Are You Living a Lie Because You’re Too Afraid to Live Your Truth?
This article has been added to my newsletter on LinkedIn, which was originally called Double Your Business because, for years, that is exactly what people came to me for. “Brad, I want to double my business.” Fine. Let’s find more customers, build the team, fix the sales, improve the brand and make more money. And I still do that work. I probably always will.
But something has changed in me.
If I’m being truthful, part of me had started living a lie. Not some massive, dramatic lie. A quieter one. The kind of lie that looks perfectly successful from the outside. The kind of lie where everyone else thinks you’re doing brilliantly. The kind of lie where you’ve built a reputation, earned good money, worked with extraordinary people, flown around in helicopters, sat on yachts, advised business owners, CEOs, millionaires and billionaires, and everybody looking in thinks, “Bradley’s got it sorted.”
But inside, something is saying, “Is this really all I want to do for the rest of my life?”
And that is a bloody difficult question to ask yourself, because once you ask it, you might get an answer you don’t like.
I think a lot of people are living in that exact place today. They are not necessarily unhappy with their whole life. They are not necessarily depressed. They are not necessarily ready to burn everything down and run away to Bali. They are just quietly thinking, “I don’t really like what I do anymore. I’m not fulfilled. I’m bored. I feel wasted. I’ve got more in me than this. I’ve spent 20 years building a career I’m not even sure I want. I’d love to do something else, but what the hell would I do?”
Then Monday morning comes and they go back to work.
Again. And again. And again.
Because living the lie is easier than dealing with the truth.
And here is the fucking irony.
Some of you will read this and think, “Brad, that is exactly how I feel.” But you won’t comment. You can’t. This is LinkedIn. Your boss might see it. Your managing director might see it. Your colleagues might see it. Your clients might see it. Your team might see it.
What are you supposed to write underneath this? “Brilliant article, Bradley. By the way, I fucking hate my job and I’ve wanted to leave for three years.”
You can’t, can you?
And that is the whole bloody point.
We have created a professional world where sometimes we are so busy managing how our lives look that we become frightened to say how our lives actually feel. And sometimes we are not just lying to everybody else. We are lying to ourselves.
About a year ago, a lady came to talk to me. Let’s call her Rebecca. She had a significant corporate position in London. Good company, good role, good salary, successful career. From the outside, everything looked fine.
But she said to me, “Bradley, I hate what I do.”
Not dislike. Hate.
She hated travelling into London. She didn’t want the corporate life anymore. She wanted something different. But like so many people, she was frightened, because when you’ve built a career, there is something terrifying about admitting that perhaps you don’t want it anymore.
What do I do? What will my boss think? What will happen financially? What happens if I make a mistake? What if I leave and regret it? What if I can’t replace the income?
All perfectly sensible questions.
So I didn’t tell her to resign. I didn’t tell her to throw her laptop through the window and start following her dreams. I told her to start telling the truth.
We began exploring what she could become outside the corporate identity she had built. One of the concepts we came up with was called Take Off Your Mask, because that was exactly what she was doing. Taking off the corporate mask and starting to work out who she was underneath it.
A few days ago, she messaged me and said, “Bradley, I’ve finally done it.”
She has moved down to four days a week.
One day.
That is all.
But that one day matters, because she has created space. Space to think, space to explore, space to build and space to ask, “What else could my life become?”
It took her around eight months to get there. That is what change actually looks like sometimes. Not jumping off a cliff. One step, then another.
I had another conversation this morning with a man I know. Lovely bloke. We met last year while I was dealing with some of the aftermath of what had happened to me personally. He said, “Brad, I’m just not happy with what I’m doing. I’m wasted. Can I come and work for you?”
And I understood exactly what he meant.
He isn’t incapable. Quite the opposite. He feels he has more to give.
That sentence keeps appearing around me.
“I’ve got more in me.”
And perhaps that is one of the reasons I’M MORE suddenly became so bloody obvious to me.
