What You’re Not Changing, You’re Choosing

There’s a saying I heard once that never truly left me:

what you’re not changing, you’re choosing.

A simple sentence, yet it lands like a stone dropped into still water — sending ripples through every part of your life you’ve avoided, tolerated, or quietly whispered “it is what it is” about.

For the longest time, that was me.

Something would go wrong — work, friendships, my mental health, even the most traumatising moments — and I’d just shrug and say, “it is what it is.”

Not because I was okay.

But because I didn’t know how to change anything.

Because staying the same felt easier than admitting I was drowning.

We talk about change like it’s dramatic — a new job, a breakup, some monumental life shift. And sometimes it is.

But sometimes change is quieter.

It’s the moment you realise you can’t keep living the way you’ve been living.

For me, change looked like running away… or at least that’s what I told myself at first.

Packing up my life and flying overseas to the UK felt like escape — a desperate attempt to breathe again, to get away from a life that was getting too small, too loud, too heavy.

I had lost every sense of who I was, and I hoped that distance would somehow bring me back to myself.

And honestly? In the beginning, it was lonely. Painfully lonely.

But that loneliness became the most valuable part of my entire story.

It stripped me back.

Forced me to sit with myself.

To ask myself who I was without the noise, without familiarity, without the life I had been sleepwalking through.

I spent so many nights journalling, trying to make sense of everything.

And that’s where this blog was born — in the quiet moments where I didn’t know what was next, where the only thing I could do was write and hope that somewhere in the mess I’d find clarity.

I always thought change was supposed to look glamorous — a glow-up, a reinvention, a Pinterest-worthy transformation.

But my change looked like crying alone in a tiny room overseas.

It looked like challenging myself in ways I never had to back home.

It looked like choosing the hardest environment because I knew staying comfortable was killing me slowly.

And that’s the truth no one wants to hear:

the areas where you feel most stuck are usually the areas where comfort has outweighed courage.

Your job, your habits, your environment, your mental state, the ways you speak to yourself — they don’t shift just because you want them to.

They shift because you decide you’re done tolerating the version of your life that feels “fine” but not fulfilling.

For months, I lived in survival mode.

But over time, something changed. I changed.

Not in one big moment, but through countless tiny ones —

the quiet mornings alone,

the uncomfortable self-reflection,

the realisation that I didn’t just want to do life anymore…

I wanted to live it.

Starting this blog was the most empowering part of it all.

It was the first thing in a long time that felt like mine — a space where I could understand myself, where I could be honest, where I could build something meaningful and, hopefully, a community of people who feel the same.

Because I don’t want to just exist.

I don’t want to accept a life that doesn’t feel aligned.

I don’t want to keep saying “it is what it is” and pretending that’s enough.

Here’s what I know now — painfully, slowly, honestly:

If something feels wrong, heavy, stagnant, or suffocating,

it’s on you to shift it.

Not perfectly. Not instantly.

But intentionally.

You deserve a life you consciously choose,

not a life you end up in because you were too afraid to choose differently.

And the moment you realise that what you’re not changing, you are choosing —

you stop waiting.

You stop settling.

You stop letting the world decide for you.

You start choosing yourself.

And that’s where everything begins to unfold.