Hey guys, welcome back.
This is part two of, for lack of a better term,
the Stuck series, or your stuck,
so what do you do now?
And today I'm going to talk about some of the
tiny, brave little steps that you could take
to finally move out of your comfort zone
without like blowing up your whole life, okay?
There's a very specific flavor of stuck
that hits us around this time of the year.
And I talked about it a little bit in the last episodes.
So if you haven't listened to that one,
I would go back and listen to that one first.
But it's kind of like this restless, kind of busy feeling,
like almost a little bit of a panic,
and it kind of, you're kind of saying to yourself,
if I don't change something soon,
I'm just going to lose my mind.
So you've had it, you're like past that point
of caring how uncomfortable change will be
you're gonna do it anyway.
So if that's you, that's good, that discomfort is your
momentum, grab it, just grab it and use it.
Your soul right now is too big for the life
that you're living in and you need to change something.
And we all kind of feel this when it gets
towards the end of the year and the beginning
of a new year, it's kind of this perfect container,
not because like January is magic
or the beginning of a new year is magic.
It's just like this social construct of like a new year,
like the term that makes me kind of gag a little bit
is like new year, new year, new year, right?
(laughs)
But a lot of people do reset this time of year.
I do a lot of thinking on my birthday.
So I have like this whole ritual I do,
like on my birthday where I ask myself questions about
like where I'm at, where I wanna be.
So I did this in October really.
But I do love the end of the year and the beginning
of the new year 'cause you're going into winter
and winter is like a time of stillness
and I talked a little bit about this in the last episode
where you kind of have this space to really think
about what you want and do a lot of journaling
which I'm gonna give you so many journal prompts
through this whole series that you could work on.
To really start your year off aligned.
Really, that's my goal for you with this series
is to help you start next year feeling like yourself,
feeling aligned and knowing the direction you wanna go in.
That's all, it doesn't have to be any like big goals
or big things that you have to do.
It's just about getting aligned with yourself.
So your comfort zone isn't really safe, it's just familiar.
And you know, as I said in the last episode,
your brain's job is to keep you alive not happy.
And so staying safe in a very comfortable place
is the brain wants to keep you there
because it's, you know, it's safe, that's it.
But it's not necessarily good for you.
And we kind of romanticize comfort like it's security
but it's really not, it's definitely not.
Comfort is like a hold in pattern
and I've been in a hold in pattern for a while now.
Anyone who knows me personally knows this.
It's a place where you go when your nervous system
is tired, overloaded and afraid
and let's face it, this is where a lot of us
are spending most of our time right now.
This is like a very weird time in the history of the world.
So to speak, where a lot of people
are just dysregulated right now because it's,
everything's kind of up in the air.
Like nothing, none of our systems are working,
everything is new, everything's changing really fast.
And I feel like it's been that way since COVID,
so since like 2020.
And so I was like in the stuck pattern of safeness
because the world doesn't feel completely safe to me.
Like if I'm really looking at it.
But the new me is trying not to focus on that
and trying to focus on moving forward
because you know, what are our options at this point?
We could stay stuck and miserable or we can move forward
and just face the fear that we have to move into.
It's kind of the new normal I think.
And so comfort definitely has a dark side.
There's, when you stay there too long,
you start to shrink around your fears.
And before you know it, your life is shrinking.
Your life becomes really small, right?
And if you're reading this,
you're already too comfortable to stay where you are.
You're interested in this.
You're probably way too comfortable.
You're ready to stretch, you're ready to like move forward,
but you don't really want to snap.
You don't really want to disrupt everything too much.
You want to move into your next chapter.
So what I'm here to tell you today in this episode
is that you don't need to make a massive like overhaul
before the new year, right?
You, most people wait for January to January 1st to change
and then they have this is like this countdown
and they try to transform their entire identity
in like 10 days and then they're exhausted by mid-January.
And you know, this is not, I don't really like doing this.
I do like planning my new year
and thinking about what I'm gonna move into,
but this is not, that's not how I like to do it.
You don't really need like a big like heroic leap.
You don't need to make these big huge changes
in order to create that momentum you need to move forward.
You just need like tiny little baby steps,
little brave steps.
You do one when you finish it, then you just do another.
And the key really is consistency.
Momentum is built not like manifested with consistency.
So taking those tiny steps, if you do it once,
it's not gonna change much, but if you do one every week,
it's gonna, before you know it,
your whole life is gonna be unrecognizable.
So what I'm calling this is like a stretch,
but not a snap.
So like the stretch, but don't snap, okay?
So here's the simple process.
Pick the smallest action that moves you towards the life
that you want.
So what do you want?
Like so maybe you journal on this a little bit.
Like what do you want the next year to look like
the next five years, the next 10 years?
You know, like think about some of the things that you want.
And then pick the smallest action
that moves you towards one of those things.
And every day ask yourself the question,
what am I gonna do today to move towards what I want?
Okay?
Small enough so that your nervous system doesn't revolt,
you don't freeze, you don't get stuck in paralysis
because it's terrifying.
But you have to still expect a little bit of discomfort
'cause it's something new, right?
So not because you're doing something wrong,
it's just because you're doing something real,
something new, something different than usual.
So the third step of this process is really, really important.
And I believe this was defined in a couple of those habit books.
