Ep 197: What's Keeping You Stuck in a Life or Career You Don't Want (And How to Get Unstuck)

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello , friends . I hope you had an amazing week .

Today we're continuing on with our refreshed episode series and we are going to listen to a really good one today , one that we all could use from time to time .

We are going to talk about how to get unstuck at midlife and why we get stuck in , all of the ways that we use to distract ourselves and kind of keep ourselves mired down in where we are , even if where we are isn't really where we want to be .

This is a good one and it gives you perspective on the layers of stuckness and some of the ways that you can use to get unstuck and start moving forward . So enjoy this refreshed episode of how to get unstuck . So I want to talk today about what to do when you're stuck .

I'm working with a couple of private coaching clients right now on how to shake some aspect of their life loose .

While I do focus on business and career , and specifically usually folks in mid-career , I do have sometimes people come to me and there's things that we work on , sometimes in other parts of their life , because , you know , anything that's going on in one part of your life is usually showing up somewhere else as well .

So if you're having issues of some sort in your career , typically if we examine what's going on in your personal life , you can see the same thing showing up there . It might manifest differently , but you know we're one person and so the challenges that we have in one part of our life will usually show up in other places .

So I have a couple of clients who one of them is working on their feelings around , feeling stuck in their personal relationship and just feels like a lot of stagnation to them and has for a period of years .

They have a couple of kids and both of them have demanding jobs and they just this person doesn't feel like they've really put the time into each other as a unit , right ? That easy to happen when you have lots of demands on yourself . And then this other client feels just really stuck in their corporate life .

They don't , they're not happy , they haven't been happy for quite some time and they want to go do something else . But they don't know what that is . And I thought this was interesting because I had a couple of those sessions with them in the past week and it made me wonder , like , what are the numbers ?

Like how many people end up at midlife you know , between 39 and 54 ? How many of us feel stuck ? And the stat that I found showed that 69% of people , just at any given time at mid-career , feel stuck in the same old routine . So it's a thing and it's easy to happen , right ?

Because I don't know about you , but I know for me , I really like change and I , if you look at my LinkedIn profile or even just friends of mine , are like my God , how many addresses have I crossed off for you ? You know I have really not let any grass grow under my feet , so I do enjoy change , almost , maybe a little too much .

So , like for me , I've been forcing myself to stay put for a while because the new horizons thing can become a little at least for me it became a little addictive . I just I kind of like jumping off of cliffs , you know , and trying new things . I guess that adrenaline rush or whatever .

But I'm trying to think you know what you've got to kind of also learn how to put down roots and appreciate that a little bit more than maybe I have for the past decade or two .

I've got some clients who are in the opposite space and they're really stuck and feel like they don't know how to move forward , and so I just kind of wanted to examine that a little bit .

I don't know if that rings true to you , I don't know if there's some part of your life where you might be feeling that way , but I think it happens to all of us at one point or another , and when it does , it's really important to pay attention to it and look deeper than just the circumstance .

Because I'm not trying to make a statement , because actually I've been divorced as well . Just if you just look at the divorce statistics , I do feel like sometimes it's easier to for us to think that it's easier to move on than it is to do the hard work of solving a problem . And I would say the same can be true in our professional life .

It's easier to , as an entrepreneur , change niches or start a new business than it is to do the hard work of fixing the business they're in , or same thing for a corporate career .

It's easier to get the new job and think that's going to solve your problem than it is to just , you know , try to do well in the place that you're at and solve the problems that you're encountering in the place that you're at . So I don't think that something new is always the answer .

Sometimes it is the answer , but it's important to go beyond the circumstance first and start inside , which won't surprise anyone who listens to the podcast , cause I do believe that every thing starts on the inside .

And for this one specifically , I want to talk about why we get stuck , and I believe that a lot of times it is related to taking our eye off the ball of what we want and getting caught up in the momentum of life that's going on .

So in your personal life , it could look like you've got a couple of kids and you've got the demands of their schedule and you've got your own schedule , and then you've got , maybe , your partner's schedule , and all of those things are very distracting , you know .

And then and they're important , by the way but then you've just got the content of your job and the content of taking care of the house , and it can just be like that's all the bandwidth that I have . I don't have any more of me to give you know . It can be the same way just in the content of a career .

