Finding Hope When You Feel Stuck: Practical Strategies for Moving Forward

When is feeling lost part of life compared to when it is an opportunity to change direction?


Feeling lost is a common feeling, and this podcast talks about this and how you are not alone!

Thank you for your time and interest in this podcast! I invite you to leave a heartfelt review on whichever podcast platform you listen to. It does so much to bring exposure to the podcast and helps lift others up!

To leave a review, helping us spread the contents of this podcast- click on this link! Thank you!

Connect with me!

Website: In the Rising Podcast Website

Email: Bettina@intherising.com

In the Rising Pinterest:

In the Rising Facebook

Check out the Website: Fit after Breast Cancer

Transcript

Greetings and welcome to In The Rising Podcast. This is the show where I talk about living your best life, living alignment with your dreams, your hopes, and your goals, and leaving behind that shame, blame game that really does nothing for you. Not really for anyone else either. My name is Bettina, and I always start off by saying I am not a counselor, psychiatrist, psychologist, any of those things.

But I am a healthcare professional who loves to talk to people, hear their stories, and figure out what makes them tick. And I start off by really working with people who are facing really large health challenges in their life and. For the most part, as of late, that has been cancer, and I have learned a great deal from the people I've worked with.

Just that life is so precious. Time is so precious, but so is our attitude and our perspective in life, and that's where this show has come about. So today I wanted to talk about feeling lost. Because you know what? That's kind of unfortunately normal. There are some parts of life that we don't feel like we have it completely together, or we feel like we've invested everything we can into a situation or into a person, and we still feel.

Like it's not enough. Things are not working the way it should. We've thrown money at it, we've thrown time at it, we've thrown our emotions into it, and it is just, it's not panning out the way we want it to, or we've just been hit, you know, like sometimes you're the one who's really punching the punching bag and sometimes it does feel like life.

Has made you the punching bag and you just, you know, and you're in the middle of some class and they're just coming at you at all angles, all day, all month, and unfortunately sometimes all year. And you feel lost because you're not sure where to go in that class, what corner to go because they keep finding you and life keeps hitting you.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about that today because. We just had Valentine's Day. We are, you know, in the middle of hopefully a reopening nationally, globally, but there's still so much going on where life has just been so radically changed that a lot of us don't feel like we have both feet on the ground.

We're just kind of floating from place to place. And I read this little article that I really liked and it talks about feeling lost. And the first thing that they talked about is that it's okay. It's okay to feel lost. There should not be, we shouldn't have to feel shamed. We should not feel as though we're the only one that has ever felt lost or, yep.

To have all the answers all the time. And that is definitely. I feel more of a business sense that's from any place our workplace. Well, there has to be goals. There has to be smart goals, realistic time-oriented goals, and you have to be working towards them every day. But real life is not a business. Real life has ups and downs where your smart goal goes away.

And I know there are people that would argue, well, that happens in business too. That's true. But we're not a machine, I guess is what I'm getting at, where we can just change the assembly line in real life. Sometimes those parts break down. And it's almost like the parts to fix it, just to keep moving on.

Well, you know, the whole thing has been discontinued and now you have to have a, an entire new assembly of how to go through things. So it's okay to have those moments when you just feel like you can't go from A to B and you certainly can't go through the alphabet from A to Z. But there is a saying. You have to know where you've been in order to know where you're going.

And so sometimes in those lost moments, we can really stop and instead of figuring out or being down about what the present is, look at where you've come from. Take that moment to actually appreciate all the efforts, not just from you, from people around you. But what you yourself have done to get to this point, all the challenges you've overcome, all the challenges that you may have not overcome, but have then made a detour.

You're here today, but for the most part, being here is already many steps above what some of us ever imagined. So it's okay to not know all the answers all the time. It's completely okay because the answers will come. They may not look the way we want them to, but the answers will come. The second thing they talked about is be aware that you have more control than you think, and often being lost comes, gosh, it's like hand in hand on the beach with feeling powerless.

