We all have times when we feel like we are not making progress or like we are stuck. This can happen to us in our careers, in our health, our personal relationships, or just about any other area of our life.
In this episode, I want to go through something that’s helped me to learn how to get unstuck in certain areas in my life where I felt like I just can’t, or I felt like I was doing the same thing. These are the things that have helped me get unstuck when I felt otherwise and I hope this episode helps you get unstuck too.
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Transcript//
You’re now listening to the self development, collective a podcast in community full of inner work and self development ideas to help us get unstuck and become the person we truly want to be.
Hi guys, and welcome to searching for bidder. In this episode, we’re going to talk about how to get unstuck. So I think there’s always times in our lives or areas of our lives, where we feel like we just can’t get on stock, where we feel like we’re doing the same things.
Maybe it’s choosing the same people. Maybe it’s getting in the same fights with someone, maybe it’s procrastinating with the same project or person.
So I want to go through something that’s helped me to learn, to get unstuck in certain areas in my life where I feel like I just can’t or I feel like I’m doing the same thing.
And this was an experience I had a couple of years ago where I felt like no matter what I did, I ended up in the same position.
And the theme was that I was actually stuck in that thought itself where I was kind of like, I always end up here.
I always end up stuck. Why do I always end up stuck? I always end up in the same spot. It doesn’t matter what I do.
I always end up here. And it was kind of in a place where I was like really frustrated with myself.
I felt like I never got anywhere with my work. I felt like I always keep this point, this roadblock, where I felt really scared and I couldn’t get past that fear.
My inner critic was massive. I couldn’t manage it. And I just recorded a podcast on the inner critic. So if that’s something that you struggle with as well, check out that episode, but these are simple steps that have helped me to get unstuck.
So the first thing that I wanna go through is my experience of what causes us to get stuck. So we are naturally habitual beings.
So we like habits. We like S like standard processes. Our brain actually uses habits to save our brain capacity to save our brain energy.
So it’s natural that we have automatic habits that we’re not aware of because that’s just how our brain works, how our body works.
It’s like, you know, I always liked that analogy of driving a car. You know, initially when you start to learn how to drive a car, it’s really overwhelming.
There’s so many things you’ve got to watch for, but naturally after you’ve practiced it so much, it becomes an automatic response.
You know, you even so like, you know, when you find your jump in the car, and then all of a sudden you’re like, oh my God, how did I even get here?
How did I even get to this point? I don’t even, I wasn’t even like fully aware of what I was doing because our brain has those natural processes where it takes over and does what we need to do.
They’re automatic subconscious habits, but the thing is that doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t just happen with driving a car. It happens with belief systems and the way that we work.
So it’s the same sort of thing. If we learn something for the long enough, eventually we start to work off that program and it’s subconscious, and we don’t realize, so for me, you know, I was working off a program of really difficult.
I didn’t have very high self-esteem. I had a really strong self-critic that I couldn’t manage. And so naturally with my work, I’d end up in the same position.
And I had this habit of always buying these courses and learning these courses, but not taking action. So I was stuck in that loop for me, where I was constantly learning, but not actually taking action, not moving forward, and then getting really frustrated and overwhelmed because I just kept filling myself up with information.
And for me, that was a process of avoidance a process of trying to learn everything. So I didn’t make a mistake.
My perfectionism was definitely kicking in, and it was only when I started to actually recognize that habit. That habit loop that I was in that I started to acknowledge it.
And that’s a thing, again, probably something, a program that I learned through when I was younger, that I maybe, perhaps it was an experience where I got a lot of respect for, for learning so much.
So I always felt like to get respect and acknowledgement. I had to know everything about what I was doing. And the truth of the matter is no one knows everything.
We’re all just trying to figure it out. So I couldn’t really couldn’t really get past that. And yeah, I started to get really frustrated with myself.
Like, how did I end up here again or wild, not really doing anything, not really taking action. So these are the things, the steps that have helped me to get unstuck in an area of my life.
So I want to go through them with you today. And again, I always say, take what resonates, leave what doesn’t, but if you’re feeling stuck in a particular area of your life, think about these steps, safer works for you.
So the first step is obviously to choose the area where you’re struggling right now. So the reason I do that is because choosing one freak is one area is a lot easier.
Then trying to think of all the ways you’d like to change your life. When we started to think of all the ways that we’d like to change and all the things are not happy with the overwhelm kicks in, and then it becomes a thing of, I don’t know about you, but I stop and go, okay, this is too much.
I’m just not going to do anything. And it becomes really challenging because we’ve got our attention in too many places.
So what I would suggest is sometimes something that helps us to do a wheel of life and fill in the different areas and say which number and because, you know, you can label it, you can number it two out of 10, 10 being really satisfied.
What areas of your life are you? You know, how satisfied are you with this area out of 10 and, you know, go for your lowest score.