So even for people who don't have a partner or children , I can speak from experience Like it can be hard in some of these jobs to just manage the job and it can become all about that day-to-day feeling of just you know , you've got this mountain to climb every day and you're working like 12 , 14 hour days .

I've had jobs like that where , in order to do it well , you are overloaded . So I do think a lot of times when we get stuck , a lot of it has to do with overwhelm . You have a lot coming at you and it feels like you're just in the sea of turbulence and demand . You know , and there's only so much of you .

When that happens , if that's you , if that's where you're at , it's really important to take a look at your situation and ask yourself if you're really managing your resources in the best possible way . So here's what I mean by that . If like and this is one of my clients right now where they feel really stuck in their job .

They don't not happy with their job . It's not really demanding in terms of lots of new , dynamic things to learn , it's just for them . It feels like the same old , same old and it's kind of boring . They're sort of over it and yet the volume of work is just for them . It seems all-consuming . And yet , as we've examined that a little bit , what's emerged ?

As I began probing in the area of productivity , what's emerged is that they're a more what I would call an intuitive worker , meaning they don't work off of an organized list of priority tasks or even like writing down their tasks . Everything is in their head . And I will tell you when that happens .

It's something that it's really really hard to get a lot done , because when you have everything in your head , it's like you're taking up all your excess bandwidth or your hard drive is full of just random tidbits of information that need to get done and that very quickly leads to overwhelm .

So it leads to being less productive and feeling more swept away by the demands on you . And if you're interested in going deep , I'm not going to go deep on that here , but if that sounds like you , I recommend you go back and listen to episode number 88 . I used to be a much more intuitive worker . I have an ability to remember a lot of things .

I remember my childhood telephone number , by the way , and that was a long time ago . So I just remember lots of things and so it was super easy for me , as my career went , to just remember lots and lots of stuff , and I was super productive and got a lot done . However , I switched to a new approach that I described in episode 88 .

And I will tell you now . It's like productivity on steroids . It's crazy . I can get so much done in my corporate job and so much done on the weekends and some evenings when I'm working on my business . It's insane . And I thought before I was productive , I still got a lot done and people were like , wow , you just get so much done , and now it's amplified .

So if you're feeling like you're in a job and that you don't have time or you don't have the bandwidth to do anything else whether that's spending time with friends or having the flexibility you want to do a bit of traveling , or even like to pause for a second and think about what you want to do next in your career If it's just all about trying to keep

your head above water . I want you to take a hard look at if your productivity habits are creating a feeling of overwhelm , because that's very , very common and I wouldn't have put myself in that bucket . But when I started I came up with this approach myself that I use super easy , and I describe it in episode 88 .

And it has totally given me time back in my day and the ability to get really two or three X the amount of work done that I used to get done , because for me , my corporate career is very demanding , so it caused my business to move slower , because I only have certain hours of the day or the week to work on my business , you know , and that's on the

weekends , and I like to do fun stuff too on the weekends . I don't want to work all the time .

So I'm trying to do this business in a way that fits into my life versus making my entire life about work , cause it's important for me to be able to do both things right now , and so developing a new system of productivity was critical for me and it really kind of took the handcuffs off and it really feels like , uh , now I've got a lot of extra time , so

that's one thing that keeps us stuck .

The other thing like if you look at the other person that I was talking about that I'm coaching which is this feeling of not having , because of all the demands of their job , their spouse's job , their children and their children's schedules and just some of the self-care stuff they both like to do Like it just felt like there's zero extra time in life to do

more aspirational things , even to take a nice vacation , and so one of the things that I'm working with them on is maybe what you need to do is to develop a new system . So how are you managing your life overall ? Like you do have a lot of dependencies , right ?

If you've got children , if you've got a spouse that maybe travels , and then you've got this house and you've got the stuff that you got to do carting the kids here and there as they get older for their activities . It requires looking at your life in a different way For that person

. What I'm working with them on is how do you look at your day and at your resources in a different way ? So , for example , what's interesting to me is that you have a dual career couple and they make good salary between them and you know they can well afford things and yet they're not using their resources .

