Natalie Walker Brimble - “I’m happy when everyone else is happy” and other lies I told myself!

Im happy when everyone else is happy

and other lies I told myself!

Natalie Walker Brimble

Copyright 2021 Natalie Walker Brimble

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9798747565876

This book is dedicated to my amazing children

Megan, Charlie and Olivia.

To my ever-supportive parents, and wonderful family.

Especially - to my beloved Nan Margo - who told me

If you can read, you can write, and if you can read and write, you can do anything you want in this world!

Acknowledgments

Lie 1 - Im happy when everyone else is happy!

Lie 2 - Fit in at all costs!

Lie 3 - Everyone else has it all worked out!

Lie 4 - Self care is selfish!

Lie 5 - To be a mother you must be a martyr!

Lie 6 - Guilt is good!

Lie 7 - We should feel happy all the time!

Lie 8 - Being busy equals being important!

Lie 9 - Comfortable is good enough!

Lie 10 - Everything on social media is real!

Lie 11 - We just need to keep pushing through!

Lie 12 - Just do what everyone else is doing!

Lie 13 - Nothing really matters!

Lie 14 - Showing vulnerability equals weakness!

Lie 15 - I need to be fixed I need a guru!

My biggest Takeaways

To you, the amazing person reading this right now You might be wondering who this woman is, and why should I continue to read this book.

Well, I am a woman that was previously sleep walking through her life. Someone who was struggling to live on her own terms and wrestled even more to negotiate her role as a mother.

I am a writer, life coach, podcaster and a single parent to three children. Im a recovering people pleaser who is obsessed with human behavior, people watching and how we all tick. Im a secret introvert, a noticer and observer of people. I love helping myself and others to peel past all the layers we have, to get to the real core of who we are, and the impact and the barriers to our own contentment.

Im someone who has battled with boundaries, anxiety, should, comparison, not feeling enough and trying to fit in to norms and values that didnt fit with me.

This is a combination of lessons I have learned, part memoir, part coaching questions, advice I have taken, and books and quotes that have helped me on my path. My hope, is by reading this book you may be able to short cut your journey back to your truest version of you.!

What I know for sure, is that I understand where you are, your fears and frustrations and why you picked up this book. I do, I get it! Because, I have been where you are. - I promise!

In any one day you can feel a tsunami of emotions and realisations, some overwhelming and sometimes frankly fearful. Youve reached a point where youre fed up with feeling fed up!

You may feel strangled by obligation and responsibility. You feel resentful of other people and their seemingly perfect lifestyle, relationships, clothes, holidays, families, freedom, happy demeanor, and contentment.

I know your fears and your desires, and that sometimes you feel stuck in your own life. You feel afraid that you might always play it safe and comfortable in your own life, and your true potential may never be seen.

Youre waiting in anticipation for someone to give you permission to start living your life.

You wonder if there must be more than spending your weekend looking around shops, looking for items to restore some type of happiness and confidence within you. As if shopping in a crowd of faceless people, buying items that may light you up for approximately five minutes will give you the answer that you are seeking.

You know it leaves you feeling empty. It leaves an underlying feeling that even coutures finest attire cannot paper over the cracks of. You cannot put a plaster over the avalanche of empty you feel!

You feel suffocated by your life, by your responsibilities, expectations and fear of not making the grade or being good enough. You feel overwhelmed, spread too thinly, no idea of what you want, your own needs, who you are and why you want to fit into the social norm so much.

Youre constantly busy, Im sure you have a hectic schedule of events to attend ranging from visiting family, kids birthday parties, school runs, coffee with friends, baby showers and other necessary appointments.

You also have an uncanny knack of saying yes to everyone!

Maybe, just maybe, you would get a really glimpse of the mundane life that you have created. The reality that you feel angry, resentful, empty, depressed, helpless, overwhelmed and sad.

You desire deep connection, real conversations. To understand you and where you want to be, your legacy and your path. To free yourself from the gilded cage that you have placed yourself in. To allow yourself to thrive, to be alive, to feel joy, to laugh, and make decisions for yourself. To feel contented, to feel enough, to feel like youve got your shit together!

Your greatest fear is that those fears stop you from reaching and achieving.

Your greatest fear is that you live the comfortable life and never know the essence of who you are.

Your greatest fear is that we live a life of going through the motions, never feeling true joy or meaning.

Your greatest fear is that you live your life in the confines of the box that you have placed yourself in. Never to break free or transform.

Your greatest fear is that you are not truly known, or seen.

Your greatest fear is that from your lifetime of seeking, you never get to the core of understanding.

Your greatest fear is that you are less than, unworthy and not enough.

Your greatest fear is that the void you feel within yourself is never filled.

Your greatest fear is that happiness is never known to you.

Your greatest fear is that the critical voice and conversations that you have with yourself, becomes your truth.

Your greatest fear is that you are found out that you are a fraud, not good enough as you suspected... all along.

Your greatest fear is that you will never find out how to ease the feeling of suffocation within your own life.

Your greatest fear is that you consume and compare so much that you become a carbon copy of everyone else.

Your greatest fear is that you dont know love, acceptance and belonging. Never truly understanding that you are the only one that can make you feel whole.

Once you admit, once you see the reality you feel inside we know its on us, on us to change! Only we can do something about it- OR NOT! The process of seeing, admitting, deciding to change can be a long process.

In my life that process took years, but then life is one big process and lessons to be learned.

But once you start the wondering- Is it enough? Is my life enough for me? Once youre curious about your own life instead of sleepwalking your way through it, then there really is only one way to go FORWARD!

That is what has led you to this book.

Is this book for you?

Do you paint on your smile every morning, telling everyone that youre fine? When the reality is your anxious, ridden with responsibilities and feeling miserable.

Do you feel overwhelmed? Too much juggling, too many expectations?

Feeling stuck and not sure how to make a change?

Do you feel like youre muddling through life? Winging it with no control of what's going on?

Your awareness is high, but clarity is low. You know its time to make a change, but no idea how.

You feel like cant go on like you are- the fake smile, the Step ford wife bullshit version of you!

I hope this book will help you see that anything is possible, that you are the only person that is holding you back. I hope, this book will begin to help you feel that you can take strides to becoming the person you want to be.