I've been getting a lot of questions about how do I move forward in my life?
How do I get unstuck?
And so this episode is about getting unstuck in your life and gaining momentum.
And this could be good for someone who is also trying to reach a goal.
So if you're one of those people who've been planning at the beginning of the new year
and setting these big goals, but you're a little bit stuck right now, this episode is also
for you.
So inside of this episode, I'm going to share with you a proven strategy that will help
you get unstuck and gain momentum.
Okay, guys, let's get into it.
You're listening to the Seoul Aligned Self-Care Podcast.
I'm your host, Tina Stinson, and I had a stroke at the age of 39 from stress and burnout
that shook my world.
Now I'm laying it all out.
The deep-level self-care practices and mindset shifts that I needed that kept me healthy,
balanced, and thriving.
Join me in this intimate space as we explore healing, resilience, and a soul's journey to alignment.
This is where real conversations about deep-level self-care happen.
Let's get into it.
[MUSIC]
Hello, and welcome back to the Seoul Aligned Self-Care Podcast.
This week we are talking about how to get unstuck and gain momentum in your life.
And I think I decided to talk about this because this time of year, there's a lot of people
that are setting goals and just have planning for the year.
And I do a lot of planning for the year.
I love it.
I have so much fun with it.
And I think I did a podcast episode back, maybe a couple of times back.
But anyway, but what happens a lot of times, especially around this time, so we're getting
into mid to end January.
And either people have not really stuck with their goals or they've had a little bit
of frustration.
Or also this episode could also help you with trying just to get unstuck in your life when
you're just feeling stuck.
It might have nothing to do with goals, okay?
This tool that I'm going to share with you today, this is a really fun strategy that I
use in my own life and it always works.
I always go to it when I'm just feeling a little stuck, stagnant or like uninspired.
Or sometimes you're just, you're completely inspired.
You have these big goals, but you just don't know where to start, okay?
And so this strategy is really helpful for that.
And so some of the reasons why we might get stuck, right?
It might just be that our goals are huge.
And we're just in a state of overwhelm.
We don't know how to start.
And I actually encourage people to set really big, huge goals because I believe it kind
of draws you closer to the life that you want to live instead of being, I just say, I don't
know how to describe it really.
I feel like it's just so much more inspiring to set these big, huge goals and it starts to
like bring what you really want into that, into your life, into the universe knows what
you want.
And it starts coming towards you instead of setting these little, okay, I'll settle for
that and that'll be great.
Okay?
I just feel like big goals are great as long as you know how to approach them.
So that might be one reason that you feel stuck.
Another reason a person could feel stuck is maybe there's just been focused on something
else.
It could be their family, it could be their partner.
It could be a distraction of, you know, something, a sickness in a family.
There's so many things that could have you just remain so focused on another person
that you almost lose yourself, right?
So you lose that contact with yourself, you lose that knowing of what you really want
in your life, what inspires you, what brings you joy, you just lose that connection with
yourself, okay?
And this happens a lot, you know, just while people are raising their children, sometimes
when they're in a tough marriage, sometimes, and usually what really stirs them is something
that's upset them like an illness or divorce or maybe the kids go to off to college.
And they're like, okay, who am I now, right?
And so they just feel completely stuck.
And I think it's very normal for this to happen for all of us at all these different times
in our lives, these transitional times.
And that's why it's really great to have someone to help you during these transitional times,
whether it's a partner, a friend, a coach, whoever it might be, a therapist, a counselor,
because we all face them many, many times in our life.
And we all have to move through them.
So this little strategy, this tool is so much fun that I'm going to share with you.
Also another reason you might be stuck is that you have this goal or you have this something
that you want to bring into your life or an experience that you want to have.
And you've tried some things, maybe you've been throwing spaghetti at the wall and nothing's
working for you.
And you're just getting completely frustrated, you're beating yourself up, you feel like
a failure.
And I'll, I mean, if you haven't listened to last week's podcast about using failure for
your benefit, then you should go listen to that.
Maybe I'll link it in the show notes for you guys because it definitely pairs with this
really well.
Right?
So there's a couple of different reasons why you might be feeling stuck.
And you might feel absolutely awful, right?
You maybe even stuck for a long time and you just, you've tried all these things and you
can't get out.
But you also might be really inspired like you might have this really exciting goal and you
want to work towards it, but you're still frustrated, right?
So there's so many different things going on here.
So if you're the first person where you're just miserable, I guess the first question that
I would ask you is what do you want?
So you have to know what you want.
You know where you're at, right?
And you have to know what you want.
And a lot of times when people are the stuck and they're this disconnected with themselves,
they don't know what they want.
