No matter what we wind up going through,
we're gonna run into little phases of our on our journey where we wind up being stuck. We feel like we're stuck. We don't know where to go. Don't know what to do.
And that's what we're gonna be talking about this week, the feeling of being stuck and how you can actually get yourself out of it. Talking about that this week on episode 257
of the relaxed male.
This
is the relaxed male.
The show that comes to you each week, helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can actually live their life on their terms.
Join the host certified coach, Brian Goodwin, as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.
Hey, man. Hello, and welcome to the Relax Mill. I'm your host, Brian, and thank you again for listening.
Coming back yet again, this is episode number 257,
and we're talking about being stuck. We're talking about those times when you try to do stuff.
And no matter what you try,
just
there's no motivation. You feel like you wanted to get something done. You feel like you wanna get just out there and just
conquer the world,
yet here you are. And you're not getting absolutely
anything done.
No matter what you've tried doing, you've tried socking yourself up. You've tried just doing
just about anything you could think of, but yet, here you are just
sitting
time and time again,
studying, trying to find out, and you find yourself just doing little busy work, doing the
the anything but what you actually need to do. This is something I find myself stuck in all the dead burn time because
I wanna
start getting relaxed mail going even more. I wanna start having more people
notice the, the company, notice what, the the practice, and
starting wanting to use it
more than what they are right now.
And so
I've I sit back there and I sit around and I try to figure out what is it that I'm needing to do, what is it that's
need to be taken care of, not be needing to be taken care of, try to
try to do stuff. And now I find myself doing a lot of blog posts, a lot of podcasts, a lot of social media posts, things like that, and still
not really a whole lot
is honestly being done. And there's times where after doing all this and doing a whole bunch of other stuff,
I don't see much in the way of
results,
and that's where I developed this sense of being stuck. Now do I feel like I'm kinda stuck right now? No. But I know that somewhere,
you know, month,
in in March or or August,
I'm going to have some type of feeling stuck. I'm need know I need to get to the next level,
and I'm not getting there. I'm not knowing where I not knowing and not sure of where I need to go to even get to that next,
you know, the next point.
So
first off, we need to understand what is
being stuck? What is that actually? And and if we boil it all the way down,
it's
in its simplest terms, it's an emotion.
It is often called
being,
like I said, beezing stuck, but it's also called mental spin.
It's called
just
confusion.
It's called so many different things, but those are the 3 that are the biggest. Just you got mental spin.
You're confused. You're not sure.
Uncertainty is another one.
These are all just means of describing
the same thing of your
brain
trying to make sure you stay safe.
And
when you are in those elements
of being stuck,
you are just a half step away
from making it to that next level. And the stronger that that feeling is that you're not sure where you really need to be,
the closer you are to actually being
able to just pick that foot up just a little bit more so you can step on to the next level.
But it's so scary because what what being stuck is is it's a secondary
emotion is what that is.
If we boil if, again, if we boil it down, yeah, we
we know that we're stuck. We know that
we're not
getting to the next level, but why is it that we're not getting to the next level? Why do we have that feeling of being stuck?
And that is because
if we look at the basis of what that
of what that emotion is, of where that emo why why are we feeling stuck? It is because
there's an underlying
sense of fear,
of uncertainty that,
well, what if this fails? What if
things go completely wrong? What if we're thrown out of the village as as we often wanna fear be afraid of?
This is where
we find ourselves just circling around
time and time and time again. How do I get to where I need to be? Well, you need to do this. Well, how do I do this? Well, that's what we gotta figure out. Well, how do I figure it out? Well, you you
gotta
think about it. Well, I'm thinking about it, but then it's happening.
This is something that re
repeats itself
over
and over.
If you're not
paying attention, you'll find yourself just being stuck,
and you'll be
you'll stay in that that
element of being stuck
until
you get fed up with it.
