What if I never left?

There's a reason why some decisions don't fit neatly in a box.

What if I never left Australia? Became a Clinical Psychologist. Bought a home by the beach in Melbourne. Popped out some babies (if we could). An alternate reality. We weren’t searching for a better life for our kids, like my parents were. We were not forced to leave. We had a wonderful life in Melbourne, incredible friends, surrounded by family. So why leave? Why make life harder for ourselves by moving to a country where we don’t speak the language? Let alone the intensity of navigating German bureaucracy (IYKYK).

The answer is both simple and complex. Simple because I had a vision for my life that was rich in adventure and travel. Complex because I had no idea where it would lead or what the exact steps were. But by leaving home and moving to Berlin I took a gamble on the type of person I could be rather than who I knew myself to be. I could never have mapped out the whole plot, I simply couldn’t see that far ahead.

“It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” - E L Doctorow.

I chose the unknown. I followed the tug that said, ‘I don’t know what’s over here but I think it could be fun’. In doing so, I showed myself that I was not only limited to what I had done before. I could leave everything I knew behind and use the skills I had to try and build something new for myself. There’s a special type of confidence that comes with backing yourself in big ways. One that creates an unshakeable foundation that reminds you that everything is figure-out-able. This version of me is my ‘ideal self’ how I wish I could show up all the time. Grounded in my values and trusting the vision.

On the flipper, the version of me that stayed seems like she would have had a pretty lovely life too. But if I am honest, this is the version of me that I felt obligated to be. The one who was grateful for all that I had and didn’t want to push the envelope. Choosing not to seek for more when I already had ‘enough’. But here’s the thing, I was never pushed in one direction. As a first generation child to immigrant parents, I had a unique experience. I wasn’t forced to be a doctor or a lawyer. Instead, I was told the world was my oyster and was encouraged to treat it as such. This allowed me to get my Psychology degrees AND travel. To taste the smorgasboard and have the better life my parents wanted for us kids (even if it meant their youngest, and only daughter gallivanting across the globe like Carmen Sandiego).

So even though my life looks different to the version of me that stayed, I still have the borrowed voice of obligation voice within me tell me what I ought to do . The one who has absorbed the stories of how my life ‘should’ look. The one who says ‘moving to London? Girl, you’re taking the piss. Don’t you think it’s time to go home? Isn’t a bit irresponsible to move across the world again in your 30s’? She’s definitely still here. I can hear her voice but it just depends on how often I let her lead.

This is the part that most people miss. It’s not about silencing those parts of yourself. It’s about listening to what they have to say and being grounded enough in your values and vision to make the decisions that lead you through the murkiness. It’s about acknowledging that you have agency and then taking responsibility for it.

So if it didn’t have to look like marry the person, have the babies, climb the ladder, buy the home - what else could it be? When you choose to see unlimited possibilities with an unwavering sense of ‘I will figure it out’ sprinkled with an audacity to think bigger, what vision forms? This is where you get to know your ideal self. The version of you who has the freedom to shut the laptop at 2pm on a Thursday afternoon for a later lunch that turns into dinner. The version of you who takes the summer off because they can. The version of you that contributes meaningfully to your community because you have created the means to do so. The version that hears the voice of obligation and says ‘thank you, I understand why you would suggest that but I am going to try this instead’.

You might not have been fully introduced to this version yet. Maybe you have seen projections of them but they haven’t fully landed. The one who lives on your vision board that you chat with frequently. Some days it feels like you’re talking over two empty cans connected by a string. Others it’s as easy as a FaceTime over 5G. You wear their clothes and speak their affirmations into the mirror but the neon flashing ‘fraud’ still appears sometimes. You can smell their life and you hope it is possible. It’s just that the waters between are muddy and there are creatures lurking beneath the surface that you don’t particularly want to face alone.

You can probably already begin to see now that there are infinite possibilities of who you may become. Understanding the interactions between who others expect you to be, who you want to be, and who you dread becoming, can get messy and loud. It’s like three sisters in one household fighting over the same wardrobe (which is your life) and the dynamic between them all are unique. These three sisters have pretty distinct personalities and through specific questions we can begin to understand who keeps winning the argument and what tactics they’re using. From there we can create the awareness and practice the skills to cross the aspirational bridge between who you are today, and who you are becoming.

The most critical driver of creating this alignment with your possible selves is vision. It has to be yours. Not borrowed from your parents, friends or society. It has to be genuinely yours and then you must truly believe that it is possible for you. Otherwise, your brain will quietly reject it.

• You’ll see some success and then go into hiding

• You’ll turn left at a fork in the road toward safety instead of right into possibility

• You’ll avoid anything that might lead to real change

These are the quiet rejections. This happens when your identity doesn’t feel strong enough to hold the weight of your vision. Like an exercise band that’s so tight you can’t even complete one repetition. Of course you’re going to feel like a failure if you load too high and can barely complete a rep. So we start lighter and load it up the stronger you get.

This is where the vision becomes real and your confidence compounds, in the small daily choices. Because theories are great but theories without application are just food for thought. When you layer theories over frameworks that inspire small actions, it becomes life changing.

It’s the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. We have over-indexed on the ‘what’ for too long. Choosing to arm ourselves with as much knowledge as possible, unknowingly feeding the belief that once you know better, you will do better. But it isn’t that simple, is it? Because here we are. All the knowing and not much of the doing. One thing you will always get from me is the reminder to go and live your fucking life. To stop beating yourself up about the mistakes made. Take the lessons but leave the self-flaggelation behind. There are enough systems trying to keep the boot on our necks, we don’t need to do that work for them. Instead, let’s focus on sharpening the skills to build our internal perception so that we can live in the world we choose to build. We are done setting up shop in the awareness phase.

Consider this your invitation to start listening more intently to those three sisters fighting over the wardrobe so you can move through the murkiness with conviction. Who is leading the conversation? Is it the sister pulling you away from what you are hellbent on avoiding? Maybe it’s the dutiful sister who doesn’t want to let anyone down? Or is it the sister with the vision stretching you into the unknown? They all deserve a place at your marble table. You just might need a bigger table to map out all the possibilities.