I get that answer almost all the time for most people, right?
And so I guess then I would move on to how do you want to feel?
All right?
So most of the time when we're setting a goal, even if it, whether it's a physical goal or
an actual material goal, like I want this car or whatever, it might not be, it's, most
of the time, it's not the actual thing that you want, right?
Most of the time it's the feeling that you're going to have when you have the thing you want.
You're working towards a feeling.
So like if you want a fancy car, you might want to feel successful.
You might want to feel important, right?
So there's, there's usually a feeling you're working towards and it's really, it's a whole
lot easier to bring joy back into your life and get on stock when you know the feeling
that you want to experience.
Most people could say, I want to feel happy.
I want to feel secure.
I want to feel safe.
I want to feel inspired.
I want to have energy again, whatever it is, what do you want to feel?
Okay?
And so that's what I would start with.
So either way, for all of us, you want, you want to figure out what you want.
And so like if you already have the goal, you know what you want, but I also want you
to think about how you, how are you going to feel when you have that goal?
What's the feeling that you're going after?
Okay?
And so the two questions are for both people, people who know what they want, people who
don't know what they want.
Okay?
If you, if you seriously don't know what you want, just write down the feelings that you
want to have or you could kind of do a journaling exercise where it's kind of like, if
I was the type of person who knew what I want, what would I write down?
Okay?
And this is just a fun way and just guess, just make shit up.
Okay?
So obviously this is a journaling strategy.
You guys know me.
And now I always do, almost always do journaling work.
And this is one of my favorite things to do.
Sometimes I actually forget about it and then I bring it back into my life when I'm feeling
like really stuck with a certain, like a certain thing that I've been shooting for for a while
and I'm like, God, why can't I do this?
You know, that's when I think of it again.
So I forget about it sometimes.
And very recently I've been feeling very stuck with just a couple of things.
And so I'm like, all right, we're going to pull this out and I actually sat and did this exercise
last night.
And that's why I decided to talk about it this week with you guys because it's just so easy.
It's actually a fun exercise too.
So what's next?
What's the next move?
So I want you to like think about why another reason why you might be stuck.
Like if you have a goal, so another reason that I think we all need to realize, and this
I do this a lot to myself is that we're stuck from fear.
Okay.
And so what we want might be like this big goal might be really different.
It's uncomfortable to like go for that, which I always think that I always say this magic
on the other side of discomfort when you're working towards a goal.
There's always magic on the other side of discomfort.
You have to be uncomfortable in order to grow.
Like we all know that, right?
And so, but the thing is is that our brain is there.
The brain's job is to protect you, right?
And so if you're super uncomfortable, your brain is going to stop you from doing whatever
it is.
So you might, it might be super comfortable where you're at right now, but it's not good
for you, right?
But your brain doesn't care.
Your brain is like, this is comfortable and safe.
It's familiar.
We're going to stay here.
And you'll end up just sabotaging yourself in order to keep yourself safe.
And I know it doesn't sound like you're not doing it consciously.
It's definitely subconsciously, but that's what happens.
And I see this in myself all the time.
Like I'll be doing something maybe for my business and I'll make some kind of a really, really,
really stupid mistake.
And I'm like, how do I make that mistake?
And it's like just like me sabotaging myself sometimes.
So I want you to be aware of that sabotage.
And when it pops up, I want you to kind of like call yourself out.
If you can, even sometimes when I'm working towards a really big goal, I'll get sick.
And usually I'm like, you know, I'm all about self-care.
And so like if I'm sick, I'm going to rest.
But at the same time, if I'm working on a project and I think that this might be some kind
of a self-sabotage, I'll actually push myself through.
I'll get the rest I need, but I'll keep moving forward.
I don't stop because I feel like this is some kind of self-sabotage.
I'll almost always get sick when I'm working towards something huge.
Right?
So I want you to just be aware of that.
Like it's in the background.
And sometimes also we're like I said earlier, we're just completely overwhelmed with the
size of the goal or we've been trying stuff and we've been repeatedly like failing and failing
and failing.
And I'll talk about this more in a little bit.
What I want you to realize is that when you fail, there's an action that you have to take
in order to keep moving forward and it's not beat yourself up and make yourself feel bad.
Okay?
And so let's get into the practice.
Let's start doing this.
And so obviously this is a journaling exercise.
And so what I want you to do is we're going to go back and we're going to look at either
what we want, excuse me, or what we want and how we want to feel.
Okay?
And I really want you to think about the feelings that you have.
A lot of times, no matter what your goal, you could have like 10, 15 goals.
