i was stuck for months. here's how i got unstuck.

276. i've been pretty stuck lately. 
for a whole host of reasons. 

i'm getting vulnerable and real with you on today's episode of the tammie bennett show (formerly the show up society podcast).

i also talk about what i did to get unstuck and what's next around here. 

if you loved what i talked about in this episode, you're going to love working with me.

i can help you feel better and get more done when you work with me 1:1. i'll help you figure out a meaningful goal, we'll create an action plan and i'll help you get unstuck all along the way. you don't have to go it alone, and you don't have to burn yourself out!

 
want to see if we are a good fit for 1:1 coaching? go to https://itstammiebennett.com/coaching and schedule a free discovery call to see if we are a good fit and find out what it looks like to work together.

 
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Transcript

New Name And Why I’m Shaken

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, welcome to the Tammy Bennett Show, the podcast for people who want to feel better and get shit done. It's me, Tammy Bennett, life and business coach, and I'm here to share bite-sized episodes full of mindset tips and practical strategies for setting goals and overcoming goblins like procrastination, perfectionism, and overthinking so you can get more done without all that nasty self-talk. And sometimes I just share personal stories about my experience that won't be chalk full of tips, but they will help you feel less alone and probably a lot more normal. This is gonna be fun. Hey friend, did you hear my new intro? I am rebranding. I am no longer going to be the Show Up Society and the Show Up Society podcast, and instead I'm gonna be Tammy Bennett and the Tammy Bennett show, because I am Tammy Bennett. So this whole rebranding thing, along with a lot of other factors going on, has absolutely thrown me into a tizzy, uh, a little mini existential crisis, if you will, uh, which is what today's episode is all about. I'm gonna share why I've been super, super stuck for months and what I did about it, both during it and now, as I'm still climbing myself out of that stuckness. We're gonna talk a little bit, maybe, about what's next around here. So I am willing to bet that you have gone through what I am going to be talking about today, and maybe you even go through it frequently. So I just want you to know you are not alone. I am not alone. We all get stuck sometimes, and it's okay. We can always get unstuck, right? So, in this episode, I hope that sharing my experience will help you get unstuck too. But before we talk about today's topic, I just have a message for you, dear reader. Thank you so much for being here and for listening to this podcast. And thank you to those of you who have left kind reviews on Apple Podcasts. So I've been in a little bit of a slump about this podcast particularly, uh, but I had to find some podcast reviews for my new website. And wow, that really turned my day around reading your kind words. It really made me feel like my words matter, at least to a few people out in the world. And it was such a mood lifter and it gave me kind of purpose again with this podcast. And I want to thank you from all the parts of my heart, not just the bottom of it. And also, I think that my podcast host service just added a feature where if you leave me a message, now I can respond. So in the past, I wasn't able to um, like when you go into your show notes, you'll see a place for like leave me a message or something like that. And um, I've gotten some really, really nice messages, but I never had the capability before of replying to those. And so now, from what I understand, I just got an email about it that my podcast host provider now has that option. So if you want to go into the show notes and leave me a message, I will respond to you. How fun. Okay, so let's talk about me kind of coming back to life after feeling like I've been stuck in concrete for months. So yeah, I mean, I don't even know where to begin. I've been super stuck and overwhelmed and been doing all kinds of overthinking and spinning and not making decisions. Uh, in terms of actions and tasks, I feel like I've done the bare minimum in my business for months. I've done hardly any Instagram or social media posts, hardly any podcast episodes, especially when you consider that I used to do it every week without fail, of very few newsletters, very few pitches to teach workshops or speak on other people's podcasts. Um, and in addition to my business, I have also felt really stuck in my non-work life. So I've been roaming around the house saying that I want to be creative again, specifically um wanting to quilt, to art journal, to write, but I wasn't really doing any of those things. I was buying supplies and downloading quilt patterns and buying journals that I don't need, uh, but I was not creating much. So I've had a lot of creative wants that I wasn't honoring. And they were, I like I just imagine them totally clogging up like this pipe. And I can imagine just this pipe coming at me with all these little, like cute, they're like actually like really cute, kind of like blobby figures. That's all my creative wants. And they're all fighting to get out of the pipe, but there's so many of them coming through that they are clogging the pipe, and none of them are getting out, and they're kind of fighting and they're making like really cute noises actually. But like I