Why You Are Stuck

Welcome to This Daring Adventure podcast, where we work on bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be in order to live a bigger and bolder life. In this podcast, we will provide inspiration, tips, and skills you need to make your life the adventure you want it to be. Here's your host, mindset mentor and life coach Trista Guertin.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to This Daring Adventure. This is episode 69. And it is why you feel stuck.

Today I am recording my podcast episode in Greece. It's very lovely. I just arrived here a couple of days ago after spending five days in Paris, which was a lot of fun. I walked everywhere. I ate everything. I shopped. Went to museums. Had a great time. It was a little bit of a future self exercise. I went into this a little bit on Instagram, and I still need to talk about my experience, but I wanted to use that opportunity to do some of my future self work. France is somewhere that I want to spend a lot more time in, in the future, and Paris in particular, and so I wanted to be there, but also be my future self at the same time and help myself acclimatize to being in that environment and imagining what it would be like to actually live there and spend more time there. I still need to wrap that up, and I will put that probably on Instagram. But it obviously was a very fun exercise and definitely felt some of the shifts occurring during that time.

Today I wanted to go into why you feel stuck. Obviously this is what my work with my clients focuses on and I wanted to give you just a bit of a taste of the work that we do in a session so that you can understand what goes on and why this work is so important.

When you are feeling stuck, there are a number of thoughts that are probably going through your brain on a loop. One of them could be, I don't know what I want. Another one could be, it'll never work. Or some flavor of it, like I'm not good enough. It never works out for me. And then the other could be like, I can't, I don't know how, and then, some sort of flavor of they'll think that I don't know what I'm doing, I'll feel embarrassed, they'll say, or they'll question me, or you'll have some sort of scenario in your mind about what will happen. If I do this, then this will happen. And all of these thoughts create a corresponding feeling in you.

When you think the thought, I don't know what I want, you will generate a feeling of perhaps fear, overwhelm, frustration, disappointment, confusion. If you're thinking the thought, it'll never work, you might feel some flavor of defeated or discouraged. then if you're thinking, I can't, I don't know how, what will they say or what will they think? And you will probably generate some sort of feeling of fear and inadequacy. so you can see how these thoughts generate a feeling in you, right? When you think, I don't know what I want, and you're feeling confused, what action then will you take? And, in fact, you probably won't take any action. You will just allow yourself to spin out in that confusion, and you will block any inspiration. You will keep your brain from looking for any information that, that may help, and you will block the thought processes to figure out a way. Or to become aware of what it is you want. And you certainly won't be making any decisions. And therefore you will create a result, a corresponding result, which would be what you say stopped. most of the time, once we get these thoughts in our heads and we start believing them, then they just play in a loop over and over in our minds, they feel true, we think they are real, that they are fact, and in most cases, you believe what you have is evidence to prove these thoughts true.

And it's a very powerful cycle. And you can see that your thoughts matter, your feelings matter, because they are what is driving your action or inaction.

Everything you do or don't do is because of how you think it will make you feel or what you're trying to avoid feeling.

So every thought you have will create a corresponding feeling. then based on that feeling, you will either take action or you won't. And depending on the action that you take, that's the result that you will get. You can go through different feelings and imagine or analyze yourself in different situations, different circumstances, the action that you took or you didn't take.

If you're feeling excited, or certain or committed, what is the action that you will take versus if you're feeling defeated or scared or overwhelmed, what are the actions or the actions that you either will take or you won't take and then understand what it is that you're creating for yourself. What is the ultimate result from taking those actions or from not taking those actions?

All of these feelings will help you. Either drive action that create the results you want, or they won't. They will move you further away from the results that you want, and you will create other results. We think, then we feel, then we act. And generally when you're feeling stuck, you are able to experiencing fear, vulnerability, frustration, defeat, uncertainty, maybe some sort of insecurity. these feelings are not going to generate the actions that you need to move yourself forward. And the cycle perpetuates itself.

You continue to be stuck.

So what you're thinking and what you're feeling matters. They will drive your actions, or they will keep you in, in, in action. Your feelings are extremely powerful, but it always starts with your thoughts. Your brain offers you a thought, and what it means usually it's trying to protect us, and it does this through fear. It does it through negativity, and we believe these thoughts.

These thoughts come into, we think them, our brain has offered them to us. We believe them, and we're not aware that they have a serious effect on us. We're not aware that we can question them, and we're not aware that we can change them. But in fact, we can. The thoughts that we think are not facts.

Some of them are not helpful, and a lot of them are not going to fuel the feelings and the actions that we need to create the results that we want in our life. So it's important that you look at your thoughts. This is daily thought work. Gain that awareness of what you're thinking. And you can do this by writing it down.

I always recommend journaling to my clients. Write them down. What are you thinking? Take five minutes and just do a brain dump. Don't edit yourself. Don't censor yourself. Don't think too much about it. Just write it all out. Then take a look at some of the thoughts that you've put down on the paper.