So how do we and when you get fed up with it, a lot of times,
we do we wind up doing
1 of 2 things. Either we will
give up because we've decided, hey. I'm not going there's nothing I could do. Right? I'm just stuck. I've gotta I'm just gonna give up, just go home, go back the way I came, and give it up, and that is true failure.
Or
you can do
like anybody else who gets themselves into a rut, gets themselves stuck.
You have to to get yourself out. You're going to have to really
wrench on a on a, on that steering wheel
and get yourself pop yourself up out of those ruts
so that
you're able to have better traction.
The problem is is that
that's really uncomfortable. The truck gets thrown around, suspensions clang things are clanging, and
and objects inside of the cab, it starts flying around and bouncing up and down, and it's a it's a bit of a ride.
It's not fun. It's not smooth,
but that is
as a as a
whole overview, that's kinda how you have to get unstuck.
You have to do the thing you're really afraid to do. That's that veil of fear that I've talked about many times.
You hit that veil of fear, and you really don't wanna go further,
but yet it's a really
easy thing to pierce.
It's thinner than gossamer, but it looks like it's a horrible, terrible landscape. But because the moment you step through it, though, you're going to find that it's everything is just a little bit nicer, a little bit cleaner, a little bit clearer,
and
everything is all of a sudden just
a lot brighter and shinier.
But to be able to get through that, you have to get
unstuck. You have to stop listening to what your mind is telling you because your mind wants you to stay safe. It wants you to stay sitting on the couch, playing video games,
not doing
the scary thing of facing what your wife is actually
angry about,
sitting down and having the the horrible, scary conversation of
what it is that she really wants to do.
And these are these are very scary conversations that we wind up having
because we're not
a 100% sure
as to what we are or not supposed to do. We're not sure,
when it comes to whatever our goal is.
What if we mess it up? We're gonna hear all these little thoughts, and that's what all all these thoughts are. What if we mess it up? What if we break it? What if we get lost? What if we,
what if we die?
You know, these are all just little messages, the sentences in your brain
to get you to stay
safe on the couch,
to stay
sitting in front of the television.
You've got your food. You got your warmth. You got your blankets. You got, you got your video game controller.
Everything right here in on the couch is fine. It's good. It's wonderful.
You don't need to go any further.
Don't don't try to learn something new because, you know, that's that's kinda
that's uncomfortable.
That's really scary because, you know, what if you learn
a new language? Well, what are you gonna do with that new language? I mean, are you gonna planning on going to going to Italy if you learn Italian?
Maybe.
Well, you don't really wanna go to Italy because, I mean, that's really old. Everything's old, and
you see how this is how your brain will
will try to take
all the reasons as to why you don't wanna do something
and make them seem as valid as possible.
So you have to stop
indulging in those emotions, and that's what you're doing. When you're entertaining those, you're you're just having an indulgent emotion.
Fear of taking the next step is just indulging
because it's not helping you. It's not hurting you. It's not helping you. It's nothing. It's just a an emotion that you wanna feel
at that moment because it feels like you're doing something at least
when you're actually not doing anything.
Confusion isn't one of those indulgent emotions that keeps you safe on the couch.
Stay safe on the couch. Don't try to do anything, you know, big and big and scary
because, you know, that's not gonna that's not gonna be do any good
because, you know, what if you what if you succeed? You're gonna lose all your friends. Your your,
your village
might kick you out of the village. And if you kick yourself out and get yourself kicked out of the village, you're going to die. That's the whole message your brain wants to keep throwing at you is if you do this, you're going to die.
Are you really? No. If you become successful, what are you really gonna die because you're being successful? No.
You're just going to have a better life.
But yet our brains
don't want that better life because that's scary. It has to
look at that. Remember back to the whole motivational triad thing. Right?
You're motivated by pleasure. Well,
learning something new, going out and doing something you've never done before
is not necessarily all that pleasurable.
