Best of Ep 8: 3 Reasons You’re Feeling Stuck In Your Job

Wondering why your side hustle hasn’t taken off yet? 

Feeling stuck in a job you hate and don’t know how to make a change? 

Can’t figure out what’s holding you back?

I’ve got some news: your subconscious fears are the most powerful things holding you back from chasing your dreams and reaching massive success.

Do you really want it? Do you feel worthy of it? Do you trust yourself to make it happen?

In this episode, I get deep, discussing the three reasons you’re feeling stuck in your job. I share 3 questions to ask yourself to figure out what’s holding you back from going after your dream, starting a business, and changing your life. 

This episode will help you look at your limiting beliefs and understand where your subconscious might be contradicting you and causing you to self-sabotage. 

Ready to get unstuck and start going after your dreams? 

Get out your journal and tune in to this week's episode - this is a riff you won’t want to miss!

Chapters

• 2:02 Do you really want to work for yourself?
• 5:52 Would bad things happen if you get what you want?
• 6:48 Identifying limiting beliefs
• 12:19 Fear of success
• 15:53 Feeling worthy of pursuing your dream career
• 19:40 Journaling and self-reflection

Transcript

[00:00:57] Hello, my loves. I hope you're having an amazing Monday morning so far. So today, we're going to talk about the three reasons why you're not going after your dream. And this is more geared towards you if you are currently working in a nine-to-five job that you don't love and you're dreaming of working for yourself someday.

[00:01:25] So the three reasons why you're not going after that dream, or if you have started your side hustle, started your business, this could be the three reasons why you're not seeing the results you want, why your business is not working. Okay, so this is going to be a packed episode, and you're going to want to write down the questions I'm going through.

[00:01:51] It's really more so three questions to ask yourself if you're not going after your dream or if your business isn't working, and you're going to wanna write these down, you're going to wanna journal on these. So if you can't do that right now, write down the questions, put them in a note on your phone, and journal on these later tonight.

[00:02:12] We're going deep today. We might hit on some serious shit. I'm going to go there because that's where you need to go to work through the shit, bring it to the surface, and destroy all of the limiting beliefs holding you back. Because they're lies. They are lies from your ego.

[00:02:29] Your ego doesn't want you to go after your dream because it is scary. So, we're just going to dive in. The first question I have for you is: Do you really want it? Do you actually want to work for yourself? Or is it just what's trendy right now? Is it what you feel you need to do because somebody else is doing it or because everybody on the internet is doing it?

[00:02:58] If you don't want to work for yourself, whatever your dream is, do you actually want it? Is it what you want? And maybe that means you are playing small because you don't think you can do what you want. Right? So you're saying you want to switch careers and work for someone else, but you actually want to work for yourself.

[00:03:22] You just don't think it's possible yet. So I was in this stage for a while when I decided that I wanted to become a personal trainer. At first, I had planned on working at a gym. And I knew ultimately I wanted to work for myself and work with clients online so that I could have more freedom with my time, set my own schedule, all the things.

[00:03:47] But I thought that I needed to work at a gym first to gain experience. So it wasn't really about wanting to work at a gym; it was feeling like I needed to because I didn't believe in myself that I could train people online without that experience. And so, for a while, I was just feeling really off when I had that plan in mind.

[00:04:10] I wasn't that excited about it, and I was excited about becoming a personal trainer and getting certified, but the idea of working at a gym wasn't that exciting to me. And when I asked myself, is that what I really want? No, that wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to work with people online, so a question to get at whether this is what you really want is, if you could have anything, what would you want?