Maven Podcast :: Slap You In The Face Stuck

slap-you-in-the-face stuck - a maven podcast

“I realized I wasn’t happy doing what I was doing, but not ready to give it up yet either.”

Does that sound familiar? It’s a quote plucked from today’s podcast where we talk about BIG stuck. The kind of stuck that feels like a slap in the face because you don’t know what’s causing it, or how to resolve it, and you’re just not feeling ready to make any sort of move.

You’re not alone! The Mavens have been there too.

This week we share our personal journeys of being stuck in indecision. Jen shares her experience of realizing that the work she did for years wasn’t the work she wanted to do anymore. Jena shares about a time recently when she struggled with motivation and direction and how she’s moved forward.

If you’re struggling with stuckness, or at a crossroads in your life, this is the prefect podcast to get you thinking about the problem from some different, solution based perspectives:

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Truthy Tuesday: Two Types of Stuckness & Two Ways to Get Moving Again

Truthy Tuesday with Bettie Newell

{By Guest Maven, Bettie Newell}

Its late afternoon and all is silent except for the occasional creak and groan of this old house and the satisfied sighs of the chihuahua in my lap.

Every member of the family is off doing something and I’ve got a blissful hour to myself to write about getting unstuck. I’m doodling in my journal, thinking about how to get started on this post. Ironically, I am completely at a loss. I am totally, unmistakably stuck. I resist the urge to jump online and see what everyone else is up to, what others might have said about this topic. Instead, I scribble a few words, stare out the window longingly at the sunshine, then give up, grab my camera, and head outside for a little inspiration.

When Jen asked me to be a Guest Maven this month, I was excited. I’m in the middle of a year-long photo project to get unstuck creatively so I figured it would be easy to share my story. But I’m a visual person, almost always preferring images to words and I realized, as I sat in front of a blank piece of paper, that this was going to prove harder than I thought. A week later, and I still only had a few random thoughts written down. And it was another couple of days before it started to all come together. As I put the finishing touches on this article (more than two weeks after my first brainstorming session and mere hours before it is due), I can see that the process I went through to write it was a perfect metaphor for exploring how I get unstuck.

In my experience, there are two different types of stuckness.

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At a Crossroads, Stuck in Indecision…What to do?

jen and Jena

We got a question from a reader asking us how to handle being at a crossroads in your life. She’s built a business she’s not feeling stoked on any longer and wondering if she should start a new path in the direction of a new passion or whether to return to the 9-5 gig. Which path is right?

Many of us have been at a crossroads in our lives and sometimes when you’re good at a number of things it’s hard to choose which one is the right one. It’s really the dilemma of the multi-talented, which of my skills is best served in the world? What do I like to do the most? Can I make money doing that?

If you do something for awhile only to discover that it’s not for you after all, take heart in knowing, many of us have been there and found that we had to follow our dreams for our well-being, no matter our ages.

Everything you’re doing now is building a body of work and many of those skills are transferable to future work. You are building your skill set whether you’re in your career of choice right now, or not. All the work you do is not for no reason- it’s creating the foundation and room for you to grow into your future.

Our Maven Minutes episode below offers ideas on how to choose the path you’ll be happiest with when you reach a crossroads in life (transcript below):

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Truthy Tuesday: An Artist on Getting Unstuck & Following Her Creative Calling

alena hennessy truthy tuesday

{by guest maven, Alena Hennessy}

Often times in life we get comfortable to our own grooves.

Without even realizing it, years pass, and family, society, personal relationships influence us, often times on sub-conscious levels, and patterns within us are made. Our soul carries these experiences and we allow ourselves to become comfortable in what we know, acting out what life has revealed to us. That is why living an uncommon life, one that asks us to step out of our comfort zone, back into the realm of possibility and true purpose, is both exciting and pretty vulnerable.

It’s an interesting thing I have found about life- as young children we are often never stuck or without that pure zeal and passion for existence. We live in that flow, or moment to moment awareness of the magic that sits right in front of you. So the well of inspiration is rarely dry, and being yourself is not something to strive for, its just what you do.