That’s another option. If you find that, you’re not really sure how to pick that area of your life yet, but I would say choose one area that you’re struggling with at the moment.
And if you’re a little bit concerned and you feel like there’s too many areas, don’t be discouraged. Because I found when I choose one area, it tends to affect the other areas too.
Our lives are interconnected. When we work on one area of our lives, it tends to, it tends to affect the others because what we’re really starting to work on is our beliefs and our self-esteem, no matter what area we’re working in, we’re working on automatic habits and programs that we’ve perhaps learned from when we were younger ways of living that we’ve learned from when we were younger.
So even if you choose one area and there’s maybe a couple you’re not satisfied with at the moment, it will like, it does have like a domino effect.
It does all affect each other naturally. So I would say one, choose an area where you’re struggling right now. So for me, it was always with my work.
This will always be my biggest hurdle. Just, I think, again, the programs we grew up with, right? Like this definitely goes against the grain of what my family considered successful, what my family considered work.
So this was, this was, this has always been a challenge for me because it’s challenged the way I’ve grown up and the belief system that I’ve grown up with.
So choose one area that you’re really struggling at the moment. Now, step number two is when you start to think of this area and perhaps, maybe you’re thinking of it or you’re in that area right now.
So maybe you’ve just had an argument with your partner and you’re like, well, that’s a perfect place to start. And you’ve that argument’s still fresh.
What’s some things that you say to yourself or believe when you think about this situation. So for me, I had to step back and go, okay, I’m in this loop, I’m doing the same thing over and over again, where I’m finding courses and trying to listen to people and try to be other people’s versions of success and do things the way other people have done.
Because if I do things the way I feel it should be done, that’s probably not going to work. There we go.
I’ve already explained a little bit of the way that I think. So I then started to become aware of my my thoughts around the situation, my thoughts when the situation happened.
So instead of just taking action, I’d be like, well, I can’t, I’ve, I’ve got to figure out who’s done this person mimic their way and do what they say is right.
And then I panicked because I think if I didn’t follow through with what they said, then it wouldn’t work. So you can see like the, the patterns of anxiety the thoughts that I would have about what other people did and how I really started to focus externally on other people’s decisions.
And versions of success and behaviors rather than actually focusing on what felt right for me to do. So I would say, what are some of the things that you think you’ll say to yourself or believe when you think about the situation?
Now, the reason I say that is because our beliefs, our thoughts, sorry, can give indications of our beliefs. So when we start to think certain ways, we can start to understand the deep seated beliefs that we have, that again, that we’ve gained from childhood.
And the reason that I constantly go back on the childhood thing and the experiences, which will be part of the next question is because something I’ve learned as Wiley’s from zero to seven years old, our brain, we’re kind of in a state of hypnosis, we start to see and learn programs of how we should work and what we should do.
And naturally we look at the world, the social world around us, and that’s how we learn how to be, how to do what to do how we learn, what should look like, what it shouldn’t look like.
And even though that’s not necessarily right or wrong it’s just something that helped me to understand and be less critical of myself, because I started to get that we all kind of get programmed into these different ways of beings, depending on our social environment.
And then again, there’s nothing right or wrong with that. It’s just about becoming aware of it so we can change the things that don’t serve us, because the thing is some of these programs, they serve us.
Some of the things we’ve learned in childhood, they serve us. But matter the matter of the fact is some of them don’t, and that’s where the conflict, the resentment comes in, the stuck-ness comes in because we’re trying to change something, but our program is doing otherwise.
The unconscious part of us that kicks in when we’re driving is doing the same thing for other things that we’re doing.
So that’s something that’s really helped when it comes to learning for me. And when it comes to feeling stuck and trying to do that, create that change.
So the next question that I would go with is, so once you’ve started to think of some of the things that you say to yourself and some of the things you might believe in those situations or in that area of your life.
The third thing that I would do is ask myself, or ask yourself where have those beliefs and ideas come from.
So something I like to do is I will write down the thought, for example, and then in one column, and then the next column you write belief.
So the thought might be I feel like I need to, and sometimes they might sound the same and that’s fine.
But for example, a thought for me would have been why need to learn a course about this. And then my belief is because I don’t trust my own thinking.
I need to figure it out someone else’s way of doing it. Otherwise I won’t be successful. There’s a belief, right?
And then I have to, then it’s good to look at the different experiences that we’ve had in our lives that might’ve taught us those beliefs.
So what experiences did we have that taught us that, where have those beliefs come from? And I think it will be different for everybody, but like, for me, when I think of those experiences are really understand to something that can happen in childhood as well.
Is we, depending on the type of parent that you had, sometimes they can accidentally not acknowledge your reality sometimes too.
