If You Feel Stuck, Take These Steps

If you want to break a negative pattern, no longer tolerate a negative pattern behavior. There's a lot of different things you can do, but one is to explore where that payoff is and set up better ones to understand why you've been doing what you're doing to give yourself a sense of something. As soon as you realize what that payoff is, you can flip it, you can choose a new one, you can choose a new way. Takes work, takes a lot of time, but that's the stuff of personal development. Today I'm going to take on a topic that I saw in the community last week. I think it was I saw somebody posting something about feeling stuck. And I hear about this a lot. And it's a theme. Of course. Many people, maybe even yourself, approach personal development first from that angle. Something's not right in life. You don't feel like you're progressing. You feel like you got the foot on the brake. You feel like you have limiting beliefs. You feel like you just haven't figured things out, or you see other people passing you on by and they're happier, healthier, wealthier, more successful. And it just drives you nuts. And sometimes also you just fall into doubt and discouragement or depression. You just think, oh gosh, I need something to shift something. And that's why you engage personal development. Good for you, good for you. Following that impulse that says I want to be better. Because many people say they want to be better, but they don't raise their hands. So already, if you do happen to feel stuck, I want to start by celebrating you. Did you know you already took an action to get better? Just coming here today, pat yourself on the back, say good job. Very few people actually have the intentionality but then the consistency to show up and do the work. And here you are. That alone tells me and should tell you, you got hope. You're already in process. You're in motion. Doors are opening for you, even if you can't see it because you're pushing forward. So good for you. You're less stuck than you think you are already. How's that for a good start? A couple things when people tell me they feel stuck, I often tell them to think about these five things. First and foremost, I often tell people they're usually not overly stuck. They're usually tired or overwhelmed. And this is where I'll often mention, make sure you practice and take your meds. If you don't know what taking your meds means, it's an acronym that means meditation, exercise, diet, sleep. And if you heard Me teach this for the last 15 years, I've always said meds, Rx, you know, take your meds, which was a joke that I learned from a yoga friend back in the day. Meds, meditation, exercise, diet and sleep. And I added rax to it. R being positive relationships and X meaning supplementation or nutrition. And so medsrx, if you're feeling stuck, start there, because that's with your body, that's with your health. Meditation, exercise, diet, sleep, positive relationships and supplementation, those things can completely make you feel better. You know, I've, you know, had so many times throughout my life where I struggled with health issues that made me question my career or my mission or my purpose or my marriage or my friendships or my confidence. And the reality was I was just wiped out. You know, my mind was fatigued, my adrenals were blown out, fatigued. I had health issues from my brain injury, and I just had to get those things right. And suddenly I felt better. And when you feel better, you're more willing to go get some momentum and break that stuckness. Second, I think it's important that sometimes when you feel stuck, you think you have to change the whole world, you know, and the reality is what we need to do is just be more intentional about the small moments of each day. And that reminds us how much control and choice we really have. Be more intentional about that conversation with your child. Be more intentional about where you're going to spend your focus the next hour. Be more intentional when you eat. Be more intentional when you just go throughout the day in the little things from the things that you choose to do or focus on to how you show up and what goals you chase after. A little bit more intention poured onto most people's lives, and they're astounded by a new level of awareness and a new level of control, and it shakes them loose of that feeling of stuckness. Third, presence. Often when we feel stuck, it's true, we're stuck in the wrong time zone. We're stuck in the past. We're stuck in negative thinking. We're stuck in stories and narratives in our life that aren't even happening here in this moment, in this fresh new day, this fresh new breath we're thinking about months ago. We're trapped in old stories and identities about who we used to be versus being alive and vibrant in this very new chapter, this blank page of the day that we entered in. We're not even feeling the day. If you've heard me teach over and over, I always tell people that they're always amazed by the types of people I get to work with, Olympians, CEOs, the Oprahs and ushers of the world. And they always go, oh, my gosh, I see all these people you mingle with on the Internet, and I just say, every one of them, no matter how much success they have, you know what they still want? They want to feel the day more. A greater connection and vibrancy with the moment and life's days. That's what I mean by feel the day. Sometimes when we're stuck, we're just kind of. We're so numb because of the hurts of the past, because of the overwhelms of the day that we're not even aware, let alone having intention. We don't feel the moment. There's no presence, vibrancy, magic of the moment, no sense of feeling throughout the day. Even though there was plenty to feel. We just numbed out, checked out, forgot to breathe, be present. That's why often I'll just tell people, many times throughout the day, do a little mini meditation or do a tapping session or do something to bring presence to the moment. And when you learn to do that over and over and over again, suddenly there's a magic in the day. Not nothing magic happened to me today. To have this voice and this passion, this vibrancy I have, I just chose to have it. I feel the day, I feel the moment. I feel you through this microphone. Let's go. That's a choice, to be present in the moment. Do you think I have things going on in this world? I mean, listen, I got, you know, I get 400 emails a day, every day. And those are emails to me, not my team or my assistant. That's to me. I don't know how many Slack messages and text messages. I mean, I've got projects just going on by the mile. I've got, you know, you know, multiple unicorn investments