Why Feeling Stuck Does Not Mean You Are Not Brave
- Feb 11
- 5 min read
Brandi Stiles is a wellness coach, personal trainer, and breathwork guide with 30+ years in fitness, yoga, mindful movement, meditation, and breathwork. As a menopausal woman herself, she bridges intellect and embodiment, helping people move beyond overthinking into clarity, strength, and inner balance.
Have you ever looked back on your life to realize that some of your biggest, most impactful decisions were made with pure bravery? When we are young, we don't possess an inventory of experiences to weigh up the options, collect emotional data, think about what could go wrong, or quite simply, overthink it all.
I recently made a brave move by putting my offerings out into the online space, and it had me ruminating about past brave decisions I made a lifetime ago. I realized that the characteristics of bravery are the same at 21 years old as they are for me now at 51.
At twenty-one, I booked a one-way flight to the other side of the world without truly knowing what would greet me when I landed. This was long before Google searches, online applications, or social media guides to relocating. All I truly knew was that I wanted a life that looked nothing like anything I had in my eyeline. I wanted a different story.
A New Zealand passport inherited through my mother, family connections, and an indescribable restlessness created the perfect mix that made me realize hopping on a plane to a country 11,000 kilometers away was the only solution.
I wasn't running away, not exactly. I look back now and realize this was pure bravery. A decision made with no data on what it might look like once I arrived. A decision made from deep, inexplicable knowledge that I must go.
Something kept running through my heart and mind, what are you made of if you strip away everything familiar?
Most people in my world were doing what they had always done, staying close to home, following predictable steps, building a life within the comfort of the known. And yet, inside me was a pulse that said, Go as far away as you can. Start again. See who you become.
That impulse carried me from Canada to New Zealand with nothing but a dream to study exercise science and a fire in my chest that told me I belonged somewhere I hadn't yet been.
When I arrived, there were moments where I doubted myself. I visualized myself as a little dot on the globe all the way down under in New Zealand, then swirled the globe around to see how far away all of my family and friends were. It was daunting and it was real. No jumping in the car and backing out, just feel it and keep going. As they say in NZ, "She'll be right, mate."
So I took what I had, a figurative blank page of life, and sometimes that's the bravest thing a woman can give herself.
New Zealand became the birthplace of my entire journey in health and wellness. Where I began my quest for knowledge with exercise science. Where I trained with a level of intensity I didn't yet know lived inside me. Where I discovered that discipline is a form of devotion, and that devotion can change a person's life.
It's also where I decided to compete in my first bodybuilding show. Where I learned what it means to truly live somewhere. Those zoom-out moments when you look around and see a real friend group forming. When you realize you know the people at the bank and the grocery store, and it just starts to feel like a normal life. You almost forget how big of a leap it was only a couple of months before.
Now, at fifty-one, I'm standing at the edge of another leap. Launching an online subscription after thirty years of being an in-person coach feels equally bold, equally exposing, as setting foot in New Zealand alone at twenty-one.
Writing this article is another brave leap, allowing my voice to be heard even when the alter ego in my brain, Paloma, tells me that no one is terribly interested in my stories. And yet… it's the same essence of bravery.
That same inner knowing that said I need to go further at 21 now says go bigger, reach further. The same devotion I discovered on the gym floors of New Zealand is the devotion I bring into every breathwork journey, every movement class, every piece of content I create today.
At twenty-one, bravery looked like flying across the world. At fifty-one, bravery looks like expanding my voice beyond the walls of my studio and trusting that the right women will find me, even if they live oceans away.
Here's what I want you to know, your bravery might not look like a plane ticket. It might look like the morning you finally left a relationship that was slowly dimming your light. It might be the day you walked away from a job that paid well but left you feeling hollow. It might be choosing therapy when everyone around you said to "just push through." It might be setting a boundary with someone you love. Or starting over at an age when the world told you it was too late. Bravery doesn't always announce itself with grand gestures, sometimes it whispers in the quiet choice to choose yourself, to honor what you know is true even when no one else can see it. Sometimes the bravest thing we do is simply refuse to abandon ourselves one more day.
That's why I'm sharing my story, not because flying to New Zealand is the only way to be brave, but because I want you to look back at your own life and see the moments you might have dismissed. The times you kept going when it would have been easier to stay small. The decisions that felt terrifying but necessary.
Or the bravery to start writing. To start sharing some of my words in hopes that you will connect or feel into them. To see yourself and realize that maybe you are already brave, even if you feel stuck. Maybe you have a list of amazing and brave choices you've made that seem like a distant memory when, in fact, they live right there inside of you.
Both versions of me, young and older, share the same truth, bravery is not a feeling. It's a decision. A decision to honor the part of you that knows you're meant for more.
Read more from Brandi Stiles
Brandi Stiles, Wellness Coach, Personal Trainer, Yoga and Breathwork Practitioner
Brandi Stiles is a wellness coach, personal trainer, and breathwork practitioner with over 30 years of experience in fitness, mindful movement, yoga, meditation, and breathwork. As a menopausal woman herself, her work bridges intellect and embodiment, gently guiding people out of overthinking and back into the wisdom of the body. Through her recently launched live online subscription, Brandi offers nervous-system-aware movement and wellbeing practices designed to cultivate strength, clarity, and sustainable inner balance.
