Feeling Stuck? Just STOP for a second!

I’m a self confessed learning junkie. My mantra for too long had been ‘more is more’ when  it came to self development and personal growth.  

Whilst I certainly wouldn’t advice anyone to turn down the volume on their focus, drive and  determination to do better, there are certainly times when knowing when to hit the pause  button can be truly game changing.  

For so long I would see any moment of calm or quiet as an opportunity to cram and  consume more information that just might make the difference in me reaching the next  level.  

In this episode I share some of the reflections I’ve had in developing my ability to self  develop. 

I talk about.. 

•  How to slow down to speed? 

•  How to give yourself permission to pause. 

•  Why some times letting your sub conscious breath can reveal answers you didn’t know  were within you. 

PLUS, I share with you an amazing online workshop I've got coming up for you! 

SEASON 3 - EPISODE 56

Hello, my friends, I hope you're all good today. I'm so excited to be back. So I’ve just been away for two  weeks in America, and it was everything I needed. You don't really realise, how getting out and just  changing your routine and changing your environment makes such a difference. I just felt like a new  person. I've got a whole new kind of like, I don't know, I just feel like a whole weight has been lifted off.  It’s been different, I've had sun and you know, I've just had some time to kind of get out of my routine  because what I feel like is, especially when you have kids, every day can be really, really similar if  you're not careful. You can kind of really get into this rut, like this a bit of a mundane rut. That's where I  kind of felt like I was getting to and I just feel I felt incredible. So my tip to you is to, as much as you  can, try and change your environment. So even if you don't have, like, you know, a big holiday plan or  something like that, just changing up your routine makes such a difference. So if you're working from  home now that we're allowed out and about, see if you can work one day in a coffee shop, or an  afternoon in a coffee shop, or even in a different room or change around your office or do something  that changes up your routine and your environment because it just completely changes your mindset. I  found that it was yeah, it was amazing to get away and another thing that was amazing to get away  was just that I was able to in the first week, we actually went to Disney in Orlando and it was incredible,  to like, experience Disney through the kids eyes and I know that they're really young, and they probably  won't remember it but they definitely experienced it. Frankie for sure. He was like literally having the  time of his life. It really enabled me to not be on my phone, obviously not being on my laptop, not  thinking about my work and stuff that I'm doing. It just completely allowed me some time to switch off  and get a little bit of headspace and that is actually what I wanted to talk to you about today.  

I found so much value in giving my head a little bit of space. When I'm at home, I'm always packing my  head with stuff. Even when I go and have like, even if I think I'm gonna have a really relaxing bath  tonight, I get in the bath and I watch a webinar. Or watch a training video or I watch a YouTube video  about cryptocurrency. I literally do not stop learning. I'm a learning junkie and I love it. At the time, it's  amazing but it's only really when you step away that you realise you haven't given yourself any space  to think. The reason I started thinking about this was because a girl in my team, she posted on  Facebook the other day, saying…I love these like kind of raw and vulnerable posts, I really don't like it  when people try and portray that they're, you know, so positive and so on it when they're not. She  posted a really vulnerable post and she said, Does anyone else feel like that no matter how much they  read and how much they listen to and how much they do for like personal development and work on  themselves that they’re just still stuck. She said that that's how she was feeling. I could massively relate  because I've definitely had those times in my life where I felt stuck. I felt like I, I'm lacking direction and  

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motivation and stuff like that. So I've lent in more to personal development, and it's just got worse and  worse and worse. It was only until probably about a year ago really that I realised. It was in lockdown  actually. I went for a walk without my phone and it was only then that I realised that you have to give  yourself brain space to think. When you're in that place of feeling like no matter what you consume,  you're still stuck. The reason you're still feeling stuck is because you are over saturating yourself.  Imagine this. You need to give yourself time to digest it, basically. So imagine this, imagine if you were  just constantly eating and eating and eating. By the way, I feel like that's what I've been like in America.  Imagine if you just ate and ate and ate and ate and you didn't digest any of it. You didn't give yourself  any time to just break it down, work through it, digest it, and then you ate some more, you just wouldn't  do that. You would feel so sick and so disgusting if you just kept cramming your face with all this stuff.  This is actually what we do a lot of the time with with personal development, we just cram, cram, cram,  cram cram it in and don't ever take a moment to really digest it. T 

The thing is, all of this personal development is completely pointless if you don't figure out how to apply  it to yourself, and the only way that you can figure out how to apply it to yourself is to have self  awareness. The only way to have self awareness is to actually hear what's going on in your head.  Sometimes that can be a little bit of a scary place to be you know, I've shared here before that there  was a time where you know me and Kurt were going through a bit of a tricky patch and I I just couldn't  bear to be with my own thoughts. Myself at that time, I was really kind of like struggling with low self  esteem and low self worth and I just was not in a good place personally. I could not bear sitting for two  minutes without some kind of distraction without scrolling on my phone or having something on TV.  Most of the time I'd be scrolling on my phone while watching something on TV while doing something  else. I think, if you're in that place where you're kind of, you're always scared to give yourself the space  to figure out and listen to what's going on in your head. That's something that you really, really need to  work through.  

