336. Get Unstuck

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 336: Get Unstuck.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me, I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hello, everybody. One of the things that is challenging for me about recording podcasts is that I’m talking to you from the past. And so sometimes I’m really good about looking at the calendar and going, “Now, what date is this going to air? What’s going to be going on that day for people?” Other times I don’t, I just get on and record. But this episode is your Christmas Eve episode.

So if you’re listening to it the day it comes out of course you’re in the thick of thinking about and putting the finishing touches on Christmas. And I hope that you’re relaxing and spending time with family and all of that. But just around the corner is going to be the New Year as well. And your focus is going to shift into goals like it does for most people into what you want to do this year, what you want to set your intentions on, what you want to focus on.

And so I wanted to put this podcast episode out because some of you won’t listen to it the day it comes out, you’ll listen to it a little later, that’s alright. But also, I wanted to let you know that if 2022 is your year to work with me, to get coached by me, to watch yourself transform and I only say that because I get messages on the regular from people in that program that tell me how their lives have transformed. And I really do feel confident that it is a transformative experience.

Be Bold is going to go up a little bit in price. It’s been $49 a month, are we going on five years now? It’s worth way more than that. We’re just going to raise it to 59, it’s not a huge jump but I feel the price doesn’t fairly represent what you get in there. And so we’re raising the price a little bit. So I’m telling you that right now because you still have one more week to get in at the $49 rate. And as long as you stay in the program you will keep that rate. It will only go up for new people joining.

So the doors are opening. They’ll be open all next week in between Christmas and New Year. And in fact, we’ll open them up today, Christmas Eve. So now is your chance. If you want to get in under the monthly pay as you go it’s $59 a month. The annual price will go up just a little bit as well. You’ll still save money if you purchase for the whole year instead of monthly. But do whatever fits in your budget. You can learn more about that at jodymoore.com/membership. And I will say it is a cancel any time program and we make it really easy to cancel but you won’t want to, I’m confident.

So anyway, that’s just a little bit of housekeeping information for you. Today we’re going to talk about getting unstuck. And what I want you to do if you’re listening to this around Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day or in between Christmas and New Year, don’t worry about taking tons of action this week. Just relax but I want you to start thinking about what’s going to happen next week. And I want to get your head in a useful place. And there are four things that I’m going to teach you that I recommend that will help you to get moving.

So when I say get unstuck, obviously that can apply in so many different ways. The way I’m thinking about it, the way I’ve structured today’s episode is those habits that you’re trying to implement or goals that you’re working towards, or even it could be a project you’re trying to accomplish that you maybe were excited about but then you sort of gave up. Maybe you got started even and then you lost momentum, it was harder than you thought it was going to be. Or the newness wore off and then suddenly you didn’t have the motivation to keep going.

Or maybe you haven’t even started yet, maybe you’ve just been thinking about it and talking about it and so it feels like it’s been something you’ve been ‘working on’. But you haven’t actually done anything but you’ve been intending to. And so in your mind it feels like you have.

I always tell the story about when I first talked to Brad Jensen who is my coach who helped me lose weight. And he said, “Have you tried losing weight in the last few years?” And I was like, “Yeah.” And he’s like, “Okay, great, what have you done?” And then I realized, wait, you mean have I actually done anything? No, I guess not. In my mind I’m trying to lose weight all the time. So it might be that kind of a project. But at any rate, like I said, I have four tools I want to teach you today so let’s dive right in.

The first one is I want to talk about self-discipline. So when I was in middle school, we had a motivational speaker come to our school, I love motivational speakers by the way, I always have, even in middle school. I was like, “Yes, we get to hear from a motivational speaker.” He was really good. I remember him being really dynamic, really engaging. I remember feeling really fired up after he spoke to us but I can’t remember anything he said other than this one little nugget which means he did his job, by the way.

A speaker should leave you with one nugget that you remember. But at any rate, the one nugget was self-discipline is the key to success. And he said it over and over again and he talked about it. And he even gave each of us a little yellow rubber keychain that was shaped like a giant key that said, self-discipline is the key to success. And I remember thinking yes, that makes so much sense.