So , for example , in that instance I'm not um judging , because I think we all have to make our own decisions on this but for them , the opportunity is to look at some of the important yet lower tier things in their life that they could be getting help with instead of doing it themselves .

That , yes , it costs money , but if it gives them back , it's kind of like a trade-off If it gives them back extra time . Why wouldn't you do that ? So small things like how many times a week are you going to the grocery store , right ? And how much time is that taking you to drive there and back and and to do the physical shopping ?

If you add up that , that's a number of hours a week , right . What could you do in order to automate that ? Could you start using a service like Instacart and get that delivered ? I just discovered that myself about six months ago , and I have to tell you something , it is a revelation .

So if you haven't done it , that right there , from my client just doing something like that , she has found five extra hours in her week . Right , it's a huge amount of time that we just don't think about . You stop there on the way at home or whatever .

It's still time and if your time is really valuable and limited because you have a very full life and a very demanding job , then you have to start looking at peripheral services in a different way .

Same thing with like do you really want to spend two or three hours on the weekend scrubbing the house and doing the laundry , or could you find a service that does that for you ?

You don't have to like , and sometimes budgets don't allow for that , but if they do , is that worth the trade-off to give you back that time that you could then be investing in time with your children ? Just things like that . Or even , is there a different way for meal prep ?

Do you really have to prep the meals the way you're doing it , or could you batch it and do it all in two or three hours on a Sunday afternoon and have things either frozen in serving sizes or just sitting in the refrigerator , depending on how you're sequencing your meals ?

What could that do to save you an hour and a half of cooking and cleaning every day ? So the answer in both instances , for the people feeling like they were just buried by life , you know , and kind of stuck .

They came to me because they were feeling not good about not being able to think about even what they want for their future or how to make improvements in the place that they're at , because they just felt like there just wasn't any bandwidth to do it .

And so sometimes , before you can focus on getting unstuck which we'll get into the meat of it here in a minute sometimes you have to clean up some of the structure around you , and I have found at least for both those clients a lot of times , before you can get into the higher minded aspects of how to get unstuck , sometimes you have to look at how you're

spending your time and how to undo the overwhelm that can happen in today's modern world with all the demands on our time . And I just found that or we're not looking at our life in a fresh way that would allow us to structure resources differently .

So , like for my one client , with the family and the spouse and the two jobs , it's like we've now found her 10 to 12 extra hours in her work week that she could then use in other ways , either investing more in time with her spouse , which is one of her big pain points right now , or spending more time with the children , more family time , or she's like I

really want to stand up this little side hustle . It won't take much time , but I don't have any time . So we've now found 10 extra hours in her week to add to her bucket of available time to spend however she chooses . So my first point is really take a hard look If you feel like it's all just too much .

It's just too many demands on you , and really ask yourself are you getting the most value from every minute ? And that doesn't mean trying to shove more through the pipeline .

It really means getting smarter about being more organized and using productivity methods , like I described in episode 88 , if that's one of your issues , or if you like , my client just has tons of directions . They're being pulled in with their family and you're just feeling overwhelmed by it .

You might have to reimagine how you think about what you do versus what you might hire other people to do , and for some people that can seem like a real luxury , but I kind of like to reframe it in my mind and I think of it as doing my part to help others too .

Those are other businesses , those people who drive for Instacart and do your shopping for you . They're helping to earn a living for their family . I feel good about that . It doesn't feel as much like a luxury as it does .

It gave me time back and it helps them right and hire them to do it If you can , if you have the ability to fit that into your budget . Or even just using your own time differently how do you meal prep differently ? How do you think about the time you spend doing laundry differently , things like that .

So that's kind of the first part is clean up your time and make sure you're getting the most value for your time and then after that , one of the ways that we get stuck is really about being afraid of change and not allowing ourselves to really dive into the future that we might want .

A lot of it is about getting frozen in fear and that can lead to stagnation . And I would say , as I've talked to my client even the client that I was talking about with the relationship issues with the spouse there's a bit of fear there that's come to light .

I'm not a relationship or a divorce coach , but I will tell you like it's a natural outgrowth of some of the issues she's having in her career .

And that's kind of how we got to this place of talking about how the spouse thing is weighing on her as well , and as we've gotten into it , the truth of the matter is that she's a little afraid of taking a look at it and of what the answer might be to the question of whether or not this is ever going to get better .

