131: Feeling Stuck? “It’s Not You, It’s Me”

IN TRANSIT with Sundae Bean

Do you need to break up with being stuck?

When you do, keep in mind “It’s not you, it’s me”. Enter self doubt and fear.

You are desperate to change your circumstances but have no idea what the next move is. Here are six steps on how to break up with being stuck.

What You’ll Discover in this Episode:

• • What you are likely blaming for being stuck
  • Where change really comes from
  • How to identify what you can control
  • Get clear on what is holding you back
  • And more

We all have fear and doubt, it is only human. Moving forward requires us to acknowledge this but still take action. There is no shame in wanting more or changing your mind about what you thought you wanted. This helps you free yourself from expat quicksand for good.

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

• • Join the four-part workshop series on freeing yourself from the expat quicksand right here.
  • Episode 130: When You’re Stuck But Don’t Know It
  • Episode 128: You’re Not Losing Yourself
  • Facebook Business Page – Sundae Schneider-Bean LLC
  • Facebook Group – Expats on Purpose

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Full Episode Transcript:

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Welcome to the Expat Happy Hour. This is Sundae Schneider-Bean from www.sundaebean.com. I am recording from Williston, North Dakota today. I’m a solution oriented coach and Intercultural strategist for individuals and organizations and I am on a mission to help you adapt and succeed when living abroad and get you through any life transition.

“I’m breaking up with you. It’s not you, really, it’s me.”

Please tell me I’m not the only one that’s heard this? Yes, I am the girl who got dumped in high school and I got dumped in college. You guys are totally missing out.

But I’m not talking about high school flings. I’m talking about breaking up with being stuck. When you’re stuck and so ready to break up with it, I promise you it is self doubt and fear that got you there.

It isn’t you, it’s them.

If you’ve been following along, you know, I’m focusing on four areas of expat quicksand. We started last month with focusing on connection how we’re hungry for more connection with ourselves or with our loved ones.

This month we’re looking at getting unstuck when you’re trying to move forward somewhere in your life or up level something in your life.

In the coming months we’re going to zoom in on purpose and direction, so don’t miss out.

We’re looking right now on getting unstuck, in the last episode we talked about when you’re stuck and you don’t even know it. This week I want us to look at the exact steps that I take with my clients so they can get unstuck.

I want you to get unstuck.

So there’s no secrets here, I’m going to share everything that we do to get started and I tell you what, even though you don’t want to hear it, self-doubt and fear are always at the center.

So I’m excited to share these six steps with you because this is exactly what you need to start loosening the stuck.

And stay tuned to the end because I’m going to share with you. What’s up next that you don’t want to miss.

So I’m going to be really honest with you, just hear me in the spirit of tough love, okay? The thing is, what happens with most people that I work with or I hear from, is that when they’re stuck they’re waiting for outside circumstances to change. It’s like they’re blaming it on their circumstances. Like, you know, “Things will change when I get to another location.” or “It’s hard to have this change happen because I’m here, it’s the temperature or it’s the culture or it’s the housing or it’s the city structure.” Whatever it is, it’s the outside that’s stopping change. Maybe you’re waiting for your kids to get older or for the next assignment.

Be honest with yourself when you think about where you’re stuck in your life. Are you blaming your outside circumstances? The chances are, based on my 10 years of witnessing this is that you’re going to say yes. If you’re really honest with yourself, you’re blaming your circumstances. And I’m not saying that your circumstances aren’t super hard, that’s not what I’m saying. I’ve been through tough circumstances, I get it, it can be limiting.

But the thing is, this is what I want to focus on, deep change, when you’re truly feeling stuck deep change comes from the inside out not the other way around. And I can tell you that I’ve seen this over and over, people who are starving for change in their life, who are feeling stuck, and then they wait until the next rotation to the next country, or the next continent, or next job. They find the same patterns popping up in the new location.

