104473.
• Nikolova, M., Cnossen, F., & Nikolaev, B. (2024). Robots, meaning, and self-determination. Research Policy, 53(5), 104987.
• World Health Organization. (2025). From loneliness to social connection: Charting a path to healthier societies.
• Microsoft. (2025). Breaking down the infinite workday.
• National Institute of Mental Health. (2025). Depression.