and advisories that I do with some of the biggest companies and people in the world. I got projects and books I'm working on. I got lots going on. But right here, I'm with you, baby. Right here. Feeling the day, Feeling the moment. Presence. Fourth Joyful friends. When people say I feel stuck, what I usually say to them, you're not hanging out enough with your joyful friends. Most people listen to this. You got one or two friends, you just haven't talked with them enough. You haven't hung out with them enough. You haven't seen them in years. You haven't gone to lunch and laughed for too dang long. So you feel stuck because you're stuck in your inbox. You're stuck in that social media world. You're stuck in the house, you're stuck with the kids. You haven't talked to no adults for a while. It's okay. We all been there. There ain't no judgment. That's what I'm saying. Joyful friends. Joyful friends. Get around the people you enjoy life with. Friends. I don't care if it's a great co worker, the one you laugh with or like the most or the most passionate, talk with them or go do something fun with your spouse. Shake it up a little bit, but find a little bit of adventure or a little bit of time with with positive fun people. And if you struggle finding those people, go volunteer or again, go create that relationship. Inspiration can be a reset. Inspiration can kick you out of that ravine of boredom and stuckness and get you back on path to feeling good and hopeful about life. Today's topic is about how we tolerate certain things in our life and how those things sometimes can hurt us and how sometimes they can also benefit us. So four big ideas for you today and your notes. As always, I try to bring up a new topic or a new angle to approach in your own self awareness or your self mastery so that you can have a greater sense of your own journey, your own story of personal growth, your own potential. You're following certain passions or doing certain types of work. You're maybe at a certain stage or level of your life with your family, in your career, your finances, your health. We're all on different journeys. So however you hear this message today, know that I like to begin it with just offering a little encouragement to give yourself some grace sometimes. You know, this time of the year, this time of the week, we just beat ourselves up. We're hard on ourselves. We're, you know, just kind of mean to ourselves and we tend to get discouraged. And I know that that is true for even the highest performing of us. We get down, we're not progressing fast enough, or we get frustrated with others and sometimes we just lose that connection with the joys or the appreciation of life. So, hey, you got a guy out here at this mic cheering you on the topic of tolerance. I like to do a tolerance check once in a while in my life and I tend to look at four different areas of my life and maybe this will help you in your own personal growth journey. You might take a few notes. The first thing I love to tell people when they think about tolerance is that when you hear that word, you usually think about you tolerating other people. So I'm not going to start with that one. I'm actually going to start with this one. You are tolerating your current behaviors and habits. I know that sounds weird to say, but you tolerate your behaviors, your habits, your actions. You tolerate your current level of connection with other people. You tolerate how you treat other people. You tolerate how much you earn. You tolerate how focused you are. You tolerate how often you work out. You tolerate what you eat. All these choices that you're making, especially made as a pattern over a period of time, are things that you tolerate. I remember working with a famous coach at some point, and he was working with a shared client. We both had the same client, and he had a very different, I would say more militant approach to working with clients. And he told this client who's going through some health challenges that they were tolerating their current health challenges and they were allowing them that somehow, some way that their health practices were things that they themselves were allowing because somehow there was a payoff. And of course this client thought, what do you mean there's a payoff? I'm unhealthy. I'm unfit. I'm mad about how I feel about myself. What do you mean? I'm doing this because I get some benefit out of it. And coach said, yeah, exactly. Good, you got it. And I just. My mouth hung open. I couldn't even believe they had said such a thing. And later on, I thought about it, I thought, well, yeah, that's kind of true. And while I didn't like the approach and I didn't like the answer, the truth is each of us does tolerate our own behaviors. We put up with our choices and our patterns, and we put up with them usually until we hit some certain level in which they degrade our lives so seriously that we know we have to change where those things that we do no longer benefit us. But the problem is, a lot of our behavior can end up with payoffs that give us a sense of comfort or ego, can give us a sense of belonging, meaning a lot of our behaviors that we do and we put up with from our own selves, we do for reasons that seem so good. You know, some people sacrifice their health so that they can be caretakers. Some people sacrifice their career so they can belong and not seem as like a person trying to strive above others. Some people sacrifice other parts of their life so that they can, quote, unquote, fit in or quote, unquote, be loved. And the issue is, we have to know when putting up with our own behaviors starts hurting us. When the payoffs there cost us too much, when the benefit is no longer there, or when we are sabotaging what could be our potential. And so look at the negative behaviors, if you will, of our lives. For example, one I know lots of people can relate with at this time in the world is that negative behavior of distraction. See, you tolerate your levels of distraction. Why? Well, because some distractions feel good. Turns our mind off, makes us focus on other things that aren't as challenging or difficult or uncomfortable. You know, rewards us. In the short term, that feels good, makes us interested or entertained. In the short term, that feels good, makes us feel like we're superior. Sometimes we're scrolling through social media, oh, I'm better than that. Or I don't do that. Okay, neat. Good. All these people are done over here. Oh, okay. And the ego gets a hit. And the truth is, we know that's a negative behavior, that distraction, but we'll keep doing it until we realize that that behavior is something we can no longer tolerate because the payoff is not worth