STUCK In A Rut

Welcome to A New Life podcast with Pamela Jean, where it's all about empowering women to empower more women. Get ready, friends, to create a new life. And here is your host, Pamela Jean.

Hello, my friends, and welcome to this week's episode of A New Life podcast. I'm your host, Pamela Jean, and I thank you so, so much for being here. I love the topic today. I think it's something that every single one of us can relate to at some point in your life, and perhaps that's why you're here today, is to figure out how to get out of the rut. If you are stuck in a rut, how do you get out of that feeling of being stuck in a rut? We've all been there, right? We've all been there. Maybe you're in a job that you're just feel like it's. It's going nowhere. You're stuck in that rut in your career. Maybe you're stuck in rut. Spiritually, you just feel stagnant. Spiritually, maybe your relationships are suffering and you just feel in a rut. Or maybe you've reached a point in your life where you've lost what your purpose is. You don't know what you're meant to do. You were on a trajectory, you followed the path, you were doing the things, and then all of a sudden you woke up one day and wondered, is this what I'm supposed to be doing? Is this. Is this where I'm at in my life? And you know, I'm a believer that if you have breath in your lungs right now, if you are listening to this podcast right now, there is something really powerful you are meant to do in this world. There is a purpose for you waking up today. There is a purpose and reason why you are walking the earth today. And you are meant to to do something, but yet you're so stuck in a rut you can't figure out what that thing is. Well, my friend, I am so glad you're here today because hopefully I can give you some insight, some tips, some ideas, some thoughts to get you out of that rut that you seem to be stuck in today. Before I dive in to the information, I would love it. Friends, if you would subscribe like this podcast, please refer your friends. You're not the only one who feels stuck in a rut. If you have a friend that you think could benefit from this podcast or past episodes, and you know, I've got a bunch of really great new episodes coming as well, please refer your friends to this podcast, rate it and give me a review. That would be amazing because that just helps me get found. That helps other people in this world find the information that they need to move forward and live their very best life. So, okay, no further ado. Let's dive in. Tip number one I want to talk to you about is reflecting on your current goals. Take some time to really dig deep and dive deep into what your goals are. Sometimes we get so focused on a goal that we just keep moving forward. But yet after a while you wonder, is this really even the goal I'm meant to be going after? Are you still working towards something that's really meaningful? Or what you thought you wanted or needed to be doing doesn't look the same anymore? Sometimes simply reminding yourself of your objectives can reignite your motivation, reinvigor your passion for what your goals are and help create that plan to reach the goals you know. For instance, if one of your goals was to get healthier and you made that goal back at the 1st of January, and here we are into the 10th month of the year and you don't feel like you've made any progress with your goal. If you feel like you haven't made any progress with a goal, you are not going to be excited about doing it. You're going to feel very, very stuck. And perhaps it's time to reinvent your goal, to repurpose your goal, to start all over and reinvent it. Or maybe you scrap it all and start completely fresh. Just because you picked a goal at the beginning of the year doesn't mean it has to maintain and still be the same goal that it was back then. So give yourself some grace and some permission to rewrite your goals once you have done that. Set smaller, more achievable goals. That's number two. And the reason for those small goals is to keep your momentum going, to keep your purpose being fed. Because if you make this big, giant goal that's going to take months, years to potentially reach, you're going to lose the enthusiasm for the goal that you thought you had. So find some smaller goals. It could be something as simple as finishing up some tasks that you started around the house. Maybe you pulled everything out of the attic with the intention of purging and reorganizing and you got started and stopped. Pick back up on those little goals and let those goals give you that sense of progress and motivation and that sense of accomplishment. If we don't feel like we are accomplishing things, we are going to lose interest quickly. And making sure that you set those little goals that you can take a baby step at a time and feel accomplished. At the end of the day, don't feel like you have to finish the whole thing at once, but give yourself those little wins along the way will keep you motivated and prevent you from feeling so stuck in that crazy, crazy rut that we find ourselves in. Number three is seek out inspiration. When you feel like you've hit your wall, when you've hit that roadblock and nothing is exciting, you feel just so mundane and unmotivated. Read a book, watch a documentary, listen to a podcast that inspires you. Perhaps that's why you're here today, to