502. When It’s Not Working

Do you ever find yourself thinking or saying, I’m doing it, but it’s not working. I’m trying what they told me, I’m executing what I’ve been taught, I’m living the way I’ve believed I should live, or I’m using the strategies that successful people are using and it’s not working. Is there anything more maddening than this thought or feeling? 

Well, today we’re going to dive into it. We’re going to understand why it may not be working and what to do about it to get moving. This is episode 502: When It’s Not Working.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

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All right, everybody, this is going to be a fun episode. I’m very excited to talk about this topic with you. But first, I want to make sure you’re joining me if you want some help making peace with food. Because I’m teaching Make Peace with Food, it’s one of the most popular mini courses I teach. Every time I teach it, people come back to me and say how they can’t believe how much they’ve been able to change what felt like impossible to change behaviors and habits and results in their life, around their health and their fitness. Spring is right around the corner.

So I feel like that is kind of a time when I know I like to recommit to my health. I’m like, enough hibernating, Jody, like a bear, oversleeping, overeating, let’s get healthy, let’s get some energy, let’s get feeling good. So Make Peace with Food, you head to https://JodyMoore.com/food, you’re going to get videos from me that you can watch forever more if you like them. 

You’re going to get access to me through live Zoom calls, where we’re going to dive deep into how it goes as you execute. You’re going to be given some little assignments, many of which are actually very fun. And we’re going to spend four weeks together making peace with food for a very, very low price. So again, https://JodyMoore.com/food. Come and join me for Make Peace with Food.

Let’s talk about how we want to think about things when it’s not working. So first of all, I always in my coaching like to start out with people and point out that it’s not working as a thought, it’s not a fact.

And this is one of the thoughts that feels like a fact, right? Because we can point to like, well, the scale hasn’t gone down, or I don’t have more clients in my business, or my child is still lying to me, or my spouse and I are still fighting, or I’m still feeling really down and out. Okay, so it’s not working is still a thought because it’s subjective, right? For most things. There are a few things I might give to you as facts that we would say are facts, but for the most part, we just wanna remember it’s a subjective thought.

Anyway, I’m not gonna spend a long time on that because I do think that it’s a thought that you could keep too. Even though it’s just a thought, it might be a thought that you wanna keep, I don’t know. I’m not trying to say when I teach you that something’s a thought that you shouldn’t be thinking it. I’m just pointing out that it’s subjective, right? Especially around a lot of things in our lives.

This seems to be coming up a lot in the topic of spirituality, where people are saying, you know, I’m living the Gospel, I’m doing the things that I have been taught to do and it’s not working. I’m not feeling peace. I’m not feeling The Spirit. Again, I’m not trying to take anything away from anybody who’s struggling because there are really hard things that we go through, but it’s not working is still just a thought, like how do we know? How do we know that The Spirit isn’t right there with you, but letting you struggle for some reason, or maybe that you’re unable to feel it for some reason that may be something you can do something about or may not, maybe a chemical, hormonal, kind of biological thing blocking it.

Anyway, like I said, I won’t get off on that tangent, but I wanna talk to you about three things to consider if you find yourself thinking “it’s not working”, because my goal is always to empower you. So the reason why sometimes people hear my work and they think it’s lacking in empathy is because I’m a big fan of empathy. I want you to get empathy from people in your life.

I want you to have people that just say, that sucks, that’s so hard, oh my gosh, I’m sorry, that’s not fair, is there anything I can do to support you? I love empathy, we all need empathy. But as a coach, my job is not empathy. My job is empowerment. And empathy can sometimes just be really useful and the only thing we need to become empowered, but it can become sometimes disempowering because it reinforces sometimes the very beliefs that are keeping us stuck and disempowered. 

And so that’s why I don’t go to empathy much when I’m coaching. I’m always going for empowerment. I want you to feel like, wait a second, I have choices here. I can do something about this in my life. I can make a difference. I can change things. I can create what I want. I’m the one. I don’t have to wait around for things that I can’t control or for people who I can’t control, or for anything else to be different before I can feel how I wanna feel. I can create it right now. 

Not only can I create feelings, but I can create results in my life? I can create tangible things that I want or feel that I need, I have the ability to do that. And that is the truth, my friend, you do. You have the ability to feel better right now. You have the ability to have what you want and need. You have the ability to achieve things far beyond what you can even imagine right now. 