If I’m an athlete and I want to be successful at my sport then I need to be self-disciplined enough to go work out and to practice, and to eat right, and to just get myself in better shape and get better at my sport. I’m going to need self-discipline to do that. And that’s the key to success. If I want to be successful at school, or in a job, or in any other way really, self-discipline is the key to success. This is brilliant. I loved this message. Now, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to ask myself, okay, so what is self-discipline then? Where do we get it? How do we get more of it?

Why is that some people seem to have a lot of it and others of us have less? And if we want to increase it, how do we do that? And I don’t know the answer to that but I’ll tell you what I think and I’ll tell you the way I think about it now that helps me to generate more self-discipline. I like to define self-discipline as just allowing your future self to win more of the time, more than it is now. Here’s what I mean. We have our current self, our present self, and then we have our future self.

And our present self wants what is pleasurable right now in this moment. That’s the only thing our present self can really care about because that’s the only thing our present self, experiences is what’s happening right now. But we are also aware that we have this future self, future me which is sort of looking back on present me going, “Please, make some decisions that will serve me.” Even though they might mean that current you has to sacrifice in some way. So a lack of self-discipline is just letting my present or current self, win more of the time, too much of the time.

When I let my future self, win if there is a conflict which there’s not always, thank goodness. But if there’s a conflict I have to more often choose my future self. I have to sacrifice my present self in the name of my future self. Do you get what I’m saying? I love thinking about it this way because it doesn’t feel like such a struggle anymore, it doesn’t feel like I’m short on willpower.

It feels like either way I’m going to win because either my present self is going to win or my future self is going to win. And either way I’m going to have to make a sacrifice, either my present self is going to sacrifice or my future self is going to make a sacrifice. So it helps me realize, I’m not avoiding discomfort, avoiding something hard, avoiding pain, avoiding something new. I’m just either choosing it now, choose the discomfort and the pain now or choosing it later. And I’m either choosing pleasure, joy, ease, comfort now or I’m choosing it for later.

We’re going to get some of both. So if I want to get unstuck then I need to ask myself some questions like, what is it that my future self wants or needs? I want you to pause and ask yourself that question. Pick one area of your life where you feel stuck. Maybe it’s that you can’t get yourself to finish the laundry. You just have a pile of laundry and you can’t get yourself to stop and put it away. So what does your future self, want or need?

He or she wants or needs to walk into the room and have it be tidy and clean and have the clothes put away where they’re supposed to be so that she can find them and so can everyone else.

Number two question I want you to ask yourself is what will I need to be willing to give up? What will I be willing to sacrifice or to do in order to allow my future self to win? Well, in the laundry situation I will need to give up something that’s easier right now and more pleasurable which is not putting away the laundry. Whatever I might do instead. I might need to be willing to sacrifice a little bit of discomfort, a little bit of something that doesn’t sound fun. I have to choose to do something I don’t really want to do because my future self will be so grateful that the clothes will be put away.

And so the third question and this is an important question, am I willing to do that or not? People tell me all the time, “How do I get myself moving? I just can’t get myself to do it.” And sometimes what I say is, “Well, are you willing to do what’s necessary in the name of your future self?” It’s okay if the answer is no. It’s okay if the answer’s no. If the answer is no that takes us into the second thing I want to teach you today, now that we’ve talked about self-discipline.

The second thing is I want to talk about motivation. And I want to talk about commitment. And I want to talk about confidence. So again, a common question, “Jody, how do I get motivated?” Here’s what I tell people, “Motivation is not going to be there to get you started.” In most cases it doesn’t get you started. Motivation comes along after you’ve already started and it helps you in many cases to keep going or to finish but it’s often not going to get you started. Now, I say often because sometimes motivation gets you started and then it actually drops off.

But I like to remind myself and it doesn’t matter what happened in the past, maybe you were motivated and now you’re not, or what have you. This area where you’re stuck, you wouldn’t be stuck if you had motivation. So instead of waiting around for motivation let’s just decide that we’re going to get started without motivation. But the odds of motivation showing up to the party go up significantly once I get moving, once I get started. If I dive in to that laundry, I just decide, I don’t need to be motivated, I’m going to do it anyway, I’m going to access self-discipline instead.