wanted to set them free, but I wasn't creating. None of those creative ideas were being able to come out of the pipe. They were all clogged up. Um, I have a huge shelf of books that I really want to read, and I but I wasn't reading. I want to be really fit, but I wasn't really lifting weights. So, what was I doing? Um, I'm gonna talk more about what I was doing in my coaching business later in this podcast, but um and I definitely was doing some work there, but it just felt like the bare minimum compared to years past. Um, but aside from that, I was doomed scrolling on threads and Instagram for way too much time each day. And I was also escaping life uh by watching a lot of TV. Some of it was really good and like made sense, and some of it was not. Um, I was completely spiraling out about the US government and MAGA supporters, and I was reeling in pain and fear and rage from all of the talk about uh all the sex abusers that exist in the world, and it just is so terrible and gross and heavy, and I was having trouble shaking all of that off to um to find things to celebrate and to be creative. And it felt really hard to want to celebrate art and joy and podcasts when the world was melting around me. Although I do know and I do believe that this when the world is melting, um, it is precisely the time to fight for our joy and to fight for our art, not only for ourselves, but for other people to give light and inspiration and that uh connection. Um, so I know it's important, but I wasn't doing it. Um, I had no energy or inspiration really to put out any sort of content in the world because it just felt scary and complicated and exhausting. I also didn't really know what I wanted anything to look like. I was just kind of in this gray fog of just not knowing what the heck I wanted to do. And even if I did know, I don't think I would know how to get there. So um, you know, my brain kept saying things. Keep in mind, my brain, probably like yours, is oftentimes kind of an a-hole, right? Our brains are a-holes sometimes. But um, you know, my a-hole brain was saying things like, Why would you spend energy on Instagram and podcast when you don't know what your brand colors are? Because remember, all of this kind of got started by me rebranding. Um, you don't know what your brand colors are, and you don't even know what what you're gonna call the podcast. And to be for real with you, I still right now at this very moment haven't decided what to do about my Instagram username. My brain also wasn't letting me make decisions. I have been exhausting my supply of decision juice early in each day, and then I have nothing left for the rest of the day, and I'm just completely unable to make decisions. Um, so like I said, this rebrand uh has proved to be way more complicated than I thought, and it had me second-guessing kind of everything. I had to make so many decisions about photos and fonts and colors and designs and tech issues and Gmail domains and just so many things. Um, and it was just, it was way too many decisions coming all at once. And it just, like I said, took all my decision juice and I had nothing left. You know, I've had the name Show Up Society since 2019, and I even paid a lot of money to trademark it. And now all of a sudden, I want to change Show Up Society to Tammy Bennett, and I want to change it everywhere. What am I even doing? What am I even doing, right? So my brain was like, what are you doing? Why are you doing it? This makes no sense. This is such a dumb move. Why do you overcomplicate everything? Why do you always shoot yourself in the foot? You're gonna lose all of this like brand awareness that you've built. So I've been going through it, friend. I have been going through it. I always tell my clients that the most successful people uh tend to make decisions rather quickly and then have their own back, meaning they don't beat themselves up about the decision that they made. They remember why they made it and they move on. And if the decision that they make turns out to have a result that they don't love, they just make another decision and keep moving forward quickly. Uh, but I wasn't doing that. I wasn't making decisions quickly at all. And um, I think it's because all my decision juice ran out. I wish there was a store where you could buy it. Wouldn't that be amazing? My brain was also struggling with wanting to share my creative process. I wanted to share my art, my journals, my quilting, my sewing, my writing. But I was getting so hung up on, well, where do I share it and how do I share it? So let's just pay attention to my brain, and I'm sure you're many of you that are listening to this right now, brains do this also, where I wasn't even creating art. So there wasn't even a problem yet of where I was going to share it because I had nothing new to share, right? But our brains love to jump five steps ahead and try to figure out air quote problems that aren't air quote problems yet. It wasn't a problem of where to share it because I had no art yet. But my brain was like, but where will you share it? Will you share it on a different Instagram or your business Instagram? Will you share it on your website or a different website? And what website platform should you use? And if you're gonna use a different Instagram, what should you name it? And is the name already taken? Can you feel me, right? Can you feel where I'm going with this? I feel like you probably relate. But it got so confusing. And I was like, well, you know, brand experts would