​​Reader, I learned a HUGE lesson yesterday about how running from what you hate isn't freedom. Here’s how to stop fleeing and start building what you actually want.

When you pack up and move cities, quit a relationship the moment it gets uncomfortable, or cut people off under the guise of “protecting your peace,” you tell ourselves a very specific story:

“I am freeing myself.”

You frame your exit as an act of courage, independence, or self-care. But if you look behind you, what does your path actually look like? Is it lined with genuine peace, or is it littered with constant chaos, unfinished business, and a wake of destruction?

Yesterday on The Story I’m Telling Myself Podcast, my guest Bubba Startz illumnated this powerful truth: there is a massive difference between escaping a life you don’t want and taking accountability to build the life you do. Until you recognize that difference, your “freedom” is just a habit of fleeing—and it will follow you wherever you run.

The Trap of “Learned Chaos”

Bubba shared how easy it is to romanticize running away. At 18, after surviving a chaotic childhood in South Dakota, he convinced himself that hitchhiking with a guitar, sleeping on street corners, and avoiding all traditional commitments was the ultimate life of independence.

To Bubba, stability felt like a trap. “To be stable meant to me to invite more problems into my life,” he explained.

So he kept running—from responsibilities, from deep emotional connections, and eventually from felony charges, which landed him living as a fugitive on dirt floors in Mexico with a toddler and a baby on the way.

He thought he was outsmarting the system and staying “free." In reality, his habit of fleeing wasn’t freeing him at all—it was leaving a trail of instability, broken trust, and collateral damage that was perpetuating destructive familial patterns.

The Dirt-Floor “Mirror Moment”

Running away from a life you hate does not automatically build a life you love.

Bubba’s turning point came on that dirt floor in Mexico, not when he was captured, but when he looked in the mirror and confronted the lie he had been telling himself. He realized that by continually “escaping,” he was repeating his father’s toxic cycle of abandonment and subjecting his kids to the exact chaos he grew up in.

True freedom didn’t come from crossing another border or starting over in a new town. It came from turning around, crossing back into the U.S., surrendering to authorities, and serving over two years in prison to pay his debts. He stopped running from his past and took radical accountability for creating his future.

How to Stop Fleeing and Start Building

If you are tired of the cycle of “hitting reset” only to end up in the same emotional chaos, here is how to break the pattern:

1. Expose the “Freedom” Lie

Be brutally honest about your exits. Are you leaving a situation because it is genuinely unviable, or are you walking away because staying requires a level of vulnerability, accountability, or hard work you don’t want to face?

2. Count the Collateral Damage

Look at the wake behind you. Has your pattern of fleeing left behind broken trust, severed relationships, or unresolved conflicts? Acknowledge that running away from problems doesn’t erase them; it just dumps the fallout onto the people around you.

3. Shift from Reactive Escape to Proactive Creation

Stop defining your life by what you are running from. Ask yourself: “What am I actively building?” True agency isn’t declaring “I’m getting out of here”; it’s standing put and doing the heavy lifting required to cultivate stability, trust, and depth.

4. Embrace the Friction of Staying Put

Building a life you love requires staying through the uncomfortable moments—the difficult conversations, the consequences of past mistakes, and the slow work of personal growth. Give yourself permission to stay, face the mirror, and own your narrative.

​Catch the full episode here or on your favorite podcast platform beginning Thursday, and be sure to share it with a friend.

Then be sure to answer these four questions in the episode activation guide: TSITM Ep 77 Activation Guide.pdf​

There is such deep and personal learning available to each of us in Bubba's story. I invite you to raise your awareness about what your fleeing and do the deeper work to claim what you want and deserve.

Cheers!

PS - I'd love to inspire your audience with a signature keynote on reducing organizational friction. Hit reply and let's chat.

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