I Feel Stuck And Lost. How Do I Change Things?
The $100 MBA Show
This episode of The $100 MBA Show addresses feelings of being stuck and lost, offering a practical three-step framework to break through sta
Key takeaways
- Staying in your head perpetuates feelings of being stuck; action is required to shift emotional states.
- Change only happens when you do something different—hope alone won't transform circumstances.
Main topics
- Overcoming emotional stagnation
- The power of small actions
Notable quotes
"If you don't do something different, nothing's going to change."
Conclusion
The episode concludes with an empowering message: even in the darkest moments,
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) Let's face it, life is hard. Let's stop pretending that it's not. And some seasons are harder than others. Some days feel like a cruel joke, to be honest with you. I've been there. If you're feeling stuck right now, today's episode's for you. And I'm not gonna give you some sort of motivational poster. I'm gonna give you some clear steps that actually have worked for me in my life. One of the biggest takeaways I wanna share with you today is that my life changed when I stopped living in my head. when I started realizing that I have to start doing things to change things. They say motion creates emotion, but also if you wanna change your emotional state, sometimes you just gotta get out and make something happen. Welcome back to the $100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business. Speaker 1 (0:59) Hey, if this show has helped you in any way, it would be amazing if you dropped us a quick review on whatever app you're using right now to listen to this podcast. It helps me and my team bring you new episodes every week. And more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover the podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. So how do you get out and make something happen? Well, that's what my three-step approach is all about. And the last step shows you how to build some incredible confidence so that when the dark days revisit you, you have the feeling of, I can take on anything. Nicole's here with me today on Q &A Wednesday to help me answer today's question. Nicole, great to have you again. Speaker 2 (1:36) Hey, Omar. Happy to be here. I know this question came from a reply to a newsletter that you sent out where you shared that you regretted not starting your business sooner, that there was... fear of failure that got in the way. And so we got a reply and we're not going to use a person's real name. So Robin has sent in this question in reply to that email. Their question is, I feel stuck and lost. Nothing seems to be going right. And I don't know how to change things, how I feel or my actual situation. How do I get out of this? I'm sure many of us have felt lost and stuck at many points in our life. So I'm really curious to hear your three-step approach. Let's go. Let's answer this question. Speaker 1 (2:16) Yeah. First of all, I have and I will continue to have those dark days and those challenging days. And that's life. Life is going to challenge you. And if you're not being challenged, then you're not really trying hard enough. Honestly, you've got to push yourself a little bit and be uncomfortable sometimes. Having said that, Robin, who asked today's question, I got to be honest with you, first and foremost, before I give you any of my steps or what works with me and all that kind of stuff. is the hard part about being stuck isn't just the situation you're in, whether you're strapped financially, whether you're having health problems, whether you're maybe not living the life that you planned out to have. Maybe you're still living with your parents, whatever it might be. It's not just a situation. It's that you're carrying this disappointment of yourself 24-7, right? You're carrying this burden and feeling like you're not where you should be for. Every day for every hour of the day, you just kind of beating yourself up throughout the whole time that you're existing. Speaker 2 (3:12) Yeah, I think the rumination that happens when you're in your head all the time, I think that's where it's going to be helpful to have some strategies how to get out of there because that's where you get stuck, right? You get stuck when it's just you and your conversation in your head or the problem that you keep facing. What is something that you can do? Speaker 1 (3:31) Well, the reason why I want to share this episode is because often when you share these things with your friends and family, they just kind of pat you on the back. They kind of say like, hey, it's going to be okay. Things are going to turn around. I believe in you, all these things, but this doesn't really tell you what to do. Like, how do I move forward? How do I get out of this situation? And one of the things that really bothers me about, you know, modern motivation and the internet and all these reels you see on Instagram is like, it actually doesn't tell you. what are the steps you need to take to change your situation? Because the honest truth is, if you don't do something different, nothing's going to change, right? If you just hope the world's going to cater to your whims and things are going to get better magically, that is delusional, honestly. And I learned this the hard way. So today's episode is about like, how do you take those first steps, even when you're feeling down, when you're feeling, how do you take that like just low effort, low lift ways to change your situation? Now, I also want to mention a book that would be incredibly helpful if anybody's struggling right now. This is a book called The Biggest Bluff by Maria Korokova. It's one of my favorite books. She wrote this book at a time where nothing was going right in her life. She had health problems. She had close family