Right , I'm helping her explore that in a light kind of way and ask the sorts of questions she'll need to seek someone else out if she's looking for a relationship coach and we've talked about that .

But I can help her start to ask herself some questions that would either get her and her spouse working on it or taking some sort of different action if that's what she feels she needs to do . But what I guess my point is is the thing that's really keeping her stuck . Yes , we need to clean up how she uses her time .

We need to clear up the schedule a little bit to make a little bit of room , to give her the bandwidth to not feel so overwhelmed so she could really deal with it and think about it . But the truth of the matter is there's fear there . She's afraid to move forward and ask herself that question . That happens for a lot of us .

It's easier to stay busy than it is to deal with the hard stuff of life sometimes , and the same is true for the client that I'm working on , with feeling stuck in their career , feeling like they want to go do something else but they don't know what it is and they're just like , well , I'm just so busy I can't get to it .

And as we've started to clear up their productivity issues and they do have the bandwidth what's emerging is really what it is is that they're afraid .

They're afraid to make a change , they're afraid they're not good enough , they're afraid they won't be successful , they're afraid they're going to try and fail , they're afraid that they're going to disappoint themselves , they're going to fall on their face , and so the reason we get stuck and we're stagnant usually the busyness and the overwhelm is a symptom .

What's really behind it is fear fear in making the wrong decision , fear in trying and failing , and so it feels miserable to stay where you are . But it's a misery that you know versus an unknown that you don't know right . A lot of times you know having a dream of something better is nice as an idea , but it can feel really scary to go after it .

And so here the interesting thing to think about is that you have to kind of look at the cost , like what is the cost of staying where you're at Like for both clients ? Like what's the cost of staying and keeping the relationship there ? What's the cost on that for the two spouses who are arguing all the time ?

What's the cost of that for the children who are watching that interaction and that dynamic ?

What's the cost on my client's wellbeing when they try to go to the office and pretend everything's fine and they're getting calls from their spouse during the day and that's , and they're getting calls from their spouse during the day and that's interrupting their sense of well-being at work and they're bringing all of that baggage with them .

Basically , how is that weighing down the emotional well-being of their day ? It is right , it's a big cost . So while it may be scary to have to look at the problem and make a decision that changes the problem either to go into therapy together or to separate for a time , or whatever they're going to do it can feel too scary to do it .

But it gets less scary when you look at what is the all-in cost of staying stuck right ? And the same thing for my client in their career of staying stuck right , and the same thing for my client in their career . It's like no-transcript .

And so they're distracting themselves with over-functioning and working all hours of the day and night and on the weekends and all that stuff and their busyness , that overly busyness feeling , is really keeping them planted right where they are and it's distracting them from really dealing with the real problem , which is probably time .

After 12 years with the same company , seven without a promotion they're over it . They need to do something else , right , and they want to do something else . And they've allowed this 12 years in one place to mean that they're not capable of being successful anywhere else , that this is all they know , which is a lie . It's not true .

And guess what , like you might make a change and it might not turn out the way you want , in which case you just need to make another decision , because that's the way life goes . Some things work out the way we want , some things don't .

But the answer is never to stay where you are and distract yourself with busyness and overwhelm just because it's hard to look at and deal with the thing that you need to look at and deal with and that's at the root of it . There's one click down beyond that , beyond the fear . At the heart of it is who do we think we are Meaning ?

How do we see ourselves ? What is our self image ?

And that is why my business focuses there , because at the root of the whole human experience , everything starts with what we believe is true about ourselves , and we are not taught this and the whole thing is really formed for most of us by default , through the combination of things people say to us about us , things that we view or see happening in the world ,

that we make judgments about and we make mean something about us , and then experiences that we've had . We interpret those and all of that gets filed away and inside ourselves we then have this default self-concept or self-image that we're not even really aware of .

We just know that maybe we have this recurring self-doubt or maybe we have this lack of belief in ourselves or this lack of self-confidence or this sense of low self-esteem and we wonder if we're good enough . Really . That's at the heart of the whole thing For my client who's struggling in their relationship . At the heart of the whole thing is .