And I’m going to start folding laundry, what happens halfway through the laundry? Now we’re on a roll, momentum or motivation comes along and we suddenly are on fire and it takes less time than we thought it would. It’s not even as painful as we thought it would be. And before you know it, we’re done. And if somebody tries to interrupt us and pull us off task we’re like, “Not now, I’m folding laundry. I’m putting laundry away.” Have you had this experience?

So the key to getting unstuck is to decide that you don’t have to feel motivated. You’re just going to get going anyway. Now, I’ll tell you, there are a couple of instances where I’ve noticed where motivation is there at the very beginning and maybe there’s more. But these are the two I’ve noticed most frequently, one of them is an opportunity like a new year.

Sometimes, and this is what I love about the new year, about January 1, is for some reason it gives our brains permission to go, “You know what? Let’s start fresh. Let’s get moving. It’s a new year, let’s see what we’re capable of.” So sometimes motivation will happen for you right at the beginning if it’s something like a new year. Another time I see motivation help us get started is if it’s a new project, or a new goal, or we have a new method or something we’re excited about.

The motivation might be there in the beginning, you might think I’m excited to try this, I think this is going to work. And now you feel motivated as you get started. But again, that motivation if it’s there in the beginning, may not be there all the way through. So don’t count on motivation because it’s kind of finnicky, have you noticed? It shows up sometimes and then it doesn’t show up other times. So it’s great if it’s there, it’s fun if it’s there but we’re not going to count on it, we’re just going to do it anyway even though we’re not motivated.

This example just came to my mind as I was talking about that. I saw on Hank Smith’s Instagram account, a shout out to Hank Smith. He posted something about a shout out to all of his students at BYU who are struggling with depression and anxiety and they still get up and come to an early morning class at school. And that really impacted me because I can remember as a college student not wanting to go to class, especially in the winter in Utah, early morning. And I didn’t struggle with depression or anxiety.

So I can only imagine how hard it would be to get yourself to go to class when you’re struggling with something like that. So I thought that was really cool of him to mention and recognize that. And it sort of helped me with some of my goals that I find myself going, “I just don’t want to. I just don’t feel like it.” I was like, yeah, but if those students who don’t feel like it and they’re battling something like that, they can get up and do it. They can make themselves do it without wanting to, I can certainly make myself do this without wanting to. So don’t wait for motivation, that’s number two.

Number three, which I alluded to a little bit earlier is I want to talk about being interested, being committed, and being confident. There’s a difference. So I want to start by talking about confidence. People ask me all the time, how do I get more confident about this thing? I’m trying to build this business or I’m trying to get myself to exercise, or I’m trying to get the house cleaned up or be a better mother or stop yelling at my kids. But I’m just not confident. How do I be confident?

And I want to say that confidence is something, it’s an emotion so you can generate it with a thought. But I find that for the most part those thoughts are not believable to me until I earn it. I like to think of confidence as something that I earn. And I earn it by being not good at it and just doing it anyway over, and over, and over again. And eventually because I’m a human being and because I have a human brain that makes adjustments accordingly the more I do it the better I get at it, the easier it is for me to think thoughts that generate confidence.

So confidence is a fun feeling, of course it’s useful but it’s just something that I’m going to earn by doing things over and over again and then believing I’m good at this. I’m not going to try to just generate confidence with a thought. I’m going to just use self-discipline and I’m going to not wait around for motivation. And then I’m going to decide am I interested in this thing or am I committed? And there is a big difference between being interested and being committed. And most people don’t recognize that there’s a difference.

Most people say to me, “This is really important to me, Jody. I really want to do this thing. I really want to accomplish this, or learn this, or master this, or contribute in this way.” And I say, “Okay, great, tell me what you’ve done so far.” And it’s not uncommon, and when I say people I put myself in the same category. It’s not uncommon for us to realize we’ve done a little bit maybe but not really much. And when I recognize that in myself then I pause and I go, “Okay, Jody, here’s the truth. The truth is you’re interested in doing that thing but you’re not committed.” And that’s okay.