The feeling that you want might be the same thing for every single goal.
And that's very normal.
You know, a lot of people want to feel free to them, right?
That's very, very common thing that people want.
So it might be just that like if you were saying I want to make more money or I want to
better job or I want to go back to school.
Maybe that'll end up meaning I want more freedom in my life.
I want more choices.
Okay?
And so I really want you to dig deep and ask yourself the feeling that you want.
Okay?
Now what you're going to do is you're going to write 25.
Don't get overwhelmed with this.
Like 25 to 50 little mini micro actions that you could take that can get you closer to
that feeling or that goal.
Okay?
And so I'll give you some examples.
Sorry, that was my phone.
I forgot to turn my phone off for a podcast recording.
I'm not starting over.
So so I'll give you some examples.
So if you are say say you're using this one, but it's so easy to use if you're trying to
lose weight, like a little micro, little micro goal might be.
I'm going to drink my coffee tomorrow morning with no sugar.
And that's it.
I'm not saying I'm going to drink my coffee every morning with no sugar.
I'm going to drink my coffee tomorrow morning with no sugar.
And then another little micro goal might be I'm going to go for a walk for five minutes
outside.
All right?
Say you're trying to buy a certain car.
Okay?
So it might be the first step might be to decide the color and what package you want.
The second little micro step might be find out how much it cost.
The third little micro step might be find out what your payment would be.
If you can afford it, then you might apply for a loan or you might have to maybe make more
money.
Maybe you want to save up for a down payment.
Maybe you want to like just open up a brand new bank account that serves only for the
purpose of saving money up for the car.
Maybe you want to pay cash for the car.
That sounds crazy, right?
I'll let it, but you know, doable, right?
You could look into what it would cost to buy that car as a used car.
Nowadays that's usually not cheaper, but that might be an option in the future.
Maybe you're listening to this podcast sometime in the future when use cars aren't ridiculous
anymore.
So these are like little tiny steps that are so doable, really, really quick steps.
Now, the next thing that I want you to keep in mind and I told you I was going to talk
about a little bit about failure, right?
So the next thing that you're going to do is you're going to ask yourself after you
take this little mini step, so you drink your coffee in the morning without sugar.
How did that feel?
How did that work out?
Do I need to shift something?
Is there something else I need to do that would work out better?
So like if it works out, right?
So you were like, that was easy.
I could do that every morning.
Maybe I'll do that again, right?
So what I want you to do though, it sounds ridiculous.
And this is from one of those habit books.
I can't remember if I think it's tiny habits, it might be atomic habits.
I apologize if I'm getting it wrong to the people who wrote those books, but I kind of
blend those two books together because I read them at the same time.
But you have to celebrate, right?
So this not only does this help you gain momentum, but it does something in your brain where
you want to do more.
It like you're like, oh, that felt good.
And now I want to do it again because it felt good.
So the celebration part is the feel good part.
So sometimes these little mini steps were taking like not having sugar in our coffee,
might not feel too good.
I get used to having my coffee without sugar, but God, it's so good with sugar, isn't it?
It's just so good.
So taking that, doing that the first time might not feel the greatest, but you did it and
it was pretty easy.
So you're going to high five yourself in the mirror and you're going to do a celebration
dance.
You're going to put on your favorite song and you're going to celebrate.
And I know it sounds ridiculous, but this is the step that you can't skip.
That is the step that you can't skip, right?
None of the steps.
Right now you can skip.
So you have to figure out what you want.
You have to know how you want to feel and you have to write, I say, 25 to 50, just do the
50.
I did it last night.
It's not that hard to come up.
These are tiny little, easy little things, right?
And you're going to do one a day.
So that, you know, drinking the coffee without sugar that worked out, okay?
And then you celebrate it, right?
And then you have the next thing on your list, which might be, um, I'm not going to
eat candy today or I'm maybe you're a sweet person like me and I'm not going to eat any
sweets today or I'm not going to eat any sweets during the week or I guess for the day would
be good because it's small, right?
With the make them small, right?
So you're going to go on to the next thing that's on your list.
Now, if it didn't work out, if you took a step and it just didn't work out, it didn't
feel good, you're going to say to yourself, okay, that didn't work out.
Now, you're not going to beat yourself up.
You're not going to say that you're a failure.
You're not going to say I suck at this.
You're not going to say I'm never going to reach my goal because I don't know what I'm
doing.
That's not what you're going to say.
What you're going to say is what any successful person would say and that is, okay, that didn't
work out.
How can I do it better?
What can I do differently?
How do I need to shift?
You know, what do I need to do that's different, right?
Cross that one off your list.