I’ve been there, I’m not excluded from this. Challenges I’ve had in my life, places where I’ve been stuck follow me no matter what continent or country I’m in, and what I’ve learned over and over with working with individuals and doing the work myself is, if true sustainable change is going to happen we need to do step number one and that’s to accept that change comes from the inside.

And it doesn’t mean that your outside circumstances don’t impact you, it’s not what I’m saying at all, what I’m saying is true sustainable change for the things that you want to impact and your relationships with yourself or with your loved ones or with your body or with your profession or with your clients or whatever it is. That change comes from the inside.

Okay, and I’ll share an example, I might have mentioned it another podcast, but I’ve considered myself a pretty healthy person for a long time, as a girl I was a dancer so I had tons of exercise, I ran track, I thought I was making healthy choices for food even in college, but when hindsight I realize I was completely depriving myself of many things and I started to do things like run, I would sign up for a 16k and do it, but then would take a huge break and then get back in the running and maybe make it 12 minutes without my lungs burning. And I was telling myself this story that I was healthy and I would do things from time to time to take care of myself like force myself to have five minutes of quiet or force myself to take a bubble bath, but to be honest, by the time I actually did that it was way too little way too late.

And in my own journey of in up leveling how I take care of myself. I realized that the way I was seeing self car, taking care of myself was basically to stop abusing myself, stop not sleeping enough, stop not giving myself the right nutrition at the right time, stop working so hard or whatever it was. And that when I finally took the steps to make my health a priority, when I started to truly desire and make a priority to take first class care of myself. Then real change happened and I can say this started in 2017, is when I really deeply started making this change and now it’s 2019 and I’ve been reaping the benefits ever since.

So about 40 Years of trying to figure it out and about two years of seeing how important it was to change from the inside out, it also goes back to episode 130 where I didn’t know I was stuck until I was unstuck.

Step one to getting unstuck is super important, is accepting that change comes from the inside. So stop looking at your outside circumstances and start taking control of where you have power and that’s from the inside out.

Second step in getting unstuck that I realized in my whole heart and I see with my clients is, just this surrender to the idea that change is uncomfortable. Right, we are humans who like to avoid pain, we like to avoid discomfort. That makes sense doesn’t it, for evolution and change is uncomfortable, it can be downright scary, it can be terrifying. So if you surrender to the truth that change is uncomfortable then you know, you’re doing something right when you’re out of your comfort zone, right?

So I realized for me personally, I was reading this book called “The Discomfort Zone” and I tell myself the story that I’m uncomfortable all the time because when I do podcasts I have to get out of my comfort zone, but I realized actually I’m pretty comfortable, I’ve been serving my clients, I’m a practiced professional, I’m doing things, and I was like, “You know what? I don’t know if I am changing enough, pushing myself out of my comfort zone enough really reach the goals I’ve set for myself.”

I had one client who was uncomfortable with sharing her work with more people and when she was uncomfortable we knew she was doing the right thing.

One of my favorite quotes is “If your dreams don’t scare you they’re not big enough.”

So are you stretching are you doing something new?

And for me in my own journey when I started to share more personally in my podcast, really be more vulnerable and letting you see kind of the behind the curtain and stuff, they usually felt really uncomfortable when I was recording and I mistook discomfort and recording for low quality and I’d always want to go like, “Oh that was crap, I should take it back from my producer.” And what I realized is that those are some of the episodes that people have appreciated the most and I was mistaking discomfort or so lack of comfort as not being good quality.

So when you’re uncomfortable maybe you’re doing something right, not doing something wrong.

So surrender to the fact that change is uncomfortable.

Third step to getting unstuck is to accept that it’s fear and self-doubt that’s holding you back. This is why it’s so easy to go to your circumstances and see what solutions you can create and I can be creative which I totally agree with and always go to as a strategy, but until we really accept that fear and self-doubt is holding you back you’re not going to even understand how it’s holding you back. It’s keeping you from making money, keeping you from meeting someone, keeping you from clients, keeping you from getting the rest that you need.