members passing away, relationship problems, you name it. Everything was going wrong in her life. She was like, I've had it. What's going on here? I'm doing everything right. I'm trying to be good. I'm trying to do all the right things so that my life is good and it's not. And she wanted to find out how much of life is luck and just, you know, the cards that you're dealt or how much of life is in your control based on the decisions that you make. And she went on this journey to learn this through the analogy of poker. She decided to learn poker and. you know, spoiler alert, she became a poker champion through this experiment. But that's not the point that she became great at poker. What she learned is like, how much is actually in our control? How much do we actually have to put ourselves in a situation where we can get lucky, where we can have things move in our favor? And I love this book so much, not because I'm just a huge poker fan as well, but also because it recognizes the fact that things will go wrong. And one of the biggest themes in the book is like, don't focus on a bad beat, which is like a term in poker, like you're going to lose and you're going to lose badly at some point in the game of poker, usually in any given time you play poker. So you have to have a short term memory. You have to be like, OK, I can't focus on the fact that that just happened because I have to be my best self for the next hand so that I can maybe possibly win that next one and the one after and eventually the whole tournament or, you know, be successful at poker or life. There's just an analogy. Speaker 2 (6:07) That's one of the. things that has stuck with me from that book, Don't Focus on a Bad Beat, which that idea has come in many ways, like pick yourself up, dust yourself off. You know, there's so many ways that you can get this advice. I think, you know, we're not probably the first people, you're not the first person to share advice on how to get unstuck, but there's always those moments that, and where a message might land or resonate with someone in the right time that. Speaker 1 (6:32) Yes. Speaker 2 (6:32) They finally get it. And for me, when she in that book, when she says, don't focus on a bad beat, even though I'm not in as immersed in the world of poker, it's such an easy way to remember that, OK, there's going to be a setback. Don't focus on it. It really that was super effective. I Speaker 1 (6:48) think a lot of success in business and life is about self-awareness and emotional awareness, like understanding, OK, I'm angry right now. Why? Oh, because I just something bad happened in life or I didn't get that customer that I wanted, that client or things are not going my way. Recognize that. All right. You have to understand that this is going to affect your performance. Understand that, like, OK, I need to step out of myself right now and realize, OK, that happened. That's OK. How do I make sure that tomorrow is better, that the next hour is better so that I am rebounding from this loss? Do you think Speaker 2 (7:23) some people are better at that? detachment, like stepping out of yourself and recognizing the emotion and separating, because it's hard when you're in that emotional state. Speaker 1 (7:32) I love this question about like, do you think some people are better at it? Because they worked on it. Yes. Speaker 2 (7:36) Question of practice. Yeah. No one's born with this. Speaker 1 (7:39) Like, you Speaker 2 (7:39) know, we Speaker 1 (7:40) all start as babies. We Speaker 2 (7:42) all Speaker 1 (7:42) learn something. Maybe our family or our parents taught us something that we didn't, you know, some parents were helpless with that or not. But at some point you have to pick it up. You have to work on it. You have to recognize this. You know, I wasn't given this as a child. You know, I wasn't, you know, we didn't talk about our emotions or talk about like feelings, you know. I can't remember last time my mom cried. Like my mom was a tough woman and, you know, and crying was not like seen as a good thing growing up. Like, you know, wipe your tears, wash your face kind of thing. You know, like there's nothing to be sad about. There's poor kids in Africa, like all that. So you have to learn it. So like anything worth anything is going to take some effort and it's going to take a bit of like, oh. I want to be angry. I want to blame other people. I want to say that this is not fair. Instead of saying, hey, you know what? This is going to happen. Everybody has bad beats. Everybody's going to have a tough time. Everybody's going to have bad seasons. Speaker 2 (8:32) Okay, so we can unlearn it. I think that's where we want Speaker 1 (8:36) to Speaker 2 (8:36) go. Speaker 1 (8:36) Yeah, and that kind of leads me to step one of the framework I want to share with everybody. And step one, and I know this is going to sound very cliche and very... I would say maybe you've heard it a million times and maybe it's not going to resonate, but I'm going to just go a little deeper to make sure it does. And that's, I want you to just take a moment to stop complaining and reset with gratitude. I know this sounds like, oh, don't complain. Don't be a complainer. You know, kind of hustle culture, blah, blah, blah. No, I want you to hear me out. There's okay to feel bad about something, but it's not okay to feel bad about it for extended period of time. You can allow yourself an hour to feel bad about something, but. Think about how much time and energy you're wasting not getting to where you want to go, changing your situation by complaining. And complaining is you are basically talking negatively about yourself. Like imagine you start trash talking your colleague or a friend of yours or your wife or your husband. Like you're a loser. You're horrible. You think that person's horrible. Well, the only difference