So it doesn't you're going against
that right off the bat. If you're trying to get the
trying to get to know your wife better,
trying to improve the relationship as to where it is,
well, you're going your brain's
going to
avoid that because it wants to avoid pain. It wants to seek pleasure.
So it may go to your wife and go, yeah. Hey. You mind if we, do the do the, the
the horizontal mambo?
Because that's very pleasurable,
but it doesn't like pain.
So which is worse? Well, you can sit on the couch. That's very pleasurable. You got a blanket around you. You got you know, you're all bundled up. It feels nice and cozy. You're you're good. That's and you're so you've got a little bit of pleasure going on there,
and you don't even have to worry about the pain of pissing your wife off.
And the third one of the third item of the motivational triad is to
is to do all of this as efficiently as possible. This is the reason why you can drive to work and not remember the drive to work. You're like, woah. Wait a minute. How did I get here? I don't remember any of the driving.
That was your brain
going into autopilot,
hitting the habit center, and the habit center is this low low energy section.
If it has to sit there and learn stuff, then
you're gonna have a lot of
of energy being burnt because it has to learn. It has to learn new processes and and do all all the stuff that your brain really actually doesn't wanna do. So it's it becomes very you you you have the chance of failure.
That failure is very painful.
Oh my gosh. You know? You've got all the worry, all the embarrassment, all the,
the
the other emotions, the the emotions that don't wanna be felt
that come bubbling up, that's all really painful,
and that pain's not pleasurable.
So this is why you indulge in these emotions. This is why your brain
wants you to stay safe on the couch.
It doesn't want you to go outside
and meet a whole bunch of new people. It doesn't want you to go
outside
and try to do whatever whatever your your goal of this year is. It doesn't want you to go into the bedroom, though your wife is mad at you and try talking it out because she may say something that really hurts.
Our brain doesn't want that. Our brain wants us to stay
as safe as possible,
and that safe is where we do not grow. Our discomfort zone
is our growing zone. This is where we develop and become better at what we're doing, but we have to get out into that discomfort zone every single time.
So instead of doing that, it's
our brain has this amazing ability to trick us into thinking that we're hanging out in the discomfort zone while we're just
we're in the comfort zone, but we're right
next to the the border
into
uncomfortable land.
And we can camp out right there by creating some confusion because confusion is yeah. It's not really
it's it's not the most comfortable thing. You're not uncertainty.
You're feeling stuck, and and you wanna be able to go further, but you know what? You you've gotta give get this,
this imaginary
problem figured out first.
And once we get that imaginary problem figured out, then you might be able to step over that line and go into a little more discomfort. But
our brain tricks us into thinking that it we're actually able to step across that
that line once we get
the imaginary
problem fixed.
The only issue that we run into is that that imaginary problem
is imaginary. It's not there.
And so it that's how it tricks us into staying safe. So what's the alternative?
So how do we get out of of doing this circle? Well,
the big
issue and the big way you do that most important way to do that is to first
understand that you're
indulging these emotions.
You're indulging yourself. You're indulging your brain.
So you have to start looking
at
changing those thoughts because that's where we
if we look at the model,
it is our
thoughts about the circumstance. Our thoughts create our emotions. Our emotions create our actions. Our actions create our results. So if we are having thoughts of, well, what if we fail?
Then we're going to have a
line of, fear. The fear is going to make sure that we stay safe. Then being safe means that we're not going to accomplish what we want.
And so we wanna move forward, but we're not, so we are staying
in the position of feeling stuck.
So we have to start being a lot more intentional. We have to start thinking, what is it that we wanna do? How do we accomplish this
this this task? How do we get beyond this?
And so what the one of the great things to do in is to find a different
motivation
than the one we're using right now.
So
you have to start, 1, being intentional
with your thoughts,
but then also sit down, and you can do use a piece of paper, and a piece of paper works great.
But also know that
being a
writing down,
doing emotion lists
and doing thought downloads
when you're in an indulgent
emotion
is a trap to keep you keep you trapped.