tell me don't share your art on your business page because people will be confused. And if they're coming to you for mindset help and coaching help and they see you showing off a quilt that you made, they're gonna be really confused. So I was like, well, maybe I'll turn someone off or confuse them if they come to my Instagram. And um, do they really, does someone really want to see me using stickers and pins when the world is on fire? Is that irresponsible? Is that completely out of touch? Is that tone-deaf? Is that, am I gonna be canceled for, you know, showing this really cute page in my art journal when there's terrible things on the news? And so I just kind of froze and I just didn't take action and make decisions about where or how I would share the art. And that was the thing, funnily enough, that was keeping me from creating the art. So I wasn't deciding on where to put it, but I also wasn't creating it to begin with. Another thing that was having me spinning and spinning was um, I really feel like my face and my body have aged dramatically, like exponentially dramatically in the last few years. Um, I am 51. I am in perimenopause. I have found myself really shying away from social media. When the world seems or is attacking women on every front for being too big or too small or too old or too loud or too quiet, it feels really hard to put ourselves out there. And you know, I've kind of found threads over the past few months and really been more I haven't really been posting there, but I've been definitely scrolling there. And holy cow, when someone gets called out and when the internet decides that that person is bad, it is crazy how the vultures come as squawking. I mean, everybody wants a piece of tearing that person down, and it's so terrifying to think of that happening to me. And so because a lot of what I share online is me and my perspective and my ideas and my coaching, it's uh I post a lot of video and pictures of me because I feel like it's relatable and people relate to me and I relate to others and I want to connect with others. And so, because of this um like kind of fear of how I look, um, and just what what I think all people go through, and I think especially women, but all people go through this where we feel like we're gonna be judged a little bit on how I look um or how we look, and that kept me from showing up on social media in a way that I miss, in a way I really miss connecting with people, and I really miss that uh that attitude where I gave less of a poop about what people thought, and I started giving more of a poop about what people thought, and I don't want to feel that way anymore. And I I hate that it made me feel small and quiet and stuck for a while, but it did, and let's deal with it. So I gave you lots and lots of uh insight into my dark downward spirals in my brain, and so now let's talk a little bit about uh what I did to what what I did about this stuck feeling, okay? One thing I did that's really important, it was really important for me, and I think it will be really important for you if you would like to try this. Is I did not double down and talk trash to myself about being stuck. I refused to shoot all over myself. You should be able to figure this out. This is what you help people do for your literal job. You're a coach, you help people get unstuck. What's wrong with you? Why can't you do it for yourself? You should just get out there and start doing it. You should just post on Instagram, you should just go draw on your journal, just get it done. All that nasty stuff that brains typically do, I did not do that. I refused to let that in the house, right? None of that. So instead, I just noticed that I was stuck. Hmm, I'm feeling pretty stuck. And I kept getting curious instead of judgmental. Why am I stuck? What do I think is going on here? What am I avoiding? And is there something scary about actually doing the thing and finding some success? So in my history, I tend to be a little more afraid of success than I do failure. And um I could give you lots and lots of reasons for that, but I'll save that for therapy. But uh, but anyway, I asked myself these questions almost daily. Hmm, I wonder why I'm stuck. Hmm, I wonder what it is that I'm avoiding. What kind of feeling is it that I'm not feeling ready to feel, right? And so I asked myself this over and over and over, and slowly my brain opened up and answered those questions honestly. And once you know what you're avoiding, then you can create safety to do that thing. So for instance, if I was avoiding something complicated, like trying to figure out my uh my new domain names and Gmail and setting up Google Workspace, all of it was so complicated. I've been on chat with Google support for oh, almost three weeks, and we still haven't solved one of the issues. But anyway, so I wanted to avoid that at all costs. The tedium and complicatedness of that was just of zero interest to me. And so I kept putting off decisions because I didn't want to deal with that. And but once you know, like, oh, I just don't want to face tedium or complication, then you can like kind of work yourself to do it and you can say, well, can I just feel complication for three minutes? Can I just spend three minutes on this Google thing? Instead of judging myself about being stuck and trash talking myself, I just noticed it and I had curiosity. Another thing I did was I celebrated the wins. So I said earlier in this episode that I wasn't doing a lot of things that I normally do to grow