Well, I can't do this and I can't do that, and I can't buy this and I can't go here. But what can you do? Because our brain and our heart really focuses on what we say and not to other people, but what we say to ourselves. And if it hears, can't, can't, can't. There really is a self-fulfilling prophecy then.

You're right. You won't. You won't, you won't. But what do you have control over? Looking at those things makes you realize that you have a lot more power. And one of the main things that you have control over is your attitude. And you get to make a new one every single day. And heck, you can make a new one every single hour or stop and say, I need to change my attitude.

Have that moment. And I really liked this reminder from this show I watched on Netflix. Of course, I don't remember, but it's about a, barrel rider who actually be, you know, became a paraplegic through a a car accident, rolled her truck, flew out. The truck survived, and actually was very fortunate not to even have a neck fracture, but her spinal cord fractured far down in the base of her spine.

But nonetheless, with the use of straps in a seatbelt, she sure could get eventually back on a horse and actually became quite fast. I don't know much about a rodeo, but it looked impressive to me that she didn't have her legs to control the horse, but she focused a lot more on what she could control, which was her arms and her willpower and her attitude.

And even in that show, I. It talks often about, you know, having persistence and then there's a time when you just need to realize you can't do it all. But when you stop to think about what you still can do, there's so much left. And what I really like about number three is that you don't forget that time is precious and that this is not a dress rehearsal, and it's certainly not a dress rehearsal for someone else's life where you are right now and what you will do really depends only on two shoulders and those are yours.

What do you want to do? What is really important for you? What do you want to leave as a legacy? Not just for your family with your stuff, but when they remember you, what do you want to leave behind? What memories is it? Well, they just never did anything. Or you know, even in their low points, they were able to keep striving to do their best, which is number four.

Doing your best today may not reflect what your best is overall. But it means a yes that you're doing it. It was a really awesome sermon. I heard in the middle of one of my lost times. You know when you sit in the back and you don't want anyone to see you? Cuz heaven forbid someone might see you in church because you're a mess.

You know, just you, you're there, you're not sure why you're there, you're not sure why you went, cuz you're exhausted and you feel depleted and you feel deflated and defeated. And what other D word you can come up with? But this pastor went on to say that sometimes your biggest yes is getting out of bed and going to work.

It means that your hair's not the best it can be. It doesn't mean your makeup's the best it can be. It doesn't mean that your smile actually reaches your eyes, but doing your best is starting that process. You're putting in energy to go from A to B. And sometimes your yes may just be getting outta bed on the weekend and not binge watching and not sleeping all day.

And sometimes your best will continue to have some action that you realize you're actually moving into your best at that lost feeling is there, but you're going some direction and that's gonna help you figure out what you need to do. Lastly, number five, remember, you're not the first one to feel this way, and that's, I think the, the biggest enemy of feeling lost is the isolation.

The feeling alone hence lost. But the thing is, this lost space has been occupied by pretty much everyone at one time. Now, that lost space can look different emotionally, psychologically, and certainly financially for a lot of people, but. In that place to know that you're not alone. And I think that's the greatest part of working with who I've gotten to work with.

A lot of these feelings they're having, they're having to handle alone, even if they are with close ones, but knowing that they're not the only ones to feel this way has given a lot of validation to a lot of people I've worked with. Because the answer or the question keeps coming up. Have you ever heard anyone say that?

I know I'm alone, but does that sound right? And just being validated in their feelings of being lost, that it will get better because other people have felt that way and it took some time, but they've slowly walked out of that lost and they slowly found. Their new place, which may be better than if they had always stayed on that original track.

So knowing that you have to know where you've been, to know where you're going. Number two, be aware that you have a lot more control over your life than you think you do. You always have control over your attitude. Never forgetting that time is ultimately precious. You only get this one minute, one time.

Strive to do your best because at the end of the day, the only one who really knows if you're doing your best is you. And remember, you're not the first one to feel this way, and you're not the first one or the last one. To get outta this funk and you may be there to help the next person or some person you come across.

That definitely feels the same way you do. So thank you so much for your time today. I am so grateful for it. Cause you know what time is precious and until next time, Let's Build One Another Up!