So you have to make sure that you
are going to act upon
whatever the emotion is.
Alright. Whatever the thoughts come up,
can you look at those
objectively
and go, well, okay. That's the reason why. This is what I'm afraid of. And if you're able to look at your
emotions
and look at that thought download and examine and understand what those emotions associated with that thought download are, you're going to be a lot, you're gonna be able to
separate out the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.
But the way you do a thought download is you grab is is simple. You just grab a piece of paper, set it down, grab a pen, set a set a timer.
And, the reason why I set a timer is because if not, you'll sit there
and your brain will want to come up with as many different, things just because, hey. We're doing something. We don't have to focus in on the actual problem. So setting a timer, 15 minutes.
All the reasons as to,
all the thoughts that you're having and all and when I say all, I mean all the thoughts.
And that can include
thoughts about the the objective, thoughts about the being stuck, thoughts about
your what your goal is, what your thought goal means to you, everything that you have, all those thoughts. Give 15 minutes to just writing all those sentences out onto a piece of paper. You don't have to write a story about it. It's just
I wanna be,
I wanna be a a
a top coach. I wanna
the people don't believe that I can be a coach. People,
say coaching is not a real profession.
These are all thoughts I can and I I personally have had, okay,
when it comes to me wanting to have a
to bring this the relaxed male coaching business
up to a higher level than what it is right now.
People think I'm boring. People think people don't listen to what I have to say. People,
I don't give good advice. I you know, everything that I've ever had, I these are all things that I've said to myself
and have beat myself up about, and that is part of where a lot of my stuff comes from.
But these are also you're gonna have thoughts like that also,
similar to that
in the vein of whatever your objective is, whatever your goal this year is.
And so
you have to start looking and understanding, first off, what your brain's trying to tell you. When you get those lined out, then guess what? You get to actually start learning
which ones are important, which ones aren't.
Because
if you're,
if you're like me and your objective is
the,
is to have a,
a profitable
business,
then
why our why our neighbor is
driving us up the wall
isn't relevant. So we could take that, and we can set it off to the side and just, okay, it's it's not important.
But once we have all everything wrote down and we've got the important thoughts laid out, we can start looking at
you well, 1, you can start doing models on them. You can start seeing
what the thought is. So what's the emotion that you have with it? What's the action that comes from that particular,
emotion?
And what are the results?
So,
so you get the model, the CTFAR,
all wrote out, and you can start running the models and seeing which ones are
helping you, which ones aren't helping you.
But you can also and those are one ways of being able to come up with the alternative.
What are the alternative thoughts that you can have about that circumstance?
But you can also
motivate yourself by looking at what are the alternative
circumstances
that you could be in.
What if you gave up on your dream? Went ahead and right now just said, you know what? I don't want a business.
Life becomes a lot easier, all that. Is that something you really wanna avoid?
I really just you know what? Let's stop trying to lose £50.
Why try? I'm just gonna gain it back. It's not even worth it. My wife doesn't care for me anyhow. So why am I trying to look good for her? Yada yada yada.
Because and the reason why you wanna go through those, even though some of them
will hurt,
is because
those ones that hurt, you can actually turn around and use that as the motivation.
I will feel like a complete and total
loser
if I don't get relaxed mail running. I will feel
completely useless. I will feel lost
because I don't get to have the relaxed mail running. That's just one reason why I'm still,
though,
making some money sometimes,
I'm still pushing at making getting this puppy profitable where I can climb out of the truck.
Because the moment I could do that,
I
know that I am on a,
a better track, a better trajectory than what I am
at the moment.
And that
desire
to
the the
fear and the pain that comes from me thinking, well, what if I just stop coaching? What if I don't wanna do coaching anymore?
So what if I just fold up shop and just walk away from it?
That that there's some pain in that.