I'm not going to do that again.
That didn't work out, okay?
And you're going to do something better or different.
You're going to move on to the next step.
You're going to keep going, right?
You're not going to beat yourself up.
That's the most important thing if you don't remember when it comes to when a step, excuse
me, when a step that you took didn't work out is not to beat yourself up, not to look
at it as something bad.
You're going to look at it as feedback.
Like I said in my last podcast, which I will put in the show notes, failure is not bad.
Failure is just feedback from your actions in order to help you move towards your goal
faster.
It's an education.
It's a learning point, okay?
That's all it is.
So then you're just like, all right, I'm moving on to the next thing, right?
So you're going to go on your list and just keep going, keep going and remember to celebrate.
And so like the more you do this, the more you're, what are you doing?
You're moving.
You're taking steps.
You see when we're stuck and we're overwhelmed, we might keep saying, I'm stuck.
I'm stuck.
I'm stuck.
What am I doing?
I'm doing the same thing.
I'm doing the same thing over and over and you're expecting a different result just because
you don't know what to do, right?
So making this list, I want you to, it's a brainstorming thing.
You know, it doesn't mean that you have to come up with all these perfect things.
It's not perfect we're looking for.
We're just looking for a starting point.
We're looking someplace to create momentum and start movement because we're stuck, right?
And so that's what this list does.
So I want you to have fun with it.
I'm up with different things.
Now, while you're thinking of things like so say you want the car, okay?
Say you want to lose weight, right?
So those are the two things I kind of used as examples.
So you want the car and I talked about all the steps that little steps you could take to
actually physically move forward to get the car.
But the feeling you want when you have the car is you want to feel successful.
Well, what can I do right now to make me feel successful?
So like maybe tomorrow morning I'm going to get up and get ready and get dressed.
Even if I work from home, I'm going to dress and I'm going to look successful and I'm going
to feel successful.
Maybe it's networking with other people who have what you want, right?
So maybe if it's like I'm going to connect with one person today that I think is successful
and I'm going to just try to connect with them.
That's it.
One little step.
That could be a high on Facebook.
That could be someone you know personally.
You can send them a text message.
You can invite them for coffee, whatever it is.
I'm going to surround myself with successful people so that I can learn from it or I could
embody the feeling of success, right?
So there's you have to make little steps that go towards the feelings too.
It's really important as a matter of fact, I think it's so much easier to take steps towards
the feeling.
I want to feel safe and comfortable.
I want to feel free.
So maybe today I'm going to write a list of the reasons that I am free and you'll come up
with some reason and you'll be like, wow, I'm pretty free right now.
I don't even realize how free I am.
We're all free to make our own decisions, right?
And so taking these little, what I call like micro many and I call it that these micro
many steps because I want to emphasize the fact that they have
to be small.
Even when I was making my list, I made a few that were a little too big.
I'm just going to admit it.
I did do 50 and it did not take me long.
I really expected it to take longer.
I wasn't even sure if I would reach 50, but I would say I was probably at it for only 30
minutes.
It was just like it just kept popping up.
I have a lot of goals that I set.
So there's a lot of different feelings that I want to embody.
And so I think that it was easy for me to come up with little things.
One of your goals might be, I don't know, it could be the car or the home.
It could be, I want to feel happy.
I want to feel if I have a new home and a lot of people think this, if I have a new home,
I'm going to be happy.
If I have this new car, I'm going to be happy.
So the feeling I'm working towards is happiness.
Well, how can I bring happiness into my life today?
Because you don't have to wait for that shit, right?
I mean, it might take a little bit of time to get the car, but you don't have to wait to
be happy.
You don't have to be, you don't have to wait to be filled with joy.
So what can you do?
I could watch a funny movie today.
I can connect with one of my old friends.
I could have lunch with a friend today.
I could hang out with my dog and play with my dog.
You know, there's so many things that make me happy.
I could go for a run.
I could do a yoga class.
I could have a cup of coffee and sit down and read my book.
I could pick a new book.
Sometimes I read a lot of books where I'm learning, learning, learning, and sometimes I
just want to read like a fun book that's just a book.
And so that's like one of the things on my list is to read a book just for fun, not
to learn something.
And so every time I read a book just for fun, not to learn something, I always learn something,
which is really funny.
And so if you guys have any recommendations for fun books I could read, the last fun book
I read was, I think it was called Midnight Library.
That was a really cool book.
So I would love any recommendation.
And you could send them to me on Instagram @aptinistenceandcoach.
And so just keep adding stuff to the list.