And ask yourself are they true? Because a lot of the thoughts that we have, we think are true, we believe they're true, we feel that they're true, but in fact, they aren't facts and there's a lot of drama.

So you do want to sort out what is actual fact and what is actual drama that your brain is adding. You might want to try and understand why you're thinking some of these thoughts. I don't like to spend too much time on this. because I think it can be a bit of a rabbit hole and you go down and you can spend a lot of time and energy there and it's, that's not going to serve you.

But sometimes if the thoughts are fearful, then you can understand that this is your brain trying to protect you. So it makes sense that your brain is offering you that thought. then you can just have a little bit of compassion for yourself. You need a little bit of understanding. then ask yourself, what else might be true? if your brain is offering a thought that you can never figure this out, then maybe you could also believe that it's possible that you could figure it out, step by step, bit by bit. It's possible that you could learn. It's also true. Might not know how now, but it's possible that you could figure it out. And that's equally true. Also, looking at your thoughts from the perspective of, is it helpful? Because if it's not helpful, then you don't need to keep it.

Your thoughts are optional. Your brain is offering you something to protect you and to keep you safe, to keep you alive. That's a part of the survival part of our brain's job, so it will offer you these thoughts automatically because it thinks it's doing its job to keep you alive, but in fact, it's not so necessary these days and understanding that it's not helpful for you in this day and age, in this time, in this place, in this situation, these thoughts that, that try to keep you alive and keep you moving. But for the most part, the thoughts that your brain is offering you are no longer completely necessary.

And then you want to take the opportunity to think what else might be helpful?

What other thoughts can I think that would serve me better? And you can spend a little bit of time looking at what would be helpful. You want it to be believable. You want it to resonate. It doesn't have to be a hundred percent believable, but you want it to be something that, yes, you can see that this is possible. That this is plausible and you try it on and you practice it until it becomes a hundred percent believable. And then you move on to another thought.

But you do want something that resonates and that feels good. But the first step is always paying attention to what your brain is offering you. Is it really helpful? Is it going to keep you stuck or is it going to move you forward? And most of the time, as I said, the brain is going to offer you thoughts in order to protect you and taking risks, learning something new, expending a great deal of energy to change You It's not something that your brain is going to encourage you to do for the most part. But don't just take all of your thoughts, whatever your brain offers you, at face value.

Don't just believe whatever it offers you. Think through what that thought will actually generate for you. What feeling is it going to create? And with that feeling, what actions are you going to be driven to take and what will be the ultimate result? If you think this through and you see it's not going to create the result that you want. Then you want to go back and start chipping away at those thoughts and seeing what else you could think instead that will create the feeling that you need in order to take the action that you want and ultimately create that result in your life. If that thought is not helpful, choose a new one to practice.

You have to refocus your brain. this is the work. This is the daily thought work that you need to do in order to rewire your brain, create new beliefs, drive different actions and create those results that you want. And this is a daily practice.

It's just like weeding a garden or brushing your teeth. It has to be done every day in order to maintain and create the results that you want.

Otherwise, your brain will go off. It will lose focus. It will take you down a path that you don't want to go. Writing down your thoughts is always really helpful. Review, notice what you're thinking, and then question them. Are they helpful? Are they serving you? What feeling is it creating for you? What's the result that it's creating for you?

Your thoughts and your feelings are your most powerful tools when you want to get unstuck and when you want to create something new in your life. They will either keep you stuck or they will propel you forward. So you need to pay attention and you need to do this daily work.

All right. This is the work that we do in coaching helps to have someone like a coach outside of your brain, showing you the impact of your thinking and understanding your emotions and how they are creating the results in your life. And then helping you to understand what changes you need to make so that you In order to create the life that you want to get unstuck, to become who you want to become.

So you need to take some time to work on your life and not just be in it. You need to step back, reflect, do the work and make the changes in order to move yourself forward.

If you want to try coaching yourself, I do offer free 45 minute coaching sessions. The link will be in the show notes. I am only offering these free sessions until the end of June.

So you have just another six weeks to try it, and then I will be moving to a different format. But if you're interested in trying, please get on my calendar.

If you don't see something, a date or time that suits you, please feel free to email me. I would love to speak to you, bring any issue that you wish, learn more about coaching.

I will also talk to you about my Get Unstuck program that is designed to teach you all of these tools and skills you need to get unstuck for good.

All right, everybody, thanks for listening. If you have a moment to rate, review, share, subscribe, I would greatly appreciate it. It helps to get the podcast out to a wider audience.

Have a great week. Talk to you later. Bye bye.

Thank you for listening to This Daring Adventure podcast with your host Trista Guertin. We hope you enjoyed the tips and conversations on how to get excited about life again.

As always, you can head to tristaguertin.com for additional resources and to book a one on one coaching session.

You can also follow Trista on Instagram at tristavguertin.

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Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time.