And we do not find the ways, the paths, the solutions to those things from disempowerment. We find proof that we can’t. We find evidence that it’s too hard, that we’re not that kind of person. So my job as a coach is empowerment. And that’s what I wanna offer you here today. 

So this thought, it’s not working, is a very disempowering thought. Because notice the subject of the sentence is it. And it can be a lot of things. It can be the diet that you’ve chosen. It can be the parenting strategy that you’re executing. It could be the marketing plan that you’re launching in your business. It can be so many things. But what it is not in this sentence is us. It’s the strategy, the plan, the routine, the advice we’ve been given. It’s not us.

And what I want to offer to you today is, first of all, like I said I have three things. First one, this is what I do with myself when I hear myself say it’s not working is I say, maybe I’m just not working it actually. Maybe it’s me. Now be careful with this one. Some of you want to go right to shame and guilt. You want to use it to judge yourself. You want to use it If you’re looking for evidence that there’s something wrong with you, you’re not as good, you’re not as smart, you’re not as capable as other people, then you will use this one against yourself. Please don’t do that. That’s not what I’m saying.

I’m saying, wait a second, what if it works? I’m just not working it yet. I haven’t figured out how to work it yet. And that’s okay. It’s okay that it takes some time. It’s okay if it takes me a minute.

So I like to think about a recipe. Like if somebody says, here is my grandmother’s recipe for making lasagna. She made the best lasagna and I’m passing this recipe on to you. And you get it out and you make it and you start eating lasagna and go, this doesn’t taste right. This isn’t good. These noodles are really crunchy and hard. They’re not soft. Then it doesn’t mean that the lasagna recipe is not a good recipe. It means I missed a step.

I didn’t realize I was supposed to boil the noodles before I put them into the pan of lasagna or I didn’t boil them long enough or maybe it didn’t say that on the recipe. Maybe it left that part out because the person who wrote it thought that was assumed that we would all know that and forgot to explicitly say it. Or maybe it was there and I overlooked it, or maybe I saw it and I thought, nah, they’ll probably bake in the pan. I’m not going to bother. I’m going to skip that step. I don’t need to do that. That’s what most people need to do, but not me. These are all things that I’ve done, not necessarily when making lasagna, because I don’t make lasagna. Let’s be honest. I buy it at Costco.

But I’ve done this with many other things that I’ve attempted to do. I’m following this eating plan you gave me, but it’s not working. Well, there are little things I’m not following. I’m not following it perfectly because who’s perfect, of course. But that just means that the plan works. It’s just I’m not working the plan. And that’s okay. Maybe it’s not the right plan. Maybe I don’t want to make lasagna. Maybe I want to buy lasagna at Costco. But it’s not the lasagna recipe that’s not working. It’s me not working it.

Isn’t that really good news? There can be so many reasons we’re not working it and it’s okay if it takes time. If you want, really want to make grandma’s lasagna, then try again, try again, try again. Eventually you’ll get really good at making lasagna.

This comes up in so many situations. I coach people on ads that they’re running on social media to grow their businesses and they’re like, I’m running an ad, it’s not working. And I always say, why in the world would you ever say that sentence or think it? How do you feel when you think that? Frustrated, disempowered.

I was listening to a call the other day, a coaching call, and the girl was saying, we did a launch and it didn’t convert because the email service provider didn’t work. The emails aren’t working. They didn’t deliver our emails to people’s inboxes. There’s a problem with this email service provider. And I was thinking to myself, such a disempowering way to think about it, right?

Maybe there’s a strategy for getting your emails to land in people’s inboxes. And I don’t know, maybe not. Maybe this is the email service provider, but like my, if our first go-to is this software doesn’t work, then we got to find new software, which you could do, but you might run into the same problem again. It might be an email in general issue and then instead I like to go, okay, I’m going to work this. I didn’t get those emails to land in people’s inboxes, but I will figure out how. Feel the empowerment that has to come from that?

Sometimes I have to just kind of talk to myself like I’m giving myself a pep talk. Let’s go Jody Moore. You’re Jody Moore. Let’s figure this out. And I want you to say that to yourself. I want you to get used to hearing your name and using it as a reason to believe that you’re capable of something. So important. It works, we just don’t always work it.