my coaching business, like posting on social or sending newsletters or uh doing podcast episodes, but I was showing up for my clients and I have the most clients I've ever had on my roster right now. Um, so my business is the most successful it has ever been in terms of uh number of clients, and um and my clients are creating wins, incredible, powerful wins, and they are standing up for themselves in really strong, inspiring ways. And so I celebrated that like crazy. I also did do several talks and workshops, and I guess it on four podcasts, and so I celebrated the heck out of that. So I wasn't feeling 100% winny, or I was feeling much less winny than in previous times as far as like what effort I'm putting out into the world, but I was creating wins and I made very sure to celebrate those, and that is so important just for humans to learn that skill. Okay, so what else did I do to get me unstuck? Earlier I talked about so many creative ideas clogging the pipe, right? And and one thing that actually kept me stuck was not allowing myself to do what I wanted. So I was saying I wanted to create, and I had this urge, I mean, I could almost just like picture it inside of my body, this creative force that just wanted to be released, but I wasn't letting myself play or sew or draw. And I think a lot of times when we when we don't honor ourselves and our inner wishes, we sort of dry up and we get small and our inner wishes kind of stop talking to us. And then we then we feel really lost, and then we feel like I don't know what I want because your wants have been denied for so long that now they have gone quiet. And they're like, why would we tell you what you want when you ignore us? So one thing I did that helped me get unstuck was to allow these wants to come out into the real world. I allowed them to come to fruition. So even when my a-hole of a brain said, what kind of grown-ass woman plays with rubber stamps and markers when the world is on fire, I ignored that goblin in my head and I said yes to joy. So I started sewing on weekends. I usually would have uh a day where I spent five or six hours sewing and I was doing a lot of quilting. And one thing that really helped me there too was I contributed several quilt squares to uh charity quilts for causes that I really want to support. So that felt like a win-win. It was a win for my creativity, and it was a win for me saying yes to my inner desires to sew and quilt. And it was also saying yes to uh social action because I really feel like um, you know, when the world is melting down, what can we do to help it not burn down? And so it just felt really good to be honoring my creativity, but also to be supporting causes that I really care about in the world. I also started multiple art journals, and so it just helped me to say yes to that creative juice flood that wanted to come out of me, and I said yes, come on out. Another thing I did to help me get unstuck was I just did one decision at a time. So earlier I talked about how there were so many decisions and I was running out of decision juice and it just felt so hard. So I just made each decision tinier, less permanent, and safer. So for instance, I uh would just decide the title page for my art journal. So I have an art journal that I really want to do. Funnily enough, it's called a joy journal, and I have all kinds of ideas for what I want to put in there that I'm gonna be tracking and hunting for joy, but I was getting clogged up and wouldn't let myself start it because I bought this really, really beautiful, kind of expensive journal, and I was scared to mess it up. So I made one decision. I'm gonna just do the title page, and I cut out a little some imagery and I put some words on it, and now I have a title page for my journal. I also decided one photo for my website. When I'm looking at this whole big website and there's like seven or eight photos on it, and I'm trying to figure out copy and decisions this, decisions that, I was like, okay, I'm just gonna decide one photo for this website. So I made the decisions so tiny and less permanent. I could always rip out that page of my journal if I want and start over. I could always change the photo again on the website, right? So I made the decisions tinier, less permanent, and that made them feel a little bit safer. Another thing I did, and this is really important, and I talk about this all the T I M E time with my clients and when I'm teaching my group coaching programs. Um, and I even have a really strong exercise I do with clients to help them figure it out. But this is what I did. I decided what I really want. I hadn't been doing that when during the stuck era, um, of which I'm claming myself out of right now. So, yeah, so during the stuck era, I didn't sit down and I didn't do this exercise for myself, even though I know it is a game changer. So I decided if I really want to get unstuck, I gotta start by knowing what I want and where I want to go. And so I decided I really want to grow my coaching business and I want to teach more and give more workshops and guest on podcast more because I really love uh connecting with new audiences and meeting new friends in the world. I also decided that I want to share other parts of me, uh, my writing, my art. I am so much more than just a coach, and I want to share it, but I also don't want multiple social media profiles, and I don't want to overcomplicate it, and I don't want to have all these different like I kind of think of like Harry Potter and the horror