lisa fabrega
Every year I speak with so many people who feel stuck and like nothing is working to make progress in their goals. I hear you and I get it. In the past I’ve also been in that place many times. I’ve helped so many people through it. It’s why Capacity Work™ exists.
But what do you do when you feel you’ve tried a million things and you’re still stuck? Well, there’s a few reasons you could be stuck. And frankly, they’re reasons I don’t see a lot of people talking about.
Over the next few emails I’m going to lay the case for why you’re still stuck (if you’re feeling that way). If you don’t currently feel stuck, you’ll still want to read because this will help you prevent from getting stuck in the future.
You’re going to hear some thoughts on “being stuck” you probably haven’t heard before. My hope is this will either get you unstuck or arm you with understanding for the next time you DO get stuck. Cause that’s life and it’s bound to happen at some point or other.
There are three reasons why you might be stuck. Here is the first one…
- You’re hoping “one thing” will save you
At the beginning of all my workshops, I always say this: “if you’ve come to this workshop with the expectation twenty years of capacity issues are going to be resolved in just a few hours or this workshop will finally be the ‘one thing’ that saves you, remove this thought now. Because this thought will block you from experiencing the full magic and results of Capacity Work.”
A few years ago, I was road-tripping through Iceland with a friend. One morning I noticed she was in a big hurry to get to the next location and agitated over my normal morning pace.
When it happened again the next day and she said “you need to hurry”, I spoke up: “I get we have two different paces, but telling me to hurry when your internal timeline suddenly speeds up without warning sends my nervous system into a tizzy. I end up moving slower as a result.” From then on, we each decided upon a “departure time” the night before and all went smoothly.
Whenever you make one thing the be-all-end-all, or you come into an experience with a strong preconceived expectation of what it “should” do for you, you put a tremendous amount of pressure on yourself and your nervous system. It can cause you to freeze, hyperfocus on only one thing, and then not absorb the full experience.
Think about it this way: if someone was standing over you, barking at you to finish something IMMEDIATELY and it should look EXACTLY like they want it or else…you’d probably finish slower and make way more mistakes. You’d also not enjoy the experience because your nervous system was on high alert the entire time. In fact, you’d probably not remember a lot about the experience other than how stressful it was.
Putting this kind of pressure on yourself hijacks your nervous system. When your nervous system gets hijacked, your perception gets hyper-focused on one thing and you miss out on everything else the experience has to teach you. It’s just how the “survival mechanism” in your brain works. While the ability to hyperfocus is great in an emergency, it ruins your ability to fully experience non-emergency, growth-opportunity situations.
It’s also a form of not honoring your process. Everyone’s process is different.
I see it all the time in my workshops and long term programs–some people get it right away and BOOM are ready to take action immediately. Others START the process of understanding during one call and then a few weeks or months later it starts to really land.
But if you keep telling yourself you HAVE TO have gotten the results and realizations by THIS time, once again, you’re putting your nervous system on high alert and, like me getting rushed by my friend in the morning, it will slow your results and realizations down.
This whole idea things HAVE to happen by a certain time is a toxic leftover from “internet bro marketing” which is highly ego-driven and doesn’t allow for any individuality or alignment when it comes to watching your own pace and process unfold naturally.
One time I was stuck on a weight plateau for three weeks. I kept counting every calorie, exercising every day, and stressing every day no matter what I did, the weight wouldn’t come off. When my nutritionist told me to EASE THE EFF OFF, I did. Guess what happened? I lost four pounds in one week. DOING LESS.
I always tell my clients, I’d rather you get ONE powerful, deep insight from this call than twenty superficial ones. So I purposely don’t overload my workshops with tons of info. Rather we focus on one powerful thing we can take deep and have a potent “aha” on.
I think this is why we always have so many people walk away from our workshops feeling such profound shifts (and we get emails from them saying so) which last way beyond just the day of the workshop.
See if you can approach all of your personal/business growth investments like this. Give them time. Don’t put a misaligned, unrealistic or ego-driven timeline on them.
Can you try relaxing and not putting so much pressure on THIS thing for it to be THE thing? And instead, focus on enjoying the experience and TRUSTING you’ll “get it” when you’re meant to?
And if you’re in a position where you can’t do this because you’re stressed out about making more money FAST and you’re wanting the coach or program you invested in to make you money fast… you’re going to actually have the opposite experience. It’s going to slow down your earning.
Money doesn’t like to come into a highly stressed out, tight, holding-on-for-dear-life container. It likes to FLOW into an expansive, relaxed container that’s OPEN, trusting, and ready to receive.
Yes, for some people, the pressure does light a fire under your ass. But if you’re like many, many clients I’ve worked with over the years, it actually shuts you down and makes it harder to earn money. You might not be the type who responds well to this kind of pressure. In that case, I recommend you do something to ease the money fears: take out a loan, get a credit card OR get a second job while you work your way up to where you want to be.
This is why, in Capacity Work, one of the areas we focus on is relaxing and recalibrating your nervous system. In the Capacity Shift™ program there are so many exercises to try and it’s how we begin all Capacity Work. Because a wound up nervous system simply cannot absorb the very things it needs in order to get unstuck, grow, and move forward.
And if you can’t relax your nervous system and stop putting so much pressure on yourself to meet some sort of imposed and artificial timeline, your nervous system is always going to block you from achieving your goals.
Okay, that’s it for today.
In the next post (in a few days) we’re going to talk about Reason #2 why you might be stuck. I’m going to tell you a client story that’ll definitely have you in “side-eye” mode and we’ll talk about what to do when nothing has worked.
See you soon!