the cost to. To our future. We realize that the benefits of those behaviors no longer serve us in that there's an opportunity cost, because other behaviors could pay off more. For example, turning that distraction back into focus, or learning to limit that distraction or catch ourself when distracted and return back to productive focus. That actually helps us or advances our life or makes us feel engaged and positive in a way that's much more fruitful than the distraction. But I'm here to share. You're tolerating how you speak to yourself. You're tolerating how you eat. You're tolerating how much you work out. You're tolerating all of these things. Your behaviors, your habits, your daily actions, because they're giving you a payoff. And what I always, you know, like to remind people is whatever that payoff is, it usually, usually looks like comfort and ego. And if you want to break a negative pattern, no longer tolerate a negative pattern behavior. There's a lot of different things you can do, but one is to explore where that payoff is and set up better ones to understand why you've been doing what you're doing, to give yourself a sense of something. As soon as you realize what that payoff is, you can flip it. You can choose a new one, you can choose a new way. Takes work, takes a lot of time, but that's the stuff of personal development. Second, you do tolerate other people's treatment of you, how people treat you and speak to you. Listen. Can you choose that in the short term? No. Because any moron can scream at you and be rude to you, and obviously that's not your issue. But if it's a pattern happens over a period of time, over and over and over again, without you speaking up, without you setting your foot down, without you setting boundaries, without you saying no more, without you walking out the door, what ends up happening is we give people permission to treat us a certain way by our own silence and acceptance. And over a period of time, we can build a trap around ourselves that we tolerate people around us who we shouldn't. They speak bad to us over and over, year after year. They bring us down. They don't support us, they don't encourage us. They don't talk about us positively around other people, and yet we keep tolerating it, not saying anything. We don't believe they'll change, so why even try? We don't believe they'll listen, so why even try? Oh, we tried once, so why try the second or the third or the fourth time, and soon we just acquiesce, we give up. And the reality is, no, we're just tolerating it. And at some point, we always got to know when that's happening. I told you that I like to do this tolerance check. So in the first part of this session today, I talked about checking your behaviors to see where the payoffs are. So I'm always like, what negative behaviors am I tolerating for myself, and what are the payoffs? Second idea is, what negative treatment am I tolerating from other people, and why am I letting that happen, and how can I change it? The third one is where tolerance becomes a great thing, an empowering thing, in fact. That is the concept of patience. To have patience with yourself in times of transitions, give yourself grace. To have patience with other people when they don't quite understand you or they have a different perspective. To have patience with the world when it's not delivering the perfect day for you or the perfect moments or the perfect year or the perfect goals or the perfect person or the perfect bank account. To have patience on your journey as you're striving to build your ideal life brick by brick. You can't get mad. The world's not giving you the perfect cathedral on the 20th brick. Not on the 2000s, either. It takes time. Patience. I always ask, am I having enough patience right now? Am I getting frustrated or angry or expecting Short term payoffs too quickly. Am I that person who needs everything to be a short term payoff where everything turns out immediately? Because I just have that immediate sense of need for instant gratification. I gotta be careful because I know that leads down a very negative path over a period of time. Because all greatness was built on the path of purpose and patience. And I gotta make sure that even though I'm trying to build a good future for myself and my family and my team and the impact I'd like to make in the world about helping others make self improvement a way of life. Day by day, man. Day by day. Don't get impatient. Fourth area I like to check on is tolerance. In terms of social tolerance, meaning openness, acceptance, equanimity, understanding that other people have a right to exist, other people have right to their different opinions, other people from all different types, races, sexes, religion, places around the world, backgrounds, experiences, preferences that if I think I'm so high and mighty, I know that life is going to turn out to be pretty darn bad for me. I'll always be stuck in judgment and in comparison and in anger and in just hatred to other people and groups. And that is not an emotional world I want to reside in. The good news, I know I get to choose that. So remaining open to other people to have great tolerance. And I know some people don't like that word, but it's a check for me. It's like, am I having high levels of openness, tolerance, acceptance, real understanding of other people? Whatever language you use, I think you get what I'm trying to say here. To be somebody who openly embraces the humanity in each living person is something I strive for. Because every person I've ever met I can see or sense or feel or connect with or relate with that humanity. Given enough time to understand that person. Doesn't mean I agree, doesn't mean I think that should be the way everybody does. It doesn't mean I even believe that the facts are true. But at the end of the day, it's allowing other people to be who they are. Now, I know some of this. It's hard. And some days you're like, brendan, nope. Just sometimes, dude, you got to call an idiot an idiot. And I know. But I also tell my high performance clients to read the chapter in High Performance Habits about the three traps of high performers. One of them is extremely successful. People start to accidentally take on an air of superiority because usually they have a high degree of competence and expertise that allows them to rise up and at some point then they start thinking everyone else is stupid. And that is always the beginning of their downfall. They just don't know it. Tolerating people of different capabilities, competencies, backgrounds, religions, faiths, experiences, hopes, dreams, that is the stuff of the truly great. That's the stuff of Aries spiritual text ever written.