cruxes, and um I don't want to give too much away, but by now you should have read Harry Potter if you're ever gonna read it. And I know that J.K. Rowling is very controversial, but um Harry Potter himself didn't do anything wrong, so I'm still gonna do some Harry Potter reference right here. But um the horror crux is when someone split themselves into many parts and um they couldn't really be whole until those kind of parts came back together in a way. And I kind of feel like I don't want to compartmentalize myself anymore. I just want to show up and be fully me. I I want to be my own number one fan, and I want to share my art and my coaching and my face with the world, and I get to block anybody who doesn't like it. I am so effing tired of playing small, and I'm effing tired of being scared about what the a-holes on social media will say. And I don't want them to win, and they win if we stay quiet, and they win if we don't share our joy, and they win if we don't fight for joy and fight for joyful experiences. And I decided I want to experience unbridled joy like the Artemis II crew and like Alyssa Liu. I don't want to hide part of me just because it's covered in a wrinkled body. I don't want to operate from fear. And so I am going to be working out ways. I I think I have some, I think I have my final idea of how I am going to show up uh as my full self in coaching and also in in creative endeavors and in in other areas of my life. So stay tuned, friend. It's gonna be fun. So I just wanted to say one more thing that I think is pretty important here, and that's that I still had a lot of success even while I was stuck, and I had so many lovely, amazing things, even while I was down on the dumps and stuck and gray. And one of the reasons why my business was still super strong was because of years of foundation that I have been laying. I have planted seeds for years, and I have put myself out there for years. Like, you know, I have over 250 episodes of this podcast, and those were still bringing people to me even when I was stuck. And so this reminds me of like what my husband and I often told our kids when they were growing up, and they felt, you know, sometimes they would get a bad grade and they felt really down and upset about it. And we were like, but all the work that you've done through the squeer has given you this buffer so that one bad grade isn't gonna affect you too much. And when I coached runners, sometimes they would have to take a few days off for an illness, and I would remind them, this is not the end of the world. You've been putting in work all season. So it gives you sort of this buffer. It gives you a little bit of room to have some days where you're not running, right? And so that was the the case for me in my business, is these years of work that I have been doing, and these years of newsletters and podcast posts and guesting on podcasts and showing up on Instagram, all of those, those uh minutes and hours and days and years of work. Uh, I I don't want to discredit those just because I'm in a funk right now, right? Just because I'm not taking as much action right now doesn't that doesn't take away all the work that I've done in the past. And so I just want to remind you if you are feeling stuck, don't discredit all the work that you've done to get yourself here. All the work that you've done so far will help keep you afloat in times where you think you're flailing. And so just because you're stuck right this minute doesn't mean that all the work you've put in before this doesn't count. It does count, okay? So all of this whole entire episode is to say, if you are stuck, it's okay. You will gently find your way out. So keep curious about why you are stuck, and then help yourself feel safe to face whatever that is that you are trying to avoid. Okay, figure out what it is you really want, and then help yourself create safety to go do that. That's what I did, and I'm feeling pretty darn unstuck, and I am feeling like I am ready to. Oh, this is gonna sound so cheesy. Should I do it? I think I'm gonna do it. I'm ready to soar, friends. I'm kind of ready to soar, okay? So thank you again for being here with me. Thank you so much. Now go out there and show up for yourself, okay, friend. Friend, if you liked what I talked about in this podcast and you want a little help applying it to your life so you can feel better and do more of what you want, you're gonna love working with me one-on-one as your coach. I will help you with strategy and mindset so you can figure out what you want, make an action plan, and I'll help you get unstuck all along the way. Go to showupsociety.com slash coaching to set up a discovery call to see if we are a good fit. Hey, loyal podcast listener. Thank you so much for listening to this episode all the way through to the end. So, your secret mission is to find me on Instagram. I am still at Show Up Society on Instagram as of right now. I'm still deciding what to do about it. Uh, but go to Instagram, find me at Show Up Society, and then find the post that corresponds to this podcast episode. And I want you to leave me an emoji that has something to do with art. If you agree that I should show more of my art to the world, and that will be our secret code to let me know that you listened to this episode. And it will also let me know and give me a little vote of confidence that sharing our art with the world is important and that I should do it. And if you feel called to do it, you should too. Okay, thanks, friend.