This was a genuine thought I had probably about 5 years ago. London is the issue. The grey skies are the problem. If I could move to Australia everything would be better. Everything would be happier then, I’d become a surfer babe and magically have blonde hair and be super confident and everyone would want to hang out with me. I’d be happy in my job and probably just be like perfect in every way. Australia is the answer. I’ll do that.
I remember very clearly my brother turning around to me and, lovingly, saying… Lucy.. the thing is, feel free to move to Australia, but you realise that moving across the world doesn’t suddenly mean you will have had a brain transplant. You’ll still have your brain when you’re there. You can’t escape yourself.
Oouuuuuf.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN’T ESCAPE MYSELF?!! I’m stuck with this brain forever?! You mean that’s why whenever I book a holiday and imagine myself feeling free and liberated and able to strike up conversations with strangers I end up disappointed that I’m still just the same old version of me but in a different place? You mean that’s why why everyone gets excited about Christmas and then when it comes around is somehow surprised that everyone in their family hasn’t magically turned into some form of human Christmas elf with absolutely zero flaws and that for some bizarre reason the things that annoyed us in our family dynamics on December 23rd still annoy us on December 25th?!
How DARE my brain do this to me.
Brutal realisation isn’t it.
We can’t escape ourselves.
Damn you advertising industry!! You’ve spun us a lie. You told us that all we needed to do was buy that dress, go on that holiday, get a bigger house, make more money, get married, get more followers, do all the stuff and THEN we’d be happy.
It’s all a lie.
A deep. Painful. Gritty. Lie.
The only way to find peace in this little old thing called life is, rather than try to escape ourselves, is to dive deeper INTO ourselves. Dive deeper into all the grittiness, all the triggers, all the lack of self belief, the imposter syndrome, the feelings of failure, the loneliness, the disconnection. Dive into all of it and start to work WITH it rather than perpetually trying to escape from it.
You can’t escape from your belief systems. Your hurt. Your ‘stuff’. You can try, and no doubt you have been trying. But my guess is that you know it hasn’t been working. You know it in your gut. Something is missing.
The thing that’s missing is self intimacy. The deepest understanding of who you are. All the depth, the grit and the beauty of YOU. It’s only in diving into all of that that we can truly find the peace and flow that we all keep trying to buy off Amazon.
You know it in your heart, don’t you?
L x
This is my life’s work. Connecting people back into themselves. Helping them to reconnect and understand themselves so that they can finally feel at peace. If you’d like to chat (it’s free), you can book in here or you can subscribe to my mailing list here.
Instagram: @lucy_puttergill