It is a matter of just like natural temperament. You know what I mean? Like something I’ve been reading lately is to perfectionism at some degree can be genetic, and then obviously the social environment comes in and perhaps just encourages that and brings that out more.
So I kind of understand that there’s a natural inclination for me to always feel like I need to be a complete expert on something and know a hundred percent of everything, but I tend to look externally for validation rather than to internally just trust my own voice.
And that’s probably something that I learned in a program I got from childhood where, you know, you kind of your parents.
And again, this is a cultural thing as well. I like my background is Italian. So there’s a lot of that.
Like, you shouldn’t be crying, you know there was definitely a thing in my family that crying doesn’t solve anything. But the thing is, what that does is that type of belief, challenges are internal feelings because what it actually communicates is that our feelings internally are not valid.
So that’s something that’s carried through and definitely affected the way that I valued my internal view of things versus external.
I definitely valued external ideas more than my own, and that’s something that I’ve worked on and I’m being able to work out of because I realized the stuckness and the habits and the experiences and the thoughts that I have, the rural interconnected to me making those constant automatic decisions and behaviors that left me in the same spot.
So if you like the idea of the columns, or sometimes it’s just a matter of reflecting, I’m thinking we have those beliefs and ideas come from.
And what experiences did you have that told you that? So now we’re starting to look back and say, Hey, this happened or, Hey, apparent might’ve said this.
And something to keep in mind, that’s really helped me as well. I’ve read. I, I always say that, but I never remember exactly where I read things.
It said we all become who we are by mistake. And I liked that because it took that pressure off of always feeling resentful or trying to throw responsibility on to parents who most of the time do the best that they can.
So sometimes, you know, it’s just a generational thing where we learn a certain thing and, you know, we carry that forward and that doesn’t serve us.
And it’s about unlearning that and changing that. And that helped me cause it helped me to understand and not get angry or, or resentful around the cultural family I grew up in and the values.
And, you know, for example, that thing about crying was probably something that my parents got told themselves, right. That’s being passed on.
So it’s also about understanding that not looking at this space and try not to get resentful, but just be curious and non-judgment so around the experience and understanding that usually the programs that we’ve learned, I usually just programs that have been carried through generationally and we’re looking to change those.
And that’s a great thing because that’s evolution, right? That’s growth. We’re now here trying to make changes. So that’s just something I want to want to add there because it’s really easy to get caught up and get really annoyed and frustrated and p****d off with your parents or, or your family around you.
Because that was definitely a process I had where I get, I used to get really frustrated with things my grandparents would say in beliefs that I got from them.
And then I just started to understand it’s just a cultural generational thing. You know, they carry their beliefs with them, beliefs that perhaps were brought on from their family.
And now we’re looking to change those. And that’s a great thing. It’s sort of bad thing. So again, looking at where those beliefs and ideas have come from, and what experiences did you have that taught you that?
So now it’s becoming aware again, of the programming where that program has come from. So we can really understand and go through that process of self discovery to get to know ourselves better.
And then the final question is how does that affect your action and behavior and behavior? So now it’s about looking at how those beliefs, I know ideas start to affect your behavior.
So what do you do? So for me, I had that deep seated fault that I needed to know everything, but also I, I worked from that aspect of that.
I trusted external, I got validation externally when it came to my ideas. And if someone disagreed with something externally than I thought it was a s**t idea, to be honest with you.
And that’s something I’ve had to work to learn, to trust my voice more. But then that explained my behavior of then going and looking for courses and ways to learn things.
But I was overdoing it instead of just taking action because I never felt like my ideas and my view were validated.
So I felt like I had to go through other people’s steps first. And so that’s something that helped show me the ways that my automatic habits and thoughts were like how, like how they were affecting my life and why I was always stuck in this loop.
And I think another great area that this becomes really relevant easing relationships because we tend to work off an attachment style, which again, is something great to look into.
I’ll definitely do an episode on that at some point, but I’m looking into our attachment styles, helps us to understand the thoughts.
And then it helps us to understand the beliefs that we have around something. And then the experiences we’ve might’ve had.
And then the automatic behaviors that we have that you will find is really surprising because we tend to mimic relationships with our parents in our personal relationships, because they’re the examples that we got.
Again, they’re the programs that we got. So there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just about understanding it so we can make the changes that we feel, because I think the challenge is too often, something with goals as well.
And that’s part of the reason why we can get stuck. You know, we create a goal and we can’t get there.
We feel like we’re stuck. We can’t get to that point of, because that goal does not match with the value or belief that we’ve had.
And therefore, when we have a value and belief that he’s driving our action, it doesn’t match with the action we need to take for the goal because they just don’t align.
Like, it’s that whole thing of me following through with these, if I have an idea that other people’s ideas are more valid or my ideas are only valid, if someone else externally validates them and makes us work really hard.