I’m not saying that you should be committed. I don’t want you to beat yourself up and feel bad that you’re not committed. I don’t do that. I just go, “That’s just the truth.” Otherwise, we’re left just so confused about what’s going on, and why we’re not taking action, and why we’re not following through. The reason is because I’m not committed, I’m just interested in it. Okay, now I get it. You know what? Sometimes just being interested is enough.

But if you find that you’re just interested, I just give you permission to stop thinking about how you should have done it. To stop beating yourself up for what you haven’t done in the past or to stop being so confused about it. Just decide, okay, I’m just interested in it but I’m not committed right now. Maybe one day I will be but I’m not right now. That’s one option. Now, the second option is to decide, alright, I’m done just being interested. I’m ready to get committed. How are you going to commit?

Commitment comes from one sentence, you guys. Do you know what that sentence is? No matter what. That’s it, no matter what, that’s commitment. Now, when I say no matter what, of course there are occasional exceptions, there are emergencies. But I’m talking for the most part, unless there’s a huge emergency, in which case I’m going to figure out a backup plan then I follow through on this thing.

My favorite way to think about commitment is I start by thinking about something that’s really easy for me to be committed to like picking my kids up. If I tell my kids, “I’m going to pick you up”, or if I tell my husband, “I’m going to pick the little kids up today, you don’t have to worry about it.” Then I’m really committed to that. I’m going to go pick them up no matter what. I’m not going to decide, I don’t feel like it. You know what? This project went longer than I thought it would. It’s kind of cold outside, I don’t want to walk to the bus stop.

None of that, I’m going to pick them up no matter what. The only exception would be some kind of crazy unanticipated emergency which wouldn’t happen very often but if it did, I would figure out a backup plan and make sure those kids get taken care of because I’m committed to getting my kids and taking care of them. So now think about your project, or goal, or whatever is that you’re feeling stuck on. If you just told yourself, “I follow through on this thing no matter what.” That’s commitment.

Now, don’t think that you have to commit to any more than you can handle, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m not talking about you hustling, if that’s not what you want to do. I’m talking about commit to what is reasonable and realistic and just know that when it comes time to do it, here’s the other thing. We talked earlier about your present self and your future self. But we have a past self too. So if you think okay, on Friday, I’m going to go to this class at the gym, or I’m going to make this phone call, or I’m going to sit down and figure out my website or whatever it is.

I’m going to do that on Friday, today’s Wednesday, then this is past me thinking about future – well, it’s present me but by Friday that will have been past me. It’s really easy for present me to make commitments for future me. But when I get there, I will then become present me. Do you follow? So I don’t want present you to look back at past you and be mad and go, “What did you do to me? Why did you give me so much? I can’t do all that. I don’t want to do all that, it’s too much. I don’t have the time. I don’t have the energy. I don’t have the bandwidth.”

Be really, really kind to your future self, make really reasonable commitments. But commitment by definition means I just do it even if I don’t want to. I show up and I do it. So tell yourself the truth, either you’re just interested and that’s okay. And we’re going to stop fighting with ourselves about it. Or we’re going to get committed. And we’re not going to wait for confidence. We’re going to know that we’re going to be terrible at it at first and we’re going to do it wrong. We’re going to mess it up. But we will get better at it as we go.

Okay, the fourth and final thing I want to teach you to day that will help you to get unstuck, and this one might be the most crucial. People who are progressing in any area are the boss of their brains. I really do believe this. Now, some people are consciously choosing to be the boss of their brains, that’s one of the things that I teach people to do as a coach. Other people don’t realize that they’re the boss of their brains but they are or else they would not be moving forward.

And I’m talking about people that are doing extraordinary things, people that are doing challenging things, people that are doing new things that they haven’t done before. They are choosing to be the boss of their brains, I promise you. You have to be the boss of your brain. Do not let your brain be the boss of you.

So many people are walking around letting their unconscious, unexamined, unquestioned brains be the boss of their life. This is why people are filled with fear, and worry, and anxiety. This is why people just go through the motions and never grow in the way that they’re capable of. They don’t realize their potential. They don’t get outside their comfort zones, or they stay stuck in a victim place or just feel overwhelmed. And I don’t say this with judgment, most people don’t realize it. They don’t realize that their unconscious primitive brain is the boss of them.