be inspired by hopefully diving into inspirational things and learning about other people's journeys and their successes can be very motivating. They can spark something inside of you. And if you don't know what to do or where to begin, this is one thing that I learned a long time ago. If you don't know what inspires you, if you don't know what your dreams are and what your goals are, then find someone who does. Attach yourself to someone who is doing something that you absolutely believe in, that you're so excited about. Attach yourself to their coattails and help them accomplish their goals. While doing that, you are going to find out what your true goals are. You're going to find things that inspire you, that motivate you. So if you're just stuck in that rut and you don't know what you need to be doing, then attach yourself to someone who does, who is living out their dreams and following their dreams. When you attach yourself to someone like that, you absolutely will have your very own goals and dreams revealed to you. And that will be very inspirational and a pathway for you to get out of that rut. Number four is I want you to assess your routine. Now I am a very, very disciplined, routine motivated routine motivated person. Not everybody is. For some people to have the same wake up time every day, the same breakfast every day, the same workout schedule every day is very difficult and that sounds painful to them. For me it's, I'm very high functioning when I stick to my routine. When I get up at 4:40 every morning, I go to the gym, I get my workout in, I do my Bible study, spend my time with God, have my breakfast and then get my day started. That works for me. Well, sometimes our routines can make us be stuck in a rut by doing the same thing every single day. Change up your daily routine just a little bit in very small ways, just to Add a little variety and excitement to your life. Now, if for the last five years you've gone to the same gym every single day, well, maybe change up your exercise. Maybe instead of doing like a boot camp, you go in, you start doing Pilates or you do a yoga class, throw that in. Just shake up your routine a little bit. Don't get rid of your routine because I believe that they are very positive and you should have a good solid routine. But just change it up a little bit and see if that helps you get out of that rut that you seem to be in right now. The next thing is talk to someone. You are not the only person on the planet that feels this way, that feels stuck in a rut. Talk to someone. Hire a coach. Sometimes sharing your feelings with a trusted friend or a life coach, or a mentor, or even a healthcare professional, depending on your circumstances, can give you a fresh perspective and the support that you need to move forward. You know that if you are feeling unmotivated and just, just quite frankly, blah, your performance in every area of your life is going to suffer. Your job that you go to, your career is going to suffer, your business is going to suffer, your relationships will suffer. Your relationships with your spouse or with your children or your best friend or your church, your relationships are going to suffer. So talk to someone. Don't feel like you have to stay stuck. And you know, here's the thing, sometimes we choose to stay stuck because we don't want to have to change, we don't want to have to put in the effort, we don't want to have to put in the work and we're choosing to stay stuck. When that seems like the easy answer, which it actually is, temporarily, it's not your long term answer. Because the longer you stay stuck, the more mundane your life will feel. The more withdrawn you will become, the more susceptible to depression you're going to become. Quite honestly, friends, it is a spiral, a downward spiral that don't tempt yourself to fall into that. So the moment you start feeling stuck, the moment you feel like, okay, this is just kind of a blah life I'm living, I need things to be different. Talk to somebody. Hire a coach. I am here for you, my friends. I am here for you. I can walk you through that. I have a series of high impact questions that I will ask you if you work with me as your coach, that I will ask you that I will force you to dive into your thoughts in ways that you never thought you could possibly do. That's what I do. As your coach. So hire a coach. Get someone that you can talk to to help you get from A to B in a healthy, positive, productive way. My next tip for you is number six is to take care of your health. If you have nothing, if you don't have your health, if you have a friend or a family member that's healing from an ailment that has cancer, that you know, has a broken arm, has a broken leg, whatever, if you don't have your health, you don't have much of anything. Take care of your health. Don't wait until you're in an emergency before you start eating better. Don't wait until it's an emergency before you stop smoking or stop drinking or stop doing the drugs, whatever it is. Don't wait till it's an emergency. Take care of your health today. Start today. Food, healthy food, good consumption, good choices are better for you now today than the medicine that you might need later. So ensure that you're getting enough sleep. Friends, I struggle with getting proper sleep. I'm the worst sleeper on the, on the planet. I don't know what my