Remember how that felt? Sure, there was sometimes fear but also, there was pure joy. It’s the process of becoming an adult: responsible, mature, accepted, liked, popular, cool, successful…that gets our minds a little fuzzy, or forgetful of our true nature. The outside world and what others think become incredibly important, and we may forget just what made us tick to begin with.

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On breaking out of the muck of STUCK

jena coray- on breaking through the stuck

jena floating headIt’s fitting that stuck rhymes with muck, because that’s exactly what we get stuck in- the swampy muck and mire of our own self-doubt and expectations.

We deny ourselves so many of our innate, deep desires because they seem too big. And hard. And scary. And so far away.

It seems selfish to go after what I really want, you convince yourself, as your heels start sinking into the mud below. It’s crazy to think I could even do that, anyway, you argue on, slipping ankle deep into the thick sludge.

Then the what ifs? begin, the likes of which you’re powerless against. What if I fall flat on my face and fail? What if I succeed and become rich and famous and I can never find a good man because dating famous guys totally sucks and normal guys are way threatened by powerful women? What if everyone looks at me funny? What if no one even looks at me at all? What if they see that I was never actually smart or pretty or talented enough to do any of this, and that I’m a total sham, and just who the hell do I think I am, anyway?

All the while you’re standing still, in the mud, slowly sinking further and further. You finally look down to see you’re now waist deep in relentless swamp goo and girl, you are stuck. (There’s another choice word that rhymes with stuck that’s perfect to use at this point of realization.)

I have found myself in this waist-deep stuckness too many times to count.

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Five Faves: Apps to Bring Balance Right to Your Fingertips

five faves apps for balance

Towards the end of each month we share five of our favorite things to UP the AWESOME in your life!

This week, we’re sharing five fave phone apps that help us balance our minds and bodies.

We thought it’d be a good way to round out our whole month on the topic of balance with some of the favorite apps we turn to when we need a little more calm, a little more health consciousness, or a little more thankfulness for where we’re at right in this moment.

It’s so awesome that we are living in an age where we literally have the tools right at our fingertips to help us start to move towards our centers and live more fulfilling lives.

In this Maven Minutes, we share five of our favorite phone apps to help us exercise our gratitude, our brains, our bodies and our life-balancing muscles! (transcript below):

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How To Balance Your Mood With Food

jen neitzel on balancing mood with food

jen neitzelYou know how some days you wake up and as the day gets rolling you realize you feel really discombobulated and unbalanced? This was my normal functioning level for a long time.

I was so busy. Running from project to project. Working so hard at trying to stay on top of everything that I missed the basic fact that I was falling apart. All aspects of my health were fading. My energy was gone. I was bloated all the time and although my stomach didn’t hurt, it didn’t feel right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I had a growing feeling that something was wrong.

I’d wake up in the morning utterly exhausted. I’d look in the mirror and see the enormous dark circles under my eyes and think, “What is wrong with me? Why do feel so depleted all the time?”

All I really wanted to do most of the time was lay down.

Fast forward to six months ago – through a series of tests I was diagnosed with Celiac disease. Dum, dum, dum dum!

Since then I’ve learned so much about food and the mind/body connection, just as a way of healing my own body. In my case, I was sick with this disease for most of my life and eating tons of gluten. I actually craved it. I could eat it endlessly. It tasted so delicious that I just couldn’t get enough.

I never knew why I was so tired. I never understood how I could get sick so often, why I would stay sick for so long or why I had so many random symptoms and issues: asthma, aches, pains, brain fogs, clumsiness, anxiety, depression and more.

The good news is, I’ve got all of that under control now through my diet and I have insights that could be helpful to you too.

The thing that I’ve realized from this experience is that it’s possible, and even easy, not to realize how the food you eat affects you. It sounds crazy, I know, but this is exactly what happened to me!

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