Even if you are not sure that this is going to bring you closer, what I want you to
realize is when you're doing things and working towards those feelings, you're like Tina,
what is being happy?
Have anything to do with getting my new car?
So if you're a constantly miserable person, and you're feeling stuck in miserable, it's
going to be a lot harder to reach a goal and bring yourself closer to a dream.
But if you're feeling happy, it's just automatically raises your vibration.
So much easier to manifest things into your life when your vibration is higher.
So when you are bringing joy into your life, so if you're like super stuck, you're like
Tina, I just don't know where to start.
Just focus on the feeling.
I want to feel joy, I want to feel love, I want to feel free, whatever it is, even if
it's just three feelings that you want to feel this year, then I want you to write all
the things that you could do to feel that way.
You're going to be different than me, right?
So write down all the things that will help bring that, and that's going to help you gain
momentum and don't forget the celebration part.
When you do it, I sat down, I had a cup of coffee, and I read my book for 10 minutes, right?
Sometimes we don't do things because we don't think we have enough time.
If I have like, I always keep like a bumper of like 10 to 15 minutes in between clients,
and I'll do quick things like that.
But a lot of times we don't feel like we have any time because it's 10 minutes, but really
I could make a cup of tea and sit down and read a page of my book in 10 minutes.
I could do like a little stretch routine.
I could put on my favorite song and dance in my living room for 10 minutes.
These are different things that you could do to raise your vibration, feel better, and
start bringing those things into your life.
And this creates momentum.
This always creates momentum.
Now, if you don't know how to celebrate, because I said how important celebration is, some
ideas of celebration are, and after some time you'll figure out your own.
Sometimes I just kind of like pat myself on the back.
Sometimes you can go into the mirror and just like give yourself a high five.
You could do the, you could have a celebration song.
This is, I think, the best way to do it.
I think you have a certain song that to you means celebration, and you're going to put that
song on and you're going to dance for the whole song.
Every time you have a win, you dance for the whole song.
And it could be something silly.
Like, maybe your goal is to gain followers on your Instagram for your business, right?
So every time you get a follower, you do a dance.
Like people tend to forget about every one of those followers is an actual person.
And if you put the person in the room and you have 100 followers, and you put 100 people
in a damn room, that's a lot of freaking people.
So I know it doesn't seem like a lot of followers, but if you celebrate each one and you realize
that each one of those people is an actual person.
And if you're actually connecting with each one of those people, that's a lot of people.
Okay.
And so like, celebrate it.
Celebrate it every time.
Okay.
This brings more of that into your life.
So I hope this episode was really good for you.
Now if you want to go deeper into this type of these type of practices in my soul aligns
self-care intensive, which is a deep level self-care program, but we also work on, we do a lot
of mindset work in there.
So it's like reset the mind, reset the body, reset the soul.
Okay.
And this year, I've decided I go live every month.
I have a coaching session and a Q&A for everybody in there.
And I usually just kind of bring up random topics that are within the program.
So I kind of stick to the 11 self-care, deep level self-care practices that I have in the
program, or maybe some of the master classes that are in there.
And I'll talk about the topic and I'll answer the questions that I get from the people.
Right.
And so this year, I'm kind of going to do it in order because there's 11 practices, I feel
like I would be cool to work through it through the whole year and then take December off
because there's 11 practices or maybe you have a master class in December.
I'm not really sure what I'm going to be feeling at the end of the year.
So this week, today, actually, you could join us for the session if you listen to this in
time.
But even if you can't join the session live, the replays are all in the intensive.
All right.
So I'm going to do a live program and all the past recordings are in there.
So you can go in there and listen to all the past recordings of the coaching sessions
I've had in there.
So if you want to go deeper on this topic, I'll be talking about your starting point because
that's where I start in the program because in order to get to where we want to go, whether
that is to reduce stress and anxiety or you have goals or you're in a state of overwhelm
and you want to be in a state of calm, whatever your goal is, you need to know your starting
point and you also need to know where you want to go.
And so I always discuss this.
That's in the first module of the program.
So I'm going to go deeper into that, but I'm also going to talk about what I talked about
today.
I'm going to share this strategy and talk a little bit more deeper about failure.
So it's probably going to be a longer, live than usual, at least an hour and hour and
a half, probably.
So if you want to join us in the intensive, it's open right now.
So I'll put the link in the show notes so you can check it out.
And if you have any questions, you could do a private message me on Instagram @teanestintsandcoach.
Okay, guys, that's it for today.
It's been a pleasure hanging out with you.
Remember to add deep-level self-care into your life every single day.
Love you.
Bye.
Don't forget those book recommendations on Instagram.
All right.
Bye.
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