There was a story I heard a while ago from Kim Giles and I’ve tried to go find it and I can’t find it. It was literally years and years ago. It was on like a webinar class or something. So I apologize if I butcher the story. I couldn’t find it, and this is to the best of my memory.

She talked about being in a foreign country somewhere where they had this legend that if you could capture a coqui frog, you were gonna be successful in your life. And someone had told her about this legend and she thought it sounded fun, and so she decided she was gonna try to capture a coqui frog.

Well, she went days and days and didn’t even see one anywhere. And so finally she had to start asking people like, how do you capture one of these frogs that I don’t even see? And they said, Oh no, they’re everywhere. They hide. They’re not out in the open. They hide.

And so she had to keep asking people, where do they hide? Where might I see them? And at what times of day do they come out? And there were all these things that she had to learn. And then there were certain, again, I can’t remember the details, but there were certain ways to even find them that had to do with times of day and locations and had to do with being really patient and really diligent.

And eventually, if you followed all these things, I can’t remember if she captured one or not, but I remember her saying, once I learned how complicated it is to find one and capture one, I realized maybe the reason you’re likely to have success isn’t this magical, you captured the frog, but you are the kind of person who’s willing to learn what’s necessary and then be diligent and patient and do all the things necessary and if you’re that kind of person, you’re likely to have success in your life because that’s what success requires. So listen, maybe you haven’t put in enough time, maybe you haven’t learned enough. That’s okay, but it’s not that it’s not working, I’m just not working it yet.

Okay, the second thing I wanna offer to you, and this comes from my buddy Myron Golden. I call him my buddy because I listen to him on YouTube a lot. He doesn’t know me, but we’re buddies. You know that feeling. He says, it’s always working. It’s either working for you or it’s working on you.

So what do we mean by that? Well, there’s this theory I was taught recently. It’s a theory of change and there’s lots of people have created theories of change in terms of what we experience as human beings from a psychology standpoint as we’re going through change, but I really liked this one that said that we begin in uninformed optimism, right? Where we’re like, “I’m gonna do this thing. It’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be so awesome once I achieve it. I can’t wait. I’m gonna dive in. I’m really willing to work hard and be patient, let’s go.” Uninformed optimism, really fun place to be, right?

We move from there into informed pessimism. When we learn more about what’s involved, what would be the emotional cost, the time cost, the financial cost, the skills maybe that we’d need. And there’s so many things that we didn’t even know we didn’t know that when now we become, we start feeling a little bit negative, right? Informed pessimism. Natural, normal. If you feel that way, don’t make it mean that you shouldn’t pursue this thing. Just know that that’s the natural progression of change.

From there, we end up in what they call the valley of despair. If we keep going, right? Keep going, get to the valley of despair. Wait a second. This is actually really hard because there’s so many things I don’t know how to do. There’s so much involved in achieving this thing I wanted to achieve. I’ve been trying it and not succeeding. I thought I was committed. I thought I had the determination, but now I’m not doing it consistently. So it’s not going to work or I’m not able to do it, valley of despair, right?

That’s the point at which most people exit, if we can. I was thinking about this cycle when I started having babies, right? And I had my first baby and I was like, we’re gonna have a baby! Uninformed optimism. It’s gonna be amazing. And then I got pregnant and started throwing up a lot and my body started changing and I slipped right away between that and having a newborn, which is amazing by the way. The most love I’ve ever felt in my life, but also hard, right? Not getting enough sleep. Somebody always needs your attention.

Anyway, informed pessimism and then right into the valley of despair. Like, I love this baby fiercely, but I do not think I’m good at this, and I don’t even like myself anymore, and I don’t even like my husband anymore. What’s happening to my life? Reason I’m giving this example is because we have to stay with it.

But if this is just, I decided I’m going to lose some weight, or I’m going to try to grow a business, or I’m going to go after this other goal, we have the choice to exit, and that’s where most people do in the valley of despair 99% of people will just exit right there, but 1% will move forward into informed optimism.

So we start coming out of the dip of negativity back up into positively informed optimism. We start finding some things that work. We start getting better at some things that we weren’t good at before. We start getting skills. We start finding support from friends or groups of people doing similar things or coaches or teachers or what have you. We start reading the right kinds of books. We start developing ourselves and we move into this informed optimism.

