Episode 32: How to Restart When You Feel Stuck
STRATEGY 1:
Stop focusing on feeling stuck or overwhelmed. Ruminating on the problem is only making you feel more stuck.
STRATEGY 2:
Shift your focus and attention from the problem to, “What’s ONE small thing I can do in THIS hour to move forward?”
There’s an endless variety of things we can do immediately to remind ourselves that there is NO crisis and that we are, in fact, NOT STUCK:
- Get up and stretch, taking several deep belly breaths
- Tackle one small item on your to-do list (phone call, etc.)
- Make your bed
- Put the laundry away
- Pack a healthy snack or meal to take with you tomorrow
- Take a short walk – just walk outside and go
- Go to the grocery store and shop the perimeter to pick up a few things to create some simple healthy meals. You don’t need a long list or a meal plan; just go.
You may be thinking: “But NONE of these things are going to make a big difference anyway so why should I even try?”
This, right here, is the problem. We UNDERVALUE the small things that make us feel like organized, intentional action takers.
We expend so much energy focusing on HOW FAR we have to go that we freeze.
We feel a panicked, clenched sense of overwhelm that makes us feel helpless, hopeless, and stuck.
STRATEGY 3: IMAGINE YOU’RE COACHING SOMEONE ELSE WHO IS FEELING STUCK:
You would remind them of ALL the hard things they’ve handled.
You would invite them to have compassion for themselves
You would lighten their burden by helping them shift their focus from feeling stuck to small opportunities to take action TODAY.
You would encourage them to let go of fear of failure.
STRATEGY 4: NOTICE YOUR EXCUSES AND QUESTION THEM:
- This day has been crazy, let’s just run and grab something.
- I don’t even care anyway.
- I’ve already screwed up today so whatever.
- I’ll make better choices tomorrow.
- I’ve been so good; I deserve a treat!
- It’s just one small thing, what can this hurt?
There is ZERO judgment in any of these excuses. The problem is that they are INCOMPLETE THOUGHTS and they make us feel like there are multiple versions of ourselves that are at war with one another!
- If you’re going to run and grab something, could you run and grab a chef salad, a bunless burger, or a rotisserie chicken?
- If you’re honest with yourself, you DO care. You want to be healthy AND you want to be able to trust yourself to follow through on your intentions.
- If your child made a mistake, would you encourage them to throw in the towel and keep making that same mistake? The first step of getting out of a hole is to STOP DIGGING.
- We imagine that our future self will magically have more grit and motivation than our exhausted current self. The fact is that we create our OWN motivation by staying on our own team and not constantly giving up and starting over.
- You absolutely DO deserve a reward but is momentary pleasure in your mouth the most compassionate way to care for yourself? Could you reward yourself in a way that gives your future self a gift as well?
- Our life is an accumulation of ALL the small choices: Our finances, parenting, career, relationships, the state of our home. When we keep telling ourselves the small things don’t matter, we’re entrenching patterns that land us in places we don’t want to be. STOP DIGGING.
THE GREAT NEWS:
It takes about 3 small actions to start building confidence and momentum. It takes 24 hours of eating better to notice a change in our mental and physical state.
STRATEGY 5: PRACTICE
NONE of this is one and done. You can’t hear this and simply say, “Ok, I’ve got it now!”
- Practice refocusing your attention when it starts to drift back to emotional overwhelm or feeling stuck.
- Practice reminding yourself that you are NOT stuck, you merely stopped for a minute and can restart at any moment.
- Practice turning off the thought faucet and shifting to what you can DO instead.
- Practice staying awake in the driver’s seat of your own life. This doesn’t mean you have to hustle 24/7. Rest when you need it. Allow yourself to feel your emotions without fear.
- Practice giving your tomorrow self little gifts like getting your clothes ready, packing your lunch the night before, going to bed at a reasonable time, packing your gym bag, organizing your calendar,etc. It’ this sense of continuity between our present and future self that will allow you to move through the friction of saying no to the wine or brownie, NOT because they’re “bad”, but because your TOMORROW SELF deserves better.
xo,
Lisa and Jenny, co-hosts
The Mind Your Body Podcast