In this stage of life, you’ve felt the call to adventure, but for a multitude of mental and physical reasons (or excuses, as you’ll come to know them), you just can’t seem to get unstuck.
But the process of feeling and then getting unstuck is actually part of the hero’s journey.
If you didn’t get stuck, you wouldn’t be able to overcome the obstacles and become the hero you were meant to be. So stop beating yourself up and instead use this second part of an 11-episode series as a springboard to get yourself unlocked and on to the next stage of your hero’s journey.
Explore with me today why we feel so bad about getting stuck, even if we know it’s a part of the process. We’ll take a look at a personal hero of mine, Luke Skywalker, who didn’t simply meet Obi-Wan Kenobi and decided to tag along. I will also provide an exercise that we do with our students to help them overcome this stagnant feeling. We will hit a sequence of prompt questions, getting down to the gritty details: what patterns you see in enjoyable accomplishments you’ve had in the past, and what your goals should be without listening to the “they.” Ultimately, these questions will act as the rungs of the ladder that gets you out of the muck.
Because no one wants to look back in 20 years with regrets, let’s get you toward the journey you were meant to have today.
3 Key Takeaways
- It’s normal to be the reluctant hero. It’s important to acknowledge these thoughts before moving forward.
- My provided questions worksheet will help you get yourself unstuck, but beware answering how “They” would.
- Impostor syndrome is especially strong in this stage, but you have to continue despite it.
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Full Episode Transcript:
You’re listening to the Storied Life Coaching podcast with Aaron J. Jacobs, episode number five. In this episode, we’re diving into part two of the Hero’s Journey: the refusal of the call to adventure, and how it’s totally normal forward.
What if you could write your own life story? How would you spend your time? What would your career or business look like? What kind of parent or partner would you be?
Welcome to Storied Life Coaching, the only podcast that will show you how to stop living life by default, and teach you how to build a thriving business that fuels an amazing life on your terms. I’m Aaron J. Jacobs and as a master coach and the CEO of OMH creative and storied coaching. I’ve had the privilege and opportunity to learn what it takes firsthand to rewrite your own life story. It’s never too late for a rewrite.
Welcome, my friends, today we’re going to be talking about getting unstuck. Some of you feel stuck, you feel like you can’t get unstuck and I’m here to tell you that that is actually part of the hero’s journey. It absolutely is, so you can stop beating yourself up right now because if you didn’t get stuck, you wouldn’t be able to overcome an obstacle and become the hero and follow the adventure that you’re meant to have. How’s that? I can just end the episode right there, maybe I should save you all a bunch of time but I’m actually going to walk you through how to do this and some questions that you can ask yourself and some results that you can get so you can methodically move yourself out of this in fact.
I’m gonna give you an exercise so you can do it like in 20 minutes or less. Our students love it. It allows you to get unlocked and move towards what you want in your adventure and get on to the next stage, which we’ll talk about in the next episode, but not to get ahead of myself, let’s talk about being stuck.
Why? Why do we feel so bad about that? I know I do. I know how this works, and I still do it, I’ll feel stuck about something, I’ll know that there’s a call to adventure happening, I know that I can’t just keep doing the thing as normal anymore from the ordinary world because I’ve seen the potential for the adventurer in front of me and I feel pulled towards it, but I’m looking for all kinds of reasons to not do it. In fact, your favorite people and your favorite movies and TV shows—they do this as well if it’s a hero’s journey story.
One of my favorites that I use an example all the time from Star Wars is Luke Skywalker. So he doesn’t just meet Obi-Wan Kenobi and then go to most Eisley and then get on the Millennium Falcon and fly away. No, he actually says “I don’t want to go on an adventure.” Then Kenobi rescues him from the sand people in Act One, and then takes him back to his house to make sure he’s okay and then Ben Kenobi says, “Hey, you should come with me. I’m getting too old for this sort of thing,” and Luke Skywalker says, “No, I’ve got too many responsibilities. The harvest is coming in but I’ll take you somewhere drop you off, if you want.”
A lot of people forget about that, that’s, it’s a key moment in the hero’s journey. Most of the heroes that you can think of there was a moment where they didn’t want to go on the adventure. It did not seem like a good idea because so many times we feel safe where we’re at right now, even if it’s not the best situation. We know it, our body knows it, our brain is familiar with it, and so even if it’s from an external point of view, not the situation you want to be in personally, or professionally, you might stay there and your brain might be telling you, “Hey, we should just, we should just be cool and stay here, even though we hate it because what if we fail if we move forward towards this new thing?”
