Ep 143. How to Get Unstuck

I am Kym Showers and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 143, How to Get Unstuck.

Welcome to the Reinvented After 40 podcast. I am your host, Kym Showers, and I’m a certified life coach for women in the second half of life. Each week I’ll bring you direct advice and inspiring, practical wisdom to help you live your very best life and create a future you’re absolutely obsessed with. It’s going to be fun, let’s get started.

Good morning my friends in the podcast world. How are you today? Oh, my gosh, we moved back home yesterday afternoon after work and I am living in my beautiful white clapboard house overlooking the Pacific Ocean once again after three months living down in our darling little beach bungalow, which we had so much fun in but I was completely over it. I couldn’t wait to get back home yesterday. Oh, gosh, it was so fun to sleep here last night and to wake up here this morning and to be recording this podcast here right now.

I’m just smiling, if you can’t tell. I’m so happy. I got up this morning and went to Orangetheory Fitness and I have been a little extra tired this week. And I’ve given myself so much space to feel tired, and I deserve to feel tired. I know you know what I mean. Oh, gosh, there are so many things that I’d love to chat with you about this morning. It is a Wednesday. It is the very last Wednesday of May of 2024. This is episode 143. I am 63 years old, living my dream life. I hope you can say the same thing.

I am talking to you, my friends who are over the age of 40 and who have desired to live a life that you absolutely are thriving in, in the second half of life. You are the reason I record this podcast every single week. You are the reason that I started my business. I am also the reason that I record this podcast every single week. And I am also the reason that I started a business. At the age of 57, I started this business. I am now 63.

And I can’t tell you how happy I am and how grateful I am that I started this business when I did and that I started this podcast when I did. Almost three years ago, I started this podcast. You guys, I have consistently put out an episode of Reinvented After 40 every single week. And I am so proud of myself. I know how to get myself unstuck. And I’m using the word unstuck because all of us use it. It’s so familiar. I know you know what I’m talking about.

All my clients feel stuck a lot of the time and that’s why they hire me to coach them because I am so good, not only getting myself out of that feeling of being stuck but also coaching my clients out of that feeling of being stuck and I had that feeling this last weekend. We were at the tail end of this remodel we’ve been doing on my house. If you’ve been listening along, following along with me on Instagram, you know we have been remodeling our downstairs. Our downstairs has three bedrooms and two bathrooms and a laundry room.

Jeff and I have separate bedrooms and separate bathrooms. It is brilliant. It is the most fabulous way to live. We are celebrating 40 years of marriage August 4th of 2024. I think this is what you would call a golden anniversary or a diamond anniversary, but we got married in 1984. We are celebrating our 40th anniversary this year in 2024 on August 4th.

So, all these fours, I’m telling you, this is something magical for us. And we have literally reinvented our marriage year after year, every five years, every 10 years, every decade. I’m so glad we did. And so happy and so proud of us that even the times that we felt stuck or it’s mostly me feeling stuck, let’s just be honest. And then him loving me enough and wanting to be married enough that he just kept holding on to me as I figured out what I wanted next and here we are. And this last weekend, the tail end of this remodel, I was so tired this last weekend that I just had to take a couple of days just to do nothing. So, in this feeling of being really just kind of bone tired I realized that I had this story that I had kind of felt like I’d been telling myself in the three months of this remodel.

That I felt like I was pushing a really large, heavy boulder up a mountain all by myself for three months. I felt like I was the only one really wanting to finish this project. And I was just having to push, push, push, push everybody to show up and finish their job and finish the details, finish the big stuff first and then finish the details. It just felt so hard to me to get everybody to finish their job because obviously I was the one that wanted it finished.

Everyone else was pretty chill about it, so it felt hard to me to get it all finished. And I had decided that we were moving back into this house this week no matter what, and there were still some things that needed to be finished. And on the weekend they just weren’t finished yet. And I was hoping we’d move back on the weekend and we just did not move back on the weekend and mainly because I was too tired, to, I was just like, oh, my gosh.

So, the good thing about the weekend, the really good thing about the weekend, on Saturday. It was a three day weekend. It was Memorial Day weekend. The really good thing about the beginning of the weekend on Saturday was that we celebrated my oldest granddaughter’s 6th birthday. Her name is Goldie Valentine Million. We celebrated her at the park with a bounce house and all of her friends from kindergarten. She invited her whole kindergarten class and their parents and then all of our family. We had the best time. It was so, darling, so fun.