So my goal is become really hard to reach because I’m always looking for external validation and looking at courses and other people rather than taking action myself.
And that’s where the friction comes from. And the stuckness for me came from and something that I want to just leave you guys with today that I found really, really important or really helpful in this process is I read when we’re in our subconscious mind on autopilot, we’re not in, in the present.
So it becomes harder for us to be aware when we are making habitual actions and decisions that don’t serve us.
So this is what this whole process is about when we’re stuck. We’re usually stuck in the same habitual actions in those automate, in that automatic pilot, in those, in those subconscious programs that don’t us because our goals or our way of being, or the way that we’re trying to aim to change, doesn’t actually match with the programs that we have and therefore our actions that we take.
So becoming aware of that gap, becoming aware of the things that are driving you, the habits, experiences that have affected you is really important because once we become aware of that, we can make different decisions, right?
And that’s something that helped me because every time I went to get another course or I’ll get stuck in that learning, I’d be like, Hey, I can see what’s happening.
I can say that I’m trying to avoid taking action because I’m still not trusting my voice. So then I’d make little steps towards it.
I’d be like, okay, just choose one small thing, one small thing that I could do. And slowly what happens is again, like driving a car, right?
Your programming starts to change because you’re constantly taking that action and communicating to your brain, Hey, that program, we’re changing it, we’re doing something different and we’re doing it in small steps so that it’s not overwhelming.
And that’s a key thing as well, taking small steps, right? Like one thing is this didn’t happen overnight. When I talk about this, this was 2018 when I had this experience.
And now we’re in 2021, it’s taken years of self discovery and work to get to this point. But I would say it’s completely worth it because there’s definitely more fulfillment and purpose and meaning in my life.
And a lot’s changed and that I’m really content with right now. And that’s because of these processes are being able to come up, become aware of the subconscious programs.
The habits, the beliefs that I had, the experiences that led to those beliefs and being able to change those so that it matches or helps me to get to the goals or the things that I want to achieve.
So that’s what I would say. So I’m just going to recap. The steps is one, choosing an area. We are struggling right now where you feel stuck, where you feel like you can’t change.
You’re doing the same stuff. You’re ending up in the same position, the same fight, the same relationship apply as you want.
Don’t forget if you’re struggling to find an exact area, then you can do a self a life wheel work out the area.
That’s the lowest. And don’t forget not to stress because you know, when we make one change in our lives, it tends to affect every other area to two years.
What’s somethings you say to yourself or believe when you think about the situation three is we have those beliefs and ideas come from what experiences did you have that taught you that?
So again, just reflecting on how how our beliefs driving out behavior and what experiences we had that created that perhaps, maybe it wasn’t, it was something that was said to us or constant things that were said to us.
Again, sometimes it’s a cultural beliefs that we grew up with and again, keeping them on that, that idea of we all become who we are by mistake.
Everyone in my family is well-intentioned working off generational learnings that they’ve had. And has that, has that served me? When do I understand when it’s no longer serving me there, the important things that I’ve learned that helped me to move forward when I feel stuck.
And then finally, how does that, how does knowing all this, now that you’ve learned the, or started to see the automatic behaviors and the beliefs, how did, how do those things affect your actions and behavior?
So again, it’s becoming aware of when things come up, how we respond, those habitual loops in automatic habits, the autopilot that we get into.
And the thing I love about self-awareness and developing this understanding of ourselves is once we become, become aware of things, it’s really hard to get on a way.
I don’t even know if that’s completely possible. I mean, there are instances where we end up back in those habitual hat patterns, but we just slowly start to see them more and more and more.
And that’s definitely happened for me where I can start to see myself with more curiosity, more compassion. Especially for example, this is something that’s helped when it comes to self criticism.
You know, you can see when that starts to come up. And if that’s something that you struggle with, again, I have I just recorded an episode on that too, which gives all the things that have helped to overcome or manage the self critic.
So I hope that you have enjoyed this episode. And as I say, always take what resonates leave what doesn’t, if this is a type of work, that in a work that you’re looking to do and you enjoy it, please make sure to join our membership, wait list.
The membership will be opening up in February. It’ll be a closed membership, meaning it’ll only open up for a certain time every couple of months.
And this is the type of work we’re going to be doing. It’s about doing the inner work to become the person that we truly want to be.
And if you don’t know who that person is yet, we do work on that too, about creating a vision for ourselves and starting to work out why we are the way we are and how we can become the person or how we can create more meaning and purpose in our lives.
And, you know, these exercises, won’t be like massive things. I understand that everybody’s busy. So there’ll be short straight to the point exercises, just help us get more awareness and start to change our actions and our behaviors, and start to really create true change in our lives.
So if that’s something that you’re interested in joining the membership link below, but other than that, I will catch you in the next episode.
Thank you so much for being here.