Our brains can be really tricky that way and they’re just trying to help us! They’re just trying to keep us safe, but we know better and we have to overcome this if we want to move towards the thing that we want if we want to grow, and we want to start businesses and find the love of our life, and have kids and do all these things that can be super, super scary. In order to go on the call to adventure, though, so many times a great adventure is going to have that moment where you don’t want to do it and that’s normal, but we make it so much worse by beating ourselves up so mad at myself for not taking advantage of that. I kind of do that sometimes.
So just know that this is normal and although you might want to go on the quest in your heart of hearts, you might, you might want to do it like there’s fear, there’s, there’s deep personal doubts or whether or not you’re up to the challenge. Imposter syndrome is super strong in this stage of your own personal hero’s journey, or if you’re starting your new business, you’re like, “Who am I to do that? Oh, my gosh, real business, people with real business degrees do that. I couldn’t possibly do that,” or “Other people feel comfortable calling themselves an entrepreneur, but I could not do that, I’ve always had an office job, I’ve always worked for somebody else, there’s no way I could do that, that’s for other people…” absolute bullshit.
But we tell ourselves this all the time. I’ve done it to myself. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way. So it’s, it can seem like it’s too much for you to handle, but it’s really, really not and so the reluctant hero, which some of you might be feeling like right now, just know that that’s perfectly normal. There’s nothing wrong with you, nothing at all. In fact, you are a hero because of the fact that you’re feeling this way, so stop beating yourself up, that’s the first thing I want to tell you.
Now, I’m going to go over some questions right now, from an exercise that we do with our students. In fact, I’m even going to tell you where you can go and you can download a thing after this in order to work through this if you want to. But I’m also just going to outline it right here if you want to think through it right now. So why, and why are you feeling stuck? And what specific area are you feeling stuck? Is it professional? Is it personal? And just write that down, get it all out of your head, all of it.
Now, while you’re writing this stuff down, when I’m going over these questions, it’s really, really important that you write this down honestly, for you. You might be like, “Aaron, I, I’m going to be honest with myself.” I know that you think you are but something that I know that I do and lots of other students that I’ve worked with do as well is we write down answers as if someone that we know “they,” they might see it and so we want to write down the right answer. And I want you to write down the answer that’s actually true to you and if it makes you uncomfortable, that’s probably the direction to go in. So if the answer you’re writing down is an answer that’s safe, because if a family member or a spouse, or that friend from college, or whoever saw it, whatever they think the right answer should be societally, if you’re writing that down, stop it, cross it out, and start again.
I want you to answer these questions from a place of your heart of hearts: what do you really want? Really, really, really, don’t allow yourself to water it down to please anyone else, and I speak as a recovering people pleaser as well. To try to get it right, write down what’s real and authentic to you.
So first question: in what specific area are you feeling stuck? Write it down. When you’re done with that, when thinking about accomplishments that you have enjoyed achieving in the past, what patterns do you see? What patterns do you see? It might not be what you’re doing right now and that’s okay, you don’t have to feel guilty about it. If you really enjoyed teaching that undergraduate class when you were in your master’s program, but you’re not a teacher, and you’re working in a completely different field right now, it’s okay to write that down, you don’t have to be doing it right now.
Where did you feel love and abundance and just thriving and loving what you were doing and looking forward to doing it every day? What was it? What can be a comp–it doesn’t have to be business related. What other accomplishments have you felt good about what, what things draw you towards it? It doesn’t seem like work.
Okay, the next question number three, when if ever were you happy in your career? I hope that the answer is there’s one an obvious one, but if you haven’t, that’s okay as well. No guilt, no shame. What work if any, did you truly enjoy? Why? Why, why, why? Why did you enjoy that work? Get really specific get really granular allow yourself to write down everything that comes to your mind.
Alright, number four: what is it that you want most right now? Again, all these questions are just in order to tease out why you feel stuck and to give you a rope ladder to climb out of the hole, so that you can move on to the next stage. Some of these might be really obvious to you, some of them might not be that useful, that’s fine. That’s why there’s multiples of them, find the one that works well for you. So what is it you want most right now?
Now, I’m not gonna let you off the hook easy with that one because the next question is: why do you want that? Why do you want that thing most right now? Why, why, why? I sound like Simon Sinek all of a sudden. Now, here’s where we get a little bit deeper: how do you want to feel? Is it different than you feel right now? Usually the answer is yes for people because if you feel stuck, it’s not usually a feeling that people enjoy. It’s very useful and I don’t want you to skip over it but how do you want to feel? Do you feel that way right now? Be really honest with yourself and then from there, what’s standing in your way, what’s standing in your way that seems obvious and tactical, and what feels like feels like it’s standing in your way? Those might be different answers and that’s okay, write them both down.