She wanted an astronaut birthday so it was a whole space theme with a space bounce house. It was so darling, big purple, spacey bounce house and with a big old astronaut on it. And a bright pink astronaut birthday cake and we had pizza and we just had the best time, it was so happy. And then we were going to go to Santa Barbara the next day with our kids and grandkids. And I woke up Sunday morning, I was just like, “Man, I’m done. I need a day off.” So, I took a day off, but I felt so much more than tired. I felt stuck. I felt frustrated.

I felt like I couldn’t even take action because I was waiting on people outside of me to do things first and so then I felt stuck. And I felt stuck on Sunday with a lot of negative emotion. And also, on Monday I felt stuck with a lot of negative emotion. And I was like, “Well, I’m not going to be able to move back into my house this week.” So, I just had a lot of negative emotion around all the thoughts that I was thinking about it.

And it really basically boils down when we feel stuck, it’s because we think that something outside of us needs to happen before we can do our job, before we can take action. And I saw that on Monday. I had all these kinds of crazy thoughts like, oh, my gosh, forget it then. Literally you guys, I was like, “Just forget it. I’ll just wait. I’m tired of pushing this huge boulder up this steep mountain all by myself.” See how I was making myself the victim here? That’s what we do when we’re stuck.

I was making myself the victim, which is so unusual for me but so usual for my brain and for your brain, too. It’s like everyone needs to give me some help here. Show up, get your job done so I can move back into my house. I had this whole dramatic story going on in my brain because that’s what the brain loves to do. That’s what my brain loves to do. That’s what your brain loves to do. So, Sunday and Monday, I was the witness, I saw myself doing this. And Monday afternoon I was like, “You know what? I’m not going to do this anymore.”

And here’s what I did, you guys. I have this way of getting myself unstuck and I didn’t realize really that I could teach it this way, but it is actually a three-step process. Look at this, I have a three-step process that I have been doing for so long. I’ve never called it this, but I’m calling it this now. It’s my three-step process and I don’t know if I made it up or if I got it from somewhere outside of me, but I can patent it as The Kym Showers Three-Step Process to Getting Unstuck because it works, I’m telling you.

I teach it to my clients and I taught it to my clients this week, but I’ve never really called it this, so organized. It’s a three-step process for getting unstuck, so listen up, my friend, whenever you feel stuck, here’s why you are making yourself the victim. You are waiting for something outside of yourself to happen before you can take action. You feel like you are powerless. That’s what happens when we make ourselves the victim and our brain loves to do this.

And I watched myself do this on Sunday and Monday. And by Monday afternoon I was kind of over it. I was over myself. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, Kym Showers. Let’s go. Stop this nonsense. You are moving back in on Tuesday”, which was the next day. I was working on Tuesday, and I had just decided on Monday, I was going to get myself unstuck. I was going to stop being a victim. I was taking all my power back. and I was going to move into my freaking house on Tuesday afternoon, after I was done working, and here’s how I did it.

I wrote down everything that my brain was feeding me, all the thoughts in my brain. I just filled up a huge piece of paper, I just wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote all the nonsense. Some useful things, all the things that I had to do, all the things that I couldn’t do, all the things I was waiting on other people to do. And then that was step number one, to this three-step process of getting unstuck, my friend, listen up.

Step number one, write down, take the time, sit down or stand up. I don’t even care. Stand up at your counter or sit down at your table and just dump out your brain and fill up two pages, fill up three pages, I don’t even care because your brain is offering you so much drama, so many thoughts. Some are useful, some are not useful, everything that has to be done.

And then step number two, you take that same pen or you take a sharpie or you take a highlighter like I like to do, and a sharpie like I like to do. And you highlight the things on that paper, first of all that are useful thoughts, thoughts like, listen, you have so many things that you have to do. That’s a useful thought for me. You have so many things that you have control of. That’s a useful thought. There are so many things that you can get done. That’s a useful thought.

So, then I highlight those thoughts, those are useful thoughts. And then I highlight the things that I can do, that I have control of. I can pack up my car. I can go to the gym. I can take all my clothes from my closet up to my house. I can take all the things out of my refrigerator and take those up to the house. I can wash all the sheets on my bed. I can go to Target and buy new bath towels for my new bathroom and wash those.

I just got busy circling every single thing on that page that I could do, that I had control of and then I crossed out everything else that I didn’t have control of. So that was step number two, I circled, circled, circled everything that I could do, everything that was useful for me, everything that I had control of. And then I made a fresh new list of things that I had control of, that I could do, everything that was in my power to create useful thoughts.

So, I made this new list and I tore that out of my little notebook, and that’s what I got busy with first thing Tuesday morning. I went and worked out. I went and ran my errands. I coached my clients. I made my post for my Instagram. After I coached my clients and did my work, I got all my laundry done at the bungalow. I got everything loaded up in my car. I made my first trip up to the house and just started moving back in. And while I was doing that, the people that had things to finish at my house actually were at my house finishing their things too.