So it’s really important to understand the mechanisms that are holding you back, right this fear and self-doubt, so you’ve got to coax them into the light and this is how you can do that. When you accept that it’s fear and self-doubt holding you back you start to name it. So simple ways you’re like “Sundae I don’t even know how I’m afraid, I don’t know how I’m holding myself back.” Here’s a few simple phrases you can start and see how you complete them, and boom you’re going to hit your fears and self-doubt.

So I’m going to start it and I want you to fill in the blank with what pops up in your head, I’ll give you some silence to do that. If you’re listening to this later and you print out the transcript, I would literally write this down and fill it out.

First one; “I can’t ……..……………” What are you telling yourself? “I can’t…………………..”

“I can’t do it, I can’t find the time, I can’t pay for it so I can’t, I don’t know how, I don’t know to.”

What pops up.

“I don’t know how to get a job in this country.” “I don’t know how to ……………………”

“I’m afraid of looking stupid, I’m afraid of failing, I’m afraid of disappointing someone, I’m afraid of creating conflict.” “I’m afraid of …………………………”

What do you fill in the blanks with?

“Everyone will think ……………………” “Everyone will think I’m stupid, everyone will think I’m selfish, everyone will think I’m neglecting my children.”

What pops up for you?

“I’m not good enough to …………………….” “I’m not good enough to make money doing that, I’m not good enough to be loved, I’m not good enough to actually make that happen.”

So get started with those prompts and you are going to land smack dab in your fear and self-doubt, and don’t shame yourself for being afraid or having self doubt that you are human. If you have no fears or self-doubt, I would really challenge you to see if you’re even doing the work. We are human, we have an amygdala, we have a fear center, we have complicated childhoods, we have interesting parenting that we’ve received, we are in a society that tells us what we should and shouldn’t be doing.

So if you don’t have fear and self-doubt, I don’t think you’re looking hard enough.

So here’s what we’ve done so far, we looked at the first three steps; One owning change comes from the inside, two accepting that change is uncomfortable, three naming how fear and self-doubt is holding you back. So once you have that the good news is you can do something with it.

Step four is, reframe your thoughts.

So, when I tell myself “Oh well, it’ll be difficult.” Instead I can say “Hey I can take on a challenge that’s important to me.”

If I say “Oh that’ll take a long time.” I can reframe it and say “All right, with the right planning I can make this happen.”

If you’re saying “I don’t know how to ……. .“ Whatever that is. You can reframe it and say “I’m willing to learn how to ………. .”

All of these are ways for you to feel more empowered and see your situation with more clarity and the ability to get unstuck.

So step four is, reframe your thoughts.

You can’t do this step if you don’t do step three, so if you want to get out of something don’t get out of this, this is what you got to do. So go back to step three, and then reframe your thoughts. If you’re struggling with how to do that you can message me and I can help you get started.

Step five, know how to know. I talked about this in Episode 128 how to know how to know. Most people that I work with start out by saying “Sundae, I honestly don’t even know what I want.” So we need to, before we go get that thing, before we create that dream, before we find that purpose, together I teach you how to know how to know.

Super simple and I’ve shared this in a workshop before I call it the “Coffee cup compass” You get up in the morning, you pick out your teacup, your coffee cup or whatever it is, and I want you to look at it, and I want you to with your body pick which one feels good, which one needs to be with you that day. That is knowing how to know, it’s getting into your body, getting into your head. Sometimes, have you ever driven somewhere and you’re like, “Oh my God, how did I arrive here?” You weren’t present while you’re driving. It’s the same thing when you’re picking your coffee cup, be present in your body, not in your head, not in your fears, your thoughts, your calendar, whatever and just be there and listen to your body. “Which one needs to be with me today, which one do I want?” That’s the simplest way to start knowing how to know.