I’m 56 years old. I’m a dad, a father to three children, a son, a businessman, a coach and a consultant. I’m someone who has got things spectacularly right and things spectacularly wrong. Underneath all of it, I’m just another human being trying to work out what the next part of my life is supposed to mean.
I could go back completely into what I know. Commercial consulting, sales, growth, strategy, clients, making very good money. I know how to do that. In many ways, that would be easier.
But something inside me doesn’t want to.
Then I started reading what was happening with young people across the UK. More than a million young people outside education, employment or training. Young people applying for job after job and getting nowhere. Young people being told they lack experience when nobody will give them the opportunity to get experience.
And something happened inside me.
I could see a room. I could see a stage. I could see young people sitting there. I could see coaches. I could see business owners. I could see people learning skills. I could see someone arriving believing they had nothing to offer and leaving thinking, “Fuck me. Maybe I can do this.”
And I couldn’t unsee it.
That is how I’M MORE started.
Am I living my truth now?
I’m trying.
And I’ll tell you something else. It isn’t some beautiful Instagram journey where every morning I wake up full of purpose, drink a green smoothie and watch the sunrise. Some days it is kicking the shit out of me.
I’m working days, nights and weekends. My income is changing. I’m building something new while still doing the work that pays the bills. There are moments when I am physically and mentally knackered. There are moments where the sensible voice says, “Brad, for fuck’s sake, just go back and make the money.”
And another part of me says, “Don’t you dare give up now.”
Because I can see it.
And I’ve always believed something. If you can see something clearly enough, and you can hold it in your heart for long enough, one day you might just hold it in your hand.
But the journey between those two places can hurt like hell.
Living a lie is easy. You can live one for years. You can get up, get dressed, drive to work, smile, join the Teams call, say everything is great, go home, pay the mortgage, put Netflix on, go to bed and repeat it tomorrow.
Nobody necessarily knows.
Perhaps not even your husband. Perhaps not even your wife. Perhaps not even your closest friends.
Sometimes not even you.
Because admitting the truth creates another problem. Once you finally say, “I don’t want this anymore,” now what?
That is where it takes balls.
Big old swinging King Kong balls.
Because living your truth sounds fucking wonderful when somebody puts it on a motivational poster. Actually doing it is different. It takes courage, persistence and an acceptance of uncertainty. It takes being prepared to become a beginner again. It can challenge your identity, your income, your ego, your relationships and your security.
It can split you in half.
But perhaps somewhere between the person you have been and the person you know you could become is the life you are actually supposed to be living.
And maybe you can’t say it publicly.
I completely understand.
Maybe you’ve read this far and thought, “That’s me.” But you cannot click comment, because doing that would expose something. So don’t.
You don’t owe LinkedIn your private life. You don’t owe your colleagues an announcement. You don’t need to resign tomorrow. You don’t need to make a dramatic decision. You don’t even need to tell me.
But perhaps you need to tell yourself.
Privately. Quietly. Truthfully.
“I’m not happy. I want something different. I don’t know what it is yet. I’m frightened. But I know there is more.”
That can be enough to start.
And if you do want to talk to somebody privately, you can talk to me. Not underneath this article. Not publicly. Send me a DM, or call me directly.
It stays between us.
Confidentiality has always mattered enormously to me. What somebody tells me privately stays private unless they explicitly want their story shared.
No judgement. No bullshit. No immediate “quit your job and follow your passion” speech.
Maybe just a conversation about one simple question.
What if?
Because sometimes that is where everything begins.
This newsletter may still be called Double Your Business, but perhaps this next chapter is going to be about something bigger than simply doubling businesses. Maybe it is about helping people discover that they are more than the life, career, job title, redundancy, CV, salary or identity they have become trapped inside.
I’m finding out what living my own truth really costs.
Is it worth it? Follow this space. I’ll let you know.
Best Wishes Bradley Chapman
Just another guy trying to live his truth.
Let’s have a chat on WhatsApp
Founder, I’M MORE CIC Business Consultant, Coach, Mentor | Read my LinkedIn Newsletter