Giving yourself space is so important, because also, we actually have all the answers that we need  inside of us already. The problem is we're actually just not asking the right questions, to find those  answers. I love asking questions, asking questions is one of my favourite things to do. Whenever I meet  someone, I'm always asking them questions. I always ask loads of questions of myself. That's actually  what these, you know, these little ‘Made for More - Moments’ are about, it's about asking you questions  to make you think differently. That's why a lot of my coaching actually, if you've been on the workshops  with myself, and Michelle, a lot of the coaching is actually not us telling you how to do stuff or what to  do. It's actually just asking you questions to get you thinking. So I want to encourage you if you're  feeling in that place where you are so over consumed and it's a very normal place to be in right now,  especially in January, maybe you've just gone on an absolute binge of learnings, you're like, This is the  year I'm going to make the most of myself. I want to encourage you to just stop for a second. There is  so much power in a pause. I want you to stop and just listen to what's going on in your head and feel  what's going on in your heart. Your intuition can lead you so far, if you just give it the space, if you  actually just tune into it and say, okay, cool, what am I actually feeling about this.  

There's been times when I’ve been feeling anxious, I do actually get, I'm quite anxious. I'm not an  anxious person, but I do feel strong feelings of anxiety quite a lot, and again, I only recognised that  probably about six months ago. I've learned to really tune into it and figure out where that's coming from  and that's been so powerful for me, you know. It’s been such an incredible tool to be able to recognise a  way that you're feeling and then tune into your intuition and and feel it enough to understand why you're  feeling that way because then you can move forward. I want to encourage you, like I said, to just stop  

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for a second, go for a walk without your phone, sit on the loo without your phone. That probably sounds  gross, but I would never do that. Go and have a bath without reading a book or without watching a  cryptocurrency webinar, or you know, without something on in the background, just takes some time.  Even being in the car, I find myself, when I'm in the car & I don't have any music on or any audio or a  podcast or something like that, I can get into a really good kind of thinking space then because there is  a little bit of distraction going on but you can get into a good thinking place. Just tune in and figure out  what it is that you really need. And all this stuff that you've been consuming, how can you actually apply  that to you? And does it apply to you? You know, again, we can get caught up in listening to these  recommendations of books that we should read. And you know, for such a long time, I would be on  training calls and someone would say, you need to listen to this book, blah, blah, and I write it down and  I'd go and buy it. And then I'd start reading the book and I’d be like, I don't know if I'm really connecting  with this book, but I'm going to keep going. I didn't really have the kind of confidence in myself or the  understanding of myself to say, actually, this book doesn't apply to me, like this book isn't where I'm at  right now and it's not what I need.  

It's only when you really understand where you're at right now and what you need that you can figure  out what it is that you actually need. Does that make sense? So yeah, take a walk, have a bath, take  some time, even meditating, you know, like meditating is so so powerful. If you can do it for five or 10  minutes every single morning. Most of the time, the problem that you've woken up with or the the  

anxiety that you feel, that you've woken up with or the things that are stressing you out and things that  are on your mind, you can actually subconsciously work through quite a lot of it in that meditation  session. So much of my ideas and my creativity that comes to me now is never actually…it doesn't  come to me because I've just watched something or I've just listened to something or I've just, you  know, consumed myself with something it actually comes when I'm in silence, and I give myself that  space, so you have permission to do less. If you have been completely doing everything and you feel  like you're hitting your head against a brick wall, and you're thinking, How do I get out of this rut? I'm  giving you permission, at least for the next week, to just stop, have a pause, have a bit of silence, don't  consume anything, and try and work through what you've already got. Ask yourself questions. Ask how  am I feeling today? How do I feel about that? If you're presented with an opportunity, think, how does  that make me feel? Will that make me happy? Am I excited to do that?  

If you look in your calendar, and think, am I excited to do everything that's in my calendar right now,  because again, you can get so caught up in doing these activities, you know, I need to do this and you  should do that, I need to do that. You can look at your calendar and think 60% of that stuff in my diary, I  dread doing. You have no idea. You just go about your day, and you're doing all these tasks, but you  actually dread doing half the stuff that is on your calendar. So look at what you're doing, look at your  activities, really tune in and think how does that make person make me feel when I spend time with  them? How does the activity make me feel when I do it? Am I excited about certain things? Ask yourself  these questions and really trying to figure out, try and figure out what it is you need right now and you  know what it is that's, that's keeping you stuck and then figure out what that is and then you can go to  work working on that specific thing, as opposed to working on every other thing that every other person  is working on right now, that may not be relevant to you at all. Just try and listen. Stop and listen.  

Thank you so much. I hope you found that helpful. I would never have given myself permission before  to pause and not do anything. My mentality was always the more I do the more I achieve. The more I  succeed, the more I will keep people happy and actually, it's not always the way. So I'm giving you  permission to have a little chill. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to talk to you next week. I've got so much exciting stuff coming and I just absolutely love showing up and helping you every single week  and I really hope it helps you. Thanks so much, guys. Bye