And what I want to teach you and what I’m going to be teaching you starting in January in Be Bold is how to be the boss of your brain. Not only will it get you unstuck and moving, but it will also help you to feel so much better, to feel empowered, and alive, and motivated. I talked about motivation, I talked about confidence, things like that come along when you choose to be the boss of your brain. Now, it doesn’t mean you’re going to feel that way all the time. We’re still going to use the other tools I gave you.

We’re not going to wait for motivation. We’re going to get started. But meanwhile as we take that action, I want you to be the boss of your brain. In other words, you’re going to tell your brain what you think instead of letting your brain tell you. You’re going to learn how to do that in Be Bold. I’m going to teach you in our January workshop and then we’re all going to practice it together all month long. And you can apply this to any area of your life that you want to. Like I said, of course it will apply to getting you unstuck.

But maybe it’s a relationship issue, maybe it’s a parenting issue, maybe it’s a challenge you’re having with your kids, maybe it’s in your marriage, maybe it’s just the way you think about yourself. I so badly want to empower you to be the boss of your brain because when I learned how to do that, that’s when my life exploded. That’s when my family became so much more fun, being a mom got so much easier for me. I was able to create this amazing thriving business. I was able to write a book all because I learned how to be the boss of my brain.

This doesn’t mean that there wasn’t tons of negative emotion along the way, there was, and there still is, and there always will be. But overall, I’m in charge of me. I’m in charge of how I feel. I’m in charge of what I think. And I’ve practiced it so many times that it feels much easier to me now. It’s much more natural for me to do. It doesn’t mean I still don’t have that primitive part of my brain that tells me that I’m worthless and this will never work, and this is scary, and everybody hates you, and what’s the matter with you. I have all of that.

But that isn’t in charge, that’s not the part of me driving the show. Part of me driving the show is me thinking about myself and my life the way that I want to. And you’ve got to think about your goals the way that you want to. I want to give you just one other tiny example of this before I let you go today.

I was talking to one of my clients, I think this is who this conversation was with, anyway I have clients who are in a mastermind business coaching program with me. It’s a small group of us. We’re working together for a full year. We’re really taking a deep dive on everybody’s business and we’re having so much fun. I love that group so much. But anyway, somebody was talking about the Facebook algorithm, or the Instagram algorithm, which is the same thing, the same company.

And how they just hate the algorithm because it feels like nothing’s authentic so why should I bother because it’s just an algorithm trying to figure it out. And I was like, “That’s a nice default thought.” It’s a thought that we hear people say all the time so we picked it up somewhere. And then we’re like, “Yeah, I think that’s true, there’s just an algorithm deciding who’s going to see my post so why should I bother posting? And I’ll never be able to figure that out and it’s so frustrating.”

And I was like, “No, no, no, this is how you be the boss of your brain, you stop and examine and you notice that’s just a thought.” And then I said to her, “I love the algorithm so much. We love the algorithm. Because the algorithm means that the people who see our content on social media are the people that want to see it, the people that are our target audience, the people that are our people, will benefit from it, that will get some joy out of it, that will like it, that will share it, that will comment on it, that will get the help that we’re trying to provide by posting on social media.”

We don’t want just any random person coming along seeing it. We want our people to see it and that’s what the algorithm does is it says, “Let me try to find your people, let me sift out the ones that are not your people.” The algorithm’s a beautiful, amazing thing that I love. Okay, now, when I explained this, she was like, “Oh yeah, you’re right. That’s such a great way to think about it. I love that so much better than being mad about it.” That’s called being the boss of your brain.

Now, again there are many, many steps involved that I’m going to teach you, once you practice them then it will feel innate. It will feel much easier, you won’t have to worry about the steps. But we’re going to break it down in Be Bold step by step so that you learn how to be the boss of your brain and then you can use it all year long, well, for the rest of your life, you’re welcome.

Alright, so if you want to join me go to jodymoore.com/membership and get in there. We’re going to have a good time. I hope that you have the most amazing Christmas and New Year. And I just love you so much. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you tuning in and listening, and sharing my work like you do, it means the world to me. and I do not take it lightly at all. So have a great week and I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking. And it’s available now at Amazon in print or kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too. Just saying.