It starts feeling much better and this is when hope comes back and this is when we see some small wins and successes and we’ve also embraced that this is harder than we thought it was gonna be, but we become okay with it being hard. And from there, we move up into success and fulfillment, right?

So that’s the natural curve of things. So this is again, back to what Myron Golden said, it’s always working. It’s either working for you, or it’s working on you.

In order to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to become the kind of person who is a successful entrepreneur, which yes, will create the results you want in your business, the revenue, the clients, the customers, whatever, but it will also turn you into a different version of you. And the way we become a different version of us is by going through the valley of despair and not quitting. And then we continue to learn and grow and develop new skills and become a new version of us.

So it’s always working, my friends. It’s either working for you or it’s working on you. You’re going to see that show up all over your life if you’re like me now.

The last thing I wanted to offer you, okay, when people say to me, I’m doing this thing and it’s not working. Sometimes I will, I’ll usually ask a few questions and then I’ll just say, okay, well, why don’t you just walk away then? Because you literally can.

So I talked about in the valley of despair, we walk away, right, if we can. By the way, when we walk away, we go right back up to uninformed optimism. And that’s because we think, you know, I just won’t do that and then I’ll feel good again. And we do for a minute until we realize actually we don’t because we still want something more, something different. We still wanna see what we’re capable of. We still wanna contribute. We still wanna improve our lives in some way. That doesn’t go away.

But at any rate, if you keep going, you will eventually end up in informed optimism and then success and fulfillment, but you don’t have to. There’s not anything wrong with you if you choose to walk away. It doesn’t make you a less of a person. It doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t mean you’re never going to succeed.

Sometimes we just decide, I thought I wanted to do that thing and I thought I had what it took in me to do it and I could. The truth is I could, but I don’t want to. I’m not willing to pay the price. I don’t want to, and that’s okay.

Did you know this? This might be a relationship that you’re in. You might realize, you know what?

I could become the kind of person who can be happy in this relationship, but I don’t want to. I don’t wanna put my effort and time and energy into managing myself with this person who treats me in a way that I don’t like being treated. I’m gonna choose to exit now in the valley of despair.

Great, I’m all for that if you want to. You can even decide that you’re gonna start a business and then get to the valley of despair and decide, I don’t wanna keep figuring this out. Okay, cool, no problem. You literally can just walk away anytime you want to, if you want to, especially if you have reasons you like. And I think the best reason of all is I just don’t want to do this anymore. I tried it, now I know, and I don’t want to.

Okay. Not because you couldn’t, by the way, because you could, but I don’t want you to beat yourself up if you choose to exit in the valley of despair. Do you know most of us do that in most areas of our life, but if you have one or two where you stick it out, if you have a handful of them where you stick it out, some of them, again, you’re going to be forced to stick it out. Sometimes life gives us those, we don’t have a choice to exit, but there will be a handful of others that you choose to keep going through the valley of despair into informed optimism and then success and fulfillment. And that’s all you need to create an extraordinary life.

So I don’t want you to tell yourself, I’m the kind of person who quits, who walks away. You can just decide I’ve done that, but that doesn’t mean I have to. I could keep going. And by the way, when I say keep going through the valley of despair, all you have to do is make baby steps. You can just keep crawling. You don’t have to take massive action. You might need extra self-care during this time. You might need to do more learning, but keep taking some kind of action that moves you through the valley.

You have to be careful because sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking, no, I’m still going. Look, I’m getting up and I did the dishes this morning. I’m like, okay, that’s great.

But what is it that you’re in the valley of despair about? If it’s about your business, then doing the dishes isn’t moving you through that valley. It’s helping you feel productive. It’s better than staying in bed maybe, but we gotta take action that moves us through the valley that we’re in the valley on. Do you get what I’m saying here, my friends?

But just keep going, okay? Just keep going. It’s always working. It works, first of all. We just don’t always work it. And then it’s always working. It’s either working for us or it’s working on us.

And finally, you can literally can just walk away. Just don’t beat yourself up for it. Don’t use it against yourself. Just decide you’re making a change. You don’t even have to have a reason.

All right, I love you. Thank you for joining me today. I will see you next time, Bye-bye.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.