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Today’s talking point:

We've all felt behind or stuck at one time or another but if you're feeling that right now, this episode is for you. I'll share 3 reasons we often feel this way and what we can do to move through it.

This episode is based on a conversation that keeps popping up in my DMs and with my clients and students. I want to talk about what to do when you feel behind or stuck. It seems like it's something we've all struggled with at one time or another. And I think it can be even more so at this time of year, the halfway point of the year.

Maybe you're seeing other people accomplish things that you haven't yet. It's one of those feelings that can spill over into pretty much all areas of life. And it's really, really hard to shake. Because it's such a nagging feeling. You constantly feel like you're chasing, but not reaching.

In this episode, I am going to share with you three reasons why you might feel behind or stuck, and what you can do about each one of them.

So why do we feel like we're never quite where we are supposed to be?

Comparison

It's no surprise that with the prevalence of social media in our day-to-day lives, we have easy access to so many people's lives. It's kind of crazy, really, when you think about it. But what I think we forget is that we're not getting the full picture.

But it makes it easy to compare where you're at in life to someone else's perceived metric of success. And when you’re feeling burnt out or tired, you might start to focus on that. It’s probably less about feeling like you need to have what other people have and it's more about feeling like not really knowing how to measure your life according to the things that really matter to you.

Comparison is a dangerous thing that can cause us to pursue random goals that don't have meaning in our lives. So instead of basing what we are, or are not doing, we're better off spending our energy getting really clear on what we actually want in our own lives.

When is the last time that you really, really sat down and pondered that question?

Where do you want to be? Not where does society say you should be or Instagram? Or where does your mum think would be a good place for you to be? What do you actually want your life to look like?

When our eyes and our hearts are glued to the lives of other people, it's going to be really hard to decipher what matters to us, and what we really want out of life. And that's when we get caught up in the feeling of being behind our stock.

We feel behind our stuck when we don't have a clear vision of what we really want our lives to be.

If there's a reason in particular why you feel behind because you're really struggling with comparison. So your action step is to spend some time deciding what actually matters to you.

So that's the first reason why you might be feeling behind is that you're struggling with comparison. And you're chasing after goals that aren't meant for you. They don't align with your life or where you want to be.

Timelines

The second reason why you might feel behind is that you've created an arbitrary timeline.

So maybe you don't struggle much with comparison. And you really are pursuing goals that matter to you and align with your vision. That's amazing. First of all, if that's you give yourself a high five.

But why are you still feeling behind?

This is honestly the biggest reason that I find myself feeling behind or stuck. And that's because I create an arbitrary timeline that has no real weight or meaning. Yet, I'm giving that timeline all of the power in my life.

I love creating timelines for my goals and helping my clients do the same because not only does it hold me accountable, but it also helps me to work toward multiple goals while still honouring my energy.

But here's the thing with timelines: they are tools, not chains.

I used to cling so tightly to my timelines and treat them as my metric of success. I had a timeline in mind for life milestones, and one for each of the goals that I was working towards. And if I didn't align with those timelines perfectly, I told myself that I was a failure, or that I wasn't working hard enough.

But when I became more self-aware, I started to ask myself the question “where did this timeline come from? What is this timeline based on?” I could not give myself a concrete answer.

So if this is you, if you can relate to this, and you struggle with creating these arbitrary timelines that make you feel behind, I have another action step for you. And it is to define a new metric for success that is not a timeline.

Use timelines as tools to help you make consistent progress on your goals. That's a big part of the work that I do with my clients and students. But don't give those timelines so much power over your life.

For example, instead of my metric for success being increased income, it now looks like having the opportunity to prioritise taking care of my mental well-being each day.

What are some of the things that make you feel like you are truly successful?

And another point I want to make that goes along with this is that sometimes it's not the right season to do something, even if the timeline we created tries to tell us that it is.

Just because you're not doing something right now, doesn't mean you're never going to do it. So, create realistic timelines that align with your life.

Your ‘why’

The final reason that I want to talk to you about in terms of why you might be feeling behind our stuck is you're out of touch with your ‘why’.

You know that feeling when you're just going through the motions every day you kind of feel like a robot in your own life? You wake up, you plop down at your desk you do the tasks that need to be done to keep things going with glazed-over eyeballs and not much creativity to be found anywhere.

You end your day you switch off you go to bed and then you do it all over again.

It can feel like a boring loop. I actually found myself here in this place at the start of this year, just feeling very uninspired with work and what I was doing.

After a lot of reflection, I realised I had lost touch with why my business mattered to me, and why I'm so passionate about what I do.

Have you ever found yourself doing that? We feel behind, we feel stuck, and we lose our spark for the goal.

So what is the solution here? You can probably guess what I'm about to say: you need to rediscover your spark.

When it comes to my business, specifically, I went back to old journal entries or old photos in my camera roll on my phone from the beginning of my journey, to remind myself of why I started this in the first place. And that's what I want you to do.

But I just needed to get reacquainted with why this business matters to me to help me stop feeling behind or stuck. I was focusing too much on the tasks and not enough on why I was doing them. And there is such a big difference there.