Now, I said to my clients, I’m like, “Are you serious? If you want to work with me, to find out what your purpose is, but you don’t even know what coffee cup you want in the morning, how are you gonna do that?” We gotta start small with these micro muscles of knowing how to know, so that when we are in the creative process we can get clear on what your purpose is.

So that is number five, know how to know.

Number 6 to getting unstuck is, make change contagious, and what that means is, all you do is start with one small change. Maybe it’s the coffee cup compass, you start your morning doing that one thing different and then watch how that feels.

Okay, start doing that and notice how it impacts your life and then do one other small thing. Maybe you decide to add one piece of color to your wardrobe that you never have, to throw on a scarf and you don’t normally wear a scarf and you notice how it makes you feel, that progress that creates like a snowball effect makes change contagious. You start small, you do one, you notice the impact in the process and it helps loosen the stuck.

So step six is, make change contagious.

Maybe it’s something as simple as, you’re going to throw strawberries on your salad every day, you’re gonna throw one slice of cucumber into your water, you’re going to change the pitcher of water from that plastic piece of crap to that really pretty crystal thing that you only bring out when you have guests. That gesture is saying “I’m ready to change.” That gesture is helping you feel the impact of change and making it contagious.

Okay, so there you’ve got it.

It’s not you, it’s me, it’s self-doubt and fear, they’re knocking at your door. That’s what’s keeping you stuck.

I’ve given you six steps to get unstuck.

Number one, own change comes from the inside.

Two, accept change is uncomfortable.

Three, name how fear and self-doubt is holding you back.

Four, reframe your thoughts.

Five, know how to know

Six, make change contagious.

You’ve got it, those are the exact steps that I walk my clients through to start getting unstuck. None of this is rocket science, all of this is simple. None of this is going to happen on its own, you have to show up. Show up for you, show up in your determination to get unstuck.

So if one of these have given you an “aha” moment and you’re ready to run with it, I would love for you to report back to me and tell me which one it is and the impact it’s had on you. Email me at: [e-mail]

I want to hear from you, you guys this is a labor of love, Expat Happy Hour is a labor of love. I am talking into the abyss, I don’t hear you right now, I want to hear from you.

So this is resonating email me and let me know what has impacted you today.

There are some of you who are listening who get it, cognitively you get it, you know it, you know, this would be great to do, but you know yourself, you know you’re like me who would read all the self-help books but never do any of the exercises, and that you know, you’re going to make deeper progress with someone like me by your side to really hold you accountable and do the work and keep you from your bullshit.

Then let’s talk, I want to support you in the best way I know how.

So give me an e-mail. Send it to [e-mail].

You can also go to my website at sundaebean.com and hit me up on the contact page.

Message me on my Facebook group Expats on Purpose or on my business Facebook page, get a hold of me you are invited.

I have a really limited space of openings right now for coaching and I just don’t want you to miss them.

Stay tuned for the coming episodes because I’ve got more coming up on getting unstuck.

And you don’t want to miss my free workshop. You’ve got me as your coach and trainer for an hour and a half coming up this month in a workshop called “Stop filling your time, how to get out of a rut and start doing something meaningful.” This is your chance to work with me for free, live in this workshop, where I can get your questions answered and help you stop filling your time and get out of a rut. So show up live, I would love to have you and you can sign up by following the link in the show notes.

All right, thank you for listening.

You’ve been listening to Expat Happy Hour, this is Sundae Schneider-Bean.

I can’t think of a more important thing you can do then work on getting unstuck, because on the other side of stuck is purpose, meaning and direction, where you’re showing up in your life for you, for your health, for your longevity, for your kids, for your partner, for your community, for the cause that lights you on fire or for your business and for your clients. This is all about impact and your work and getting unstuck will benefit each and every person that you touch

I’ll leave you with the wisdom from Steve Maraboli. “Look around you, everything changes, everything on this earth is in a continuous state of evolving, refining, improving, adapting, enhancing, changing. You are not put on this earth to remain stagnant.”

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