I'm trying to, I don't remember which one it was,
so I'm not gonna say the name of the books,
but if you know, you know the books I'm talking about,
there's two very popular books about habits,
but celebrate the micro winds like they're massive.
So every time you have a little wind, celebrate it
because your brain is literally wired to build confidence
this way and momentum.
So don't skip that step.
Especially women, women do not celebrate their winds.
They just move on to the next thing.
They're just trying to prove themselves constantly.
And then you just repeat this.
You pick a small action, expect discomfort,
a little bit, celebrate the wind, repeat.
Consistency beats intensity every single time,
meaning if you're just doing this regularly,
doing it once a week, it beats some big huge leap
that you would take that would be like disruptive and terrifying.
Okay?
So some examples of tiny little brave steps.
Five minutes of journaling before you go to bed,
saying no to one draining thing every week,
doing something in perfect on purpose,
meaning doing something before you're ready, okay?
Exploring a creative impulse without trying to monetize it,
just doing something for fun, okay?
Cleaning one corner of your house instead of
overhauling your life, okay?
So like I meet a lot of people like this
in my coaching business where they feel like
they have to change everything all at once.
So like so if they're decluttering,
they need to declutter their whole entire life, right?
No, just do one little space, like one drawer in your desk,
the medicine cabinet in your bathroom,
the center console in your car,
just one little space at a time.
These things might look very insignificant to you,
but they are like the scaffolding of a new beginning.
And when you do these things with consistency over time,
you create really big changes
and positive forward movement in your life.
Picture if you did one tiny thing every week
for the entire year, right?
That would be 52 things.
52 new things that you didn't do last year.
Think about how much change would happen
with that, even if they were small little things.
So it's actually quite amazing.
Like maybe that's a journaling prompt that you could do.
What is 52 things that I could do to move me towards
the new life that I want to experience?
It doesn't necessarily have to be a goal, could be a feeling.
I want to feel safe, comfortable, I want to feel inspired,
I want to feel happy, I want to feel joyful,
I want to feel at peace.
So these are the things you want to create.
How do you create those feelings?
What are 52 ways you can bring more of those feelings
into your life?
I feel like that would be a fun journal prompt.
I don't know.
So I'm like in the middle of my own deep reset changing.
I'm moving to another state, I'm shifting my business,
I'm embracing my creativity that I haven't really embraced
for a long time.
I'm stepping into like this new era
with like equal parts, you know,
like high levels of fear for myself
because I've been comfortable for so long,
but I'm like equally excited.
I am so freaking excited and it's been a long time
since I've been excited about something.
So it feels really good.
It feels even ometerrified, it feels great.
So I'm uncomfortable, but I'm also growing
and honestly that is the point.
So my question to you this week is,
are you ready to take this shift with me?
So here's something you could do.
Try this now, between now and the new year.
And if you keep following this series,
there's gonna be one more podcast.
And then I'm moving into a journal prompt reset
that I'm gonna do in between Christmas and New Year's.
So it's just going to be,
every day you get new journal prompts to ask yourself
and it's supposed to help you move into the new year,
feeling aligned and ready and just inspired
to move into the next year.
So ask yourself the question.
So if we're gonna journal again,
just like I talked about in the last episode,
get into a relaxed state because journaling is like
having a conversation with your higher self
or your subconscious, right?
But you can't do that unless you're in a relaxed,
focused, grounded state.
So close your eyes down, take a few deep breaths.
And when you feel your body let go a little bit,
when you feel that relaxation kick in,
that's when you start asking yourself the questions.
So this is the question.
What is the smallest possible move I can make this week
that honors who I'm becoming?
And you might even add, you know,
who do I want to become?
What does she look like, act like?
What does she do?
What does her day look like?
You know, you could really expand
on this whole journal prompt.
And like get like deep into it
and come up with those possible moves
and like for extra credit, you could like do like 52
little baby steps that you could take
throughout the year that moves you into the feelings
that you want to experience next year, you know?
So that would be a cool exercise.
I think I'm gonna do that one myself.
So next week we're gonna talk about
how to step into your upcoming year
so that it actually supports your growth
instead of pulling you back into like old patterns, right?
We all move back into those old patterns,
but the key really is to recognize them
and then just like move out of it.
Like no matter what I say to you
and no matter what exercise I give to you
in these three separate podcasts,
you're still gonna go back into those old patterns.
But the key is just acknowledging it,
recognizing it, acknowledging it,
and then changing it in that moment.
That's how we create change.
You can't expect perfection, you can't expect
to do one thing and everything to be changed
when you've been like creating those habits
for years and years and years, decades probably, right?
So you have to just expect to fall into those old patterns.
You don't beat yourself up 'cause that's normal.
And then you just say to yourself,
what's something different I could do right now
in this moment?
And those little shifts, they create like a new pattern.
You know, so if you could picture like water,
excuse me, flowing that like a river flowing
and you want the water to go in a different direction.
So you start digging this little ditch,
the water isn't just gonna instantly go
in the new direction.
You're gonna have to dig the ditch and dig it deeper
and deeper and deeper until it's deeper
than the original ditch, right?
And then the water will start going that way.
That's how we create new patterns.
It is not instantaneous.
It's a process that you have to do it.
You have to go through the process.
But with these little tiny baby steps consistently,
it's not that much work.
This is just a really easy way to do it.
Okay guys, until next week,
I hope you have a good rest of your week
and I'll see you for part three next week.
Okay, love you, bye.