Now, if you have any shame about anything that you’re writing down, I want you to also know that that’s normal and that’s part of the process and that it’s good that you’re processing this and working through some of these emotions. Don’t push them away. So what’s standing in your way? Write that down and last, but not least: what regrets might you have in 20 years? I know this is brutal but what regrets might you have in 20 years if you don’t take action now? Let’s just get right to the point. If you don’t climb up this rope ladder out of this hole of feeling stuck, and you stay down here, what regrets might you have in 20 years? Most people, when they talk about regrets, they don’t talk about not earning a whole lot of money, they don’t talk about things that are tangible, they talk about the thing they wanted to move towards in their heart of hearts. A lot of times it has to do with how they want to serve at a deeper, deeper level but it doesn’t have to be aspirational, it can be money-related, if you want. What regrets might you have in 20 years if you don’t take action now?
Now, taking all your answers from those questions and again, it’s really easy if you want to go and grab this from our website (I’ll tell you about in a moment) but I want you to take that and now I want you to write your top three goals that you can think of that kind of come out of that soup that you just wrote down and you got all out of your brain. Some people who find it helpful to divide it into different categories, like maybe you want to make three different categories, maybe you want to do personal family and professional, you can absolutely do that but you don’t have to. Sometimes they cross borders, that’s totally fine.
What you want to move towards in your professional life might really satisfy some of the things that you want in your personal life as well and vice versa and that’s great, wonderful. Now remember, for this part of this exercise as well, I don’t want you to write down what “they” want to see what they want to hear. If someone read it aloud, if you’re uncomfortable, you’re probably on the right track. If you’re writing down answers like I know I have been prone to do in the past, that other people would nod their head and think I was clever, try not to do that. You’ll get much better results if you’re really honest with yourself about what you really want, not what your friend wants, what your spouse want, what you think your friend wants, what your you think your spouse wants, what would be socially acceptable.
If you want to be a teacher, and right now you are not a teacher, that’s okay, if you’re an executive and a CEO, and you think like “I could never go and do that. I did all this stuff and I’m already here in my career, I could never go and do that, that would be seen as a failure by them, whoever them are,” by the way them doesn’t really exist, it’s just a story we tell ourselves in our minds, so write down those top three, constrain it to three, there’s probably lots of things that you might want to do, but constrain it to three. If you’re a real master, go to one. What’s the one thing that you got out of those first eight questions?
But that’s it, that’s the exercise. This will help you get unstuck. This will be—those questions will be the rungs on that ladder to get out of the stuck pit, that sticky tar pit, and to move on with your adventure into the next stage. But you have to honor the process of the feeling stuck moment, the refusal of the call to action. It’s an important thing, because now you have something to overcome and to know that this is right for you to move towards that professional or that personal goal that you want, and that it’s okay that you felt stuck. In fact, it’s absolutely part of your journey, like I’m trying to tell you.
So that’s it for this time. Super well, I think it’s super simple, because I know the process but for you, you might really be working through this and that’s great, good job doing the work, because it takes personal work in order to get unstuck. There’s no magic elixir at this stage to get unstuck. You have to do the work to get out of it.
All right. That’s what I have for you this week. We’re going to go into the next phase next time and that’s really going to help you as well but until then, you can absolutely go to our website, storiedcoaching.com, there’s actually a download there where you can download a nifty little PDF document and you can fill this out those questions I just gave you were on there. And then the fillable 123 questions are on there as well. If you find that useful, if not, you wrote it down, that’s great as well. All right, I will talk to you next time my friends. Thank you so much for listening, I hope this was helpful to you as it’s been for our students and for me when I feel stuck. Talk to you next time.
To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m going to be giving away an amazing on-camera kit, which includes a high-quality webcam, lighting, setup, and a microphone. This is the very same kit we provide to students enrolled in our story teams course that is used by our storied clients like Microsoft and SAP. I’ll be awarding three lucky listeners who follow rate and review the show. It doesn’t have to be a five-star review, although I sure hope you love the show. I want your honest feedback so we can create an awesome show that provides tons of value visit storiedcoaching.com/podcastlaunch again that’s storiedcoaching.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. I’ll be announcing the winners on the show and an upcoming episode. Thanks for listening to Storied Life coaching with Aaron J. Jacobs. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, visit us at storiedcoaching.com.
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