deal is. I probably should get help for that. But I try, you know, sleeping for me. Me, I don't need a lot of sleep. I can function well on five, six hours of sleep a night. I know that's not nearly enough, but get adequate sleep. Have a better nighttime routine, have a positive night routine as much as you do a morning routine. Eat well and exercise regularly. If you're not exercising now, if you're not doing anything as far as moving your body, please don't feel like you have to start a high impact system at a gym or aerobics or whatever. Friends, take it slow. Meet yourself where you're at with your health and your exercise. And if what you do today is walk around the block one time, good for you, then maybe try two blocks tomorrow and three blocks the next time. Just move your body every day, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 10 minutes. Meet yourself where you're at and just simply start doing that. That is one thing that you will never, ever regret. I promise you that. You'll never regret that. And your physical health, quite honestly, is so closely connected to your mental well being. If you're someone who has a chronic illness, if you have fibromyalgia or whatever it may be, if you're not feeling well, your mental well being suffers also. So take care of your health, friends, and start sooner than later with your health. Okay? Number seven, learn something new. You know, we get so in routine of what our day is. We do this every day, we do that every night. We do this on the weekends, and then here we are, back to Monday. Our weeks just fly by. Challenge yourself to learn something new. Explore a new hobby or skill. That's a great, great way to break out of a rut and discover a new interest. If you've ever thought about, you know, I want to learn how to oil paint, then take a class. Sign up for a class. If you think that you want to learn how to sew or you want to learn how to bake or cook, then take a class. You know, the really cool thing about that is nowadays everything that you want to learn is free on the Internet. You can go to YouTube, Google, Pinterest, you name it, and learn something new. You can take an online course. You don't even have to leave your home if you feel like, oh, I can't do that. I don't want to have to leave home. I hope you do, because community is where it's at. You've got to be with community. But if that's not where you are mentally, then do an online class. Some of them will cost you money, but there's a lot of them out there that are free, so there's no excuses. I think when we get stuck in a rut, it's hard for ourselves to fight for us. It's hard to fight for yourself when you're in a bad mental space because. Because we just don't feel like we're worth it. My friend, you are absolutely worth fighting for. Fight for yourself. Challenge yourself to learn something new. What is something that you stopped doing when you had your children? Well, I have kids now, so I can't take piano lessons anymore. I have kids now. I can't do this, I can't do that. Because you didn't want that time taken away from your kids and your family. What is that thing? Dig up that old interest and hobby and dream that you put to rest a long time ago. So bring those back up. Learn something new while you're at it, and then, my goodness, meet more people and build and grow your community. That absolutely will get you out of a horrible rut that you might be in. The eighth tip is to practice mindfulness, mindfulness meditation, spiritual relationship, prayer. All of those things can help you become more aware of your thoughts and feelings and help you step into a more positive place and create positive changes in your life. I have conversations with God all the time throughout the day. In fact, we had a chat before I started this podcast. Because I want my words to be the words you need to hear. And without his guidance and help, I may or may not do that. So I ask for his guidance and I ask for his direction and hope that the words I'm saying you today are resonating, that you pick up one thing, two things, ten things. I hope that whoever's here listening is hearing exactly what you need to help you get out of that rut. Now, meditation, yoga, there's a lot of different spiritual techniques. Choose the technique that works for you. My technique is my relationship with the Lord, my prayer time, my spiritual time, my meditation time. I concentrate on God. It may not be that for you. And that's okay, friends. That is okay. We're here on this earth to love one another, lift one another up. And my spiritual journey does not need to look like yours and yours doesn't have to look like mine. And that is okay. We are here to love one another and lift one another up and build a beautiful, positive community. My ninth tip is avoid overthinking. Oh my gosh, are you an overthinker? Overthinking can be absolutely paralyzing. I want to flip that on its end though, and say that overthinking can actually be a superpower too. It's kind of a double edged sword, right? If you're an overthinker. But you know what I'm talking about. If you're. And if you're an overthinking, an over thinker that talks yourself out of moving forward, out of having a positive life, that's when overthinking is not your friend. Focus on the present moment and take small steps moving forward, even if you know you're looking at a