There's a actually, a lot more than just some. There's a lot of pain in that,
and that's something I can't let go of. I like
coaching. I love the the ability to be able to help
men who are struggling.
So the other thing that you notice when you do these
these thought downloads is you also start to see what is it that you're avoiding.
What do you know you need to be doing that you're not doing?
I know I need to be talking to more people,
but I'm not. Why?
And that's one reason why I'm doing the
one person meet one person a week. I want 50 new people in my, that I
can say I know.
They're not just
an acquaintance. They're not just a passerby. They're
somebody
that is an acquaintance. They, that I know
them on on-site that I see them and I go, hey. What are you up to? How's the wife? Kids, how's your mom and them? All that type of stuff. You know? And so
we have to
we have to look at
the points that we're avoiding. Why do I avoid talking to other people? Because
I feel
that I am an absolute idiot when I start talking.
But yet here I am. I'm on a podcast. I'm talking to you. Do I have a lot of people listening? Well, I don't know. Depends on who you're talking to. Joe Rogan? No. I don't have anybody listening.
If I'm somebody who
is
not used to talking on a podcast,
yeah, I've got more people than them
listening.
So, yeah, I've got I've got a classroom full of people.
May not sound like a a whole lot, but it's a classroom full of people. Have you ever stood in front of a classroom
with 40, 50 kids in there? Yeah. That that that's quite a few people.
Sometimes I have a 100 people.
Other times, I have 25.
Sometimes I get a 1,000. You know, it's just what?
It's those are just the numbers. The you can make those numbers mean anything you want.
But what am I avoiding?
What are you avoiding?
Examine that.
Look at that
intricate
intricate little
reason,
otherwise known as an excuse,
and decide
why
am I avoiding doing this? Why am I avoiding
talking to the bank if that's what you need to do?
Why
am I avoiding
dropping
the sugar
in my life? You know, it'd make you healthier.
It'd make you happier, honestly.
Make you feel better about yourself.
All you have to do
is drop
the Cokes
candy
and process
McDonald's hamburgers
and French fries. Sadly, the French fries, they kick ass. I agree, guys.
But those those French fries, I've got a lot of sugar in them. Heck, even the salt that they use
on the on the shu on on the fries is actually got sugar mixed in there with it.
It's actually a salt and sugar combination,
which is where we get so much of the we all love the salty sweet flavor
because it's the 2 of the best worlds. We know we need salt in our diets. We also know that we like the energy of sugar.
So examine what you're avoiding
so that you know what steps you need to take.
You know you need to start talking to more people, then find a way, find a solution. Go get out there, start talking to more people.
If you're still struggling to do that, then
another thing you might do is finally get an accountability partner.
Get some coaching.
You wanna get coached? Hey. Hello.
Relaxmail.comforward/trycoaching,
all one word.
That'll take you over to the, scheduling account,
and you can schedule up an appointment a time that we will sit down, and we will talk.
It's not hard. It's not a challenge.
It's
it's actually
a lot easier than your brain wants you to think because it's just you and me we're talking. Am I agreeing with everything you're saying? No. No. I'm not.
But I will agree with some stuff.
But that's
another solution because all of a sudden, you're accountable to somebody else. If somebody else is getting up, yeah, 5 o'clock in the morning and going to walk in, like, in 15 degree weather,
40 mile an hour winds
with a 3 you know, a minus 10 degree wind chill.
If they can do it,
then by damn, you can do it.
Make bets. You know? I'm gonna be out every week. We're gonna take a picture. Here's proof that I'm out in the cold.
Here I am. Here's a picture. Here's proof that I'm out in the cold. And y'all swap those out every day that y'all are supposed to be walking. And alright.
If you fail, then you have to buy him a
$200 bow and arrow set. And if you if, he fails, then he owes you the same thing. You know? Y'all can come up with ways that motivate y'all,
but it takes time. It takes deliberation, and you have to get out of the fear
that something horrible is going to go wrong.