So, the three-step process to getting unstuck, I got myself from a place of victimhood, from feeling stuck, and I call it the pond of misery, the stagnant pond of misery. That’s what I was in on Sunday and Monday. And the way I got out of that stagnant pond of misery that felt so stuck and gross to me and got myself in the freshwater of the river of momentum. That’s what I’m calling, the fresh water of the river of momentum is this three-step process of dumping out the nonsense in my brain, the drama in my brain, I dumped it all out on paper. Step number one. Step number two, I circled and highlighted everything I had control of.

Step number three, I started a whole new fresh page, a list of everything that I could take action on. And I got myself moved back into my house within 24 hours. And everything that needed to get finished, you guys, got finished on the same day. It was a miracle. This is the belief that I have is the minute we start taking action, the minute we pop ourselves out of that stagnant pond of misery where we are making ourselves the victim and we are telling ourselves a ridiculous story. The minute we do that, the universe meets us where we are.

Nothing happened. When I was stuck the universe met me there. Nothing happened. No one else was taking action either. But the minute I started taking action, everybody else, the universe met me where I was in that energy and my house got finished exactly at the same time. It was a miracle. And this is what I believe. I believe energy matches energy. And when we’re in a low vibe, the universe is just low vibing with us. But when we’re taking action and we get ourselves out of the victim world, the universe vibes right with us and delivers exactly what we are needing, exactly what we are wanting my friend.

So, this stuff works. I am not kidding you. And here I am in my beautiful new remodeled house that we don’t have to do anything to for a long, long, long time. We have done everything that needed to be done since we’ve lived here in the last, we’re going on, gosh, 2020, so we’re going on four years now of living here. And we remodeled the upstairs first right when we got here. We remodeled our yard last year. And we remodeled our 1984 downstairs, we remodeled that in the last three months.

And we are now living in this darling beautiful, fresh, updated white house that overlooks the Pacific Ocean, that is absolutely my dream. So, I want you to know if you’re feeling stuck, there is a way to get unstuck and I can help you. The mountain is us. The mountain is you. There is no mountain. That big boulder I had been pushing up a mountain was all created in my mind. I am my own mountain. You are your own mountain. And we are our own stagnant pond by the story, the drama that we’re believing, that our brain is offering us, and that’s the only thing ever in our way. I promise you.

And it’s so fun to know this, it’s so powerful to take our life back and to have these self-coaching practices that we can actually implement even when we’re feeling stuck. I can teach you how to coach yourself and you can actually start practicing it right now with this three-step process, The Kym Showers Three-Step Process of Getting Unstuck, my friend, works.

So, wherever you are right now, know that if you dump your brain out and you take a look at all this drama that’s going on in your brain, that’s keeping you feeling like the victim to your own life. And then you pull out the useful thoughts that make you feel better, you pull out the things that you have control of, that you can start taking action on right now. And you start thinking only on those things, you scribble out all the rest, all the things outside of your control.

And you just train your brain to concentrate only on the things that you have control of. And you start taking action from that place, everything starts meeting you, everything starts working again. You’re back in the river of freshwater momentum and you’re feeling so much more alive, so much more productive, so much more powerful in your own life. Alright, you can do it. I can do it. I do it all the time. I want you to start doing it all the time as well.

If you need coaching, you can hire me right now to be your private coach or you can get in my next group that starts July 9th, it’ll be Tuesday mornings, California time from nine to ten every Tuesday morning for 20 weeks. And you also get two private sessions, with that package, you also get my workbook in the mail. It’s so useful, so helpful, teaches you so many skills that will help you live the exact life you want to live and have the relationship with yourself, the self-confidence, the motivation, the enthusiasm for your life again.

And to have such easy, happy, loving relationships with the people that are the most important to you. So, I’d love for you to come work with me either privately or in the group. The group is so phenomenal. You’re going to love these women so much. And you’re going to literally transform before your own eyes, before your family’s eyes and before my eyes as your coach. It will be a blast. It’s so much more than you can even possibly think right now.

And I know it’s scary, if you’ve never been coached, I know that you have hesitations because your brain loves to talk you out of things that feel scary, but I’m telling you, you will not regret it. You will love it so much and it will right now be the very best choice that you’ve ever made. So, I adore you. Thank you for showing up today and being such an amazing part of my podcast universe, my own podcast experience. Consistency is the most powerful way to live.

Have the best week and I will talk to you next Thursday.

If you love this podcast, I invite you to come work with me. Go to kymshowerslifecoach.com, sign up for my next group and retreat, and let’s create your dream life together.