They're really , really worried that it's not going to work . And then they wonder what does that mean about me ? What does that mean about my future ? Am I going to be a single parent ? Am I ever going to meet anyone else ? Can I even fix this relationship ? So it's at the heart of who they think they are .

And looking at this change through that lens , when , in reality , if you go inside and you fix yourself first and you take a look at how you view yourself and examine that and I teach people how to do that in my business , either in private coaching or you can join my monthly membership , next level , which is $49 a month , and I'm getting ready to open that

up next week so if that's what you want to do , we go inside . No matter what you're facing , whether you're stuck or there's a thousand other problems in your life I can promise you that before you fix those problems , think of those problems as symptoms . You need to go inside and take a look at yourself .

Who are you , how do you view yourself and what part of that is aligned with where you want to go in your life and what part of that is actually holding you back and keeping you stuck , keeping you afraid to actually make the hard decisions or to make the changes that you really want to make , because you think about anything that we want to do in our life

losing weight , making more money , starting the business , finding the right partner , getting out of a bad relationship , like whatever is happening . Yes , those things are happening , but before you try to fix those things , you have to be clear about what's going on with you .

It starts inside , and when you fix those things , usually all the things around that were symptoms of the problem go away . It is really true . It's kind of like what we learn to do as we move through life is we will learn how to put band-aids on what's really a broken arm . It doesn't really help . We overeat , we overdrink , we become overly busy .

We tell ourselves there's not enough time .

We do all these things and the truth of the matter is is we're just distracting ourselves from the real issue , or sometimes we'll power through and we'll make the change only to end up in the same situation all over again , and the reason that happens is because we haven't fixed the root of the problem , which is how we view ourselves .

If this is you , and this is ringing true , I want you to hear one thing the question that we all ask ourselves usually at some point or another is am I enough , am I good enough ? And I can promise you the answer to that question is yes . You just need to believe it , and that is a process of editing your self-image .

You keep the things that are serving you , you keep the things that are really towering strengths and you try to make those even stronger , and you eliminate the old beliefs that got stored in there without you even knowing it , that are now keeping you stuck and stagnant and mired down in all of these other symptoms of issues around you .

That could easily be cleared up if you just cleaned up how you think about yourself . So just know that if you're stuck today , however , that's manifesting in your life and you're telling yourself you're just too busy , there's not enough time , I've got too much going on Like I don't have enough money to make a change . I don't whatever . You're telling yourself .

You're just too busy , there's not enough time , I've got too much going on Like I don't have enough money to make a change . I don't whatever .

You're telling yourself before you believe that let's clean up how you use your time , cause you do need a little bandwidth in order to think you can't just be , you know , overly busy and overwhelmed and trying to figure out some of life's more complicated things . But once you clean up how you spend your time so you can get yourself a little extra bandwidth .

I want you to then focus on how do you go all the way inside and clean up your self-image . Once you do that like for my client , I'm working on that and how they think about their career . What they really want to do is stand up a side hustle .

That's really what they want to do , because in five years , they want their own business that can support them . They don't think they want another corporate career . They want to do this and they've got something very specific in mind . They just truly don't believe that they're going to be able to be successful . So now we know what we have to do .

They're going to be able to be successful . So now we know what we have to do . We have to work on their level of self-belief and we have to let them understand that they're going to try and stub their toe and they're going to try things and they're not going to work on the first time .

And none of that means that this business isn't going to eventually be successful , and none of it means that they're not cut out to be an entrepreneur . They need to stop being afraid . They need to clean up their time . So they've got a little extra bandwidth in order to stand up to business and then they just need to go .

So that is what I wanted to talk to you about today . Think about stuckness as just a symptom of a bigger issue , and that issue is one that is very easily solved . Starts inside , with your self-image , and you could start that today .

All you have to do is go to the purposefulcareercom forward slash next level and sign up on the wait list , and with that I will leave you until next time . Make it a great week , my friends . Do you have a life coach ? If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach . I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called Next Level .

Inside , we take the material you hear on this podcast , study it and then apply it . Join me at ThePurposefulCareercom backslash Next Level . Don't forget the ThePurposefulCareercom backslash next level . Join me and together we'll make your career in life everything you dream of . We'll see you there .