part of your house that is so disorganized, that needs a ton of work and you don't even know where to begin. You know what? I want you to look at that area through a one binocular, just one binocular, where you close one eye and just look at that one tiny area. Look at that one tiny area and start there and then move over a little and start on the next area. Don't look at the whole mess, just look at a tiny part of the mess and move forward. Overthinking truly can be paralyzing. And that is a downward spiral. Because you overthink about doing a project or changing careers or changing relationships, eliminating toxic people out of your life, you overthink that. When you overthink it, then what happens? You do nothing. You make no changes. You don't you stop trying. You become stagnant and paralyzed. And then when you're just sitting on the couch doing mindless things like watching Netflix or whatever, whatever sitcom or reality TV show is on at the time, that serves no one, it definitely doesn't serve you. In fact, it will spiral into how you start thinking about yourself, your abilities, your beauty, your kindness, who you are as a person. You just start this downward negative spiral. And friends, if you allow your overthinking to be paralyzing, the rut that you're in right now will be impossible to get out of. So avoid the overthinking. Lean into it when it is a superpower, because it can be really positive at times. But have enough self awareness to know when it is paralyzing you and triggering you. Create a system to get out of that negative space and move forward. My 10th and my last tip for you is to be patient with yourself. Take a deep breath, my friends, and breathe out. Be patient with yourself. Remember that going through rough patches in your life is normal. It's through those setbacks in your life that the setups come for positive, ginormous growth. Be kind to yourself in those stages and understand that breaking out of the rut that you're in right now may take some time. And that's okay. One thing I want you to do, first of all is give yourself grace. Give yourself grace. Meet yourself where you're at and say, you know what? It's okay, it's okay. You are where you are and it is okay. The second thing that I want you to think about is go back in your mind. You know, take a couple deep breaths, go back into your mind and remember the last time you felt free, the last time you felt that you weren't stuck in that rut. When was that? Go back to that time and then think about what was happening in the world around you. What was happening in your personal world, not the world outside of you, but your world. Was your job going well? Were your relationships healthy? Were your relationship with your children happy? With your grandchildren, with your friends? Think about how your life was. When was the last time you were not stuck? And then I want you to analyze and get out your journals. Friends, I'm a big proponent of writing things down because if you get the things that are holding you back out of you, on paper out of you, you are going to be able to move forward more quickly. But you're also going to identify patterns and processes and disconnects. You're going to be able to identify, okay, the Last time that I did not feel stuck, that I felt like my momentum and my purpose was shining, was before XYZ event happened, before my husband lost his job, before my mother was diagnosed with cancer. You fill in the blank. Typically, the rut that you get stuck in is promoted or prompted by a big life event. And because we're not dealing properly with the big life event, we get stuck and then we stay stuck. And then all of a sudden, before we know it, we're down in this deep rut and we don't know how to get out. So, my friends, please be patient with yourself. Remember that going through these rough patches are so normal. In fact, you have to have the hard times in life for you to be able to understand the goodness that's in life. The rough patches of life are not meant to punish you. The rough patches of life are meant to strengthen you, to give you power, to teach you, to teach you a lesson, to teach you something that you need to learn. Typically, the lessons that you learn from those difficult, hard times in your life are so purposeful. They are to show you the purpose of your own life, teach you that there's someone else that you need to serve. There's something new that you need to learn so you can help someone else. My gosh, if you can look at the hard times as a gift and not a punishment or not just a hard time, that's where the growth is. That's where the absolute gold is in your life. My friends, I want to thank you for spending your time with me today. I know your time is valuable and I know there are a lot of different podcasts and books and other things that you could be doing right now. And I want to thank you for choosing to spend your time with me. I want you to have an amazing day. Make it a great day. Having a great day is your choice. No matter what is going on in your life, you can have a great day day. It's what you think about your day. And the first foot that you set, you put forward is going to dictate the kind of day that you will have. So, my friends, make it a great day and I will talk to you next week.

Thank you for joining us today on a New Life podcast. We will see you next time.

Sam.