Find
the power that you need
by living your life intentionally.
Because when you start being intentional
in your emotions and in your
in your actions and in your life in general,
all of a sudden, things start changing.
Things be start becoming a little bit better. Things become strong you become stronger. You become a better person. You start working on your mind, body,
soul, and community.
All of a sudden, you start developing a fire in the belly that gets everybody's attention. You have a fire in your eye. There's a light there that just attracts everybody's attention, and they start coming to you, start asking you questions, seeing what it is that you have in your life. And when you do that,
all of a sudden, you find
that things become a little bit easier. There's it's never a 100% easy. It's just easier.
And you start embracing the fact that you've got challenges coming up ahead of you. And so you take on those challenges, and you and you conquer those challenges.
And you eventually
will wind up,
fulfilled
in the goal that you're after.
And that's what I wanna help you do. That's what I want
all of y'all
to be able to do is to have that relationship that you want, to have the the life that you
dreamed of
when you were 25 and just got finished saying I do, and you had all these wonderful
ideas,
setting in front of you going, hey. Yeah. We're fixing to, fixing to have a great life here.
And now that you're 10,
20 years down the road, all of a sudden you're going, what happened to that wonderful life?
It's still there. It's just waiting for you
to get out of your own way.
And you're probably having thoughts right now about, no. It's not my fault. It's hers. If she would go off and actually decide that what she wanted to have sex more often,
well,
yeah, it may it it would help if she decides she wanted to have sex more often. But why is it that she has decided she doesn't wanna have sex?
Because, guys, I know a lot of us, me and 1,
as or as 1,
have have come up with the excuse, well, she just doesn't like sex.
Well, I've got 2 kids that prove otherwise.
She likes it enough to have kids.
Yours does too.
It's just there's
a element in that relationship that's missing
that's where you need to what you need to work on. And to be able to work on that means you have to work on yourself.
And that's where us guys get in our own way because we wanna blame our wife. We wanna blame the kids. We wanna blame the dog for all of our all of our pain,
and that pain's actually coming on us. And that's what we're gonna talk about next week, actually. We're gonna be talking about
all those little excuses that we wanna wanna make. Why
our
why our lives we wanna think that our life sucks. We're gonna be talking about that next week because
that is something that we
all of us, not just men, but men and women, we love to do. We will point
a finger at other people all the time. But at the same time, when you if you notice it, when you're pointing a finger, there are 3 more
being pointed right back at you.
How do we stop that? How do we how do we correct that little issue?
That's what we're talking about next week. So, guys, with that, I wanna say thank you very much for listening. Thank you for taking the time. If there's anything that I said here that just resonated with you, rang a bell,
made you think of somebody,
If you could think of somebody who needs to hear this, share this
this episode out with them. Share it with them and with a message saying, hey, man. I'm thinking of you.
There's I found a show that helps men become better men,
helps men have better relationships.
How can a moo how can a a podcast do both of those things? Well, this is how. We start have we have to start listening
to what we're thinking.
We have to start paying attention and living our lives intentionally.
And until we do that, we're always gonna be running into more and more pain.
When we can
accept the fact that our life is gonna have some suffering in there,
we can also turn around and start examining and embracing the fact that we have a lot of pleasure in our life too.
So, guys, with that, I wanna say thank you very much for listening. If you want, to try out coaching, again, go to relax mail.comforward/trycoaching.
It is a
free coaching session that I am handing out to you complimentary.
Thanks to,
thanks to all the greatness that is that happens here in
in the relaxed mail
ecosystem.
Few big changes that I'm fixing few things that I've gotten,
planned,
looking at trying to see what it's gonna take to make a community
for all you men to come to
sit down, talk, have a good conversation
without having to actually
worry about
Facebook or things like that.
So, guys, that I wanna say thanks again for watching, listening,
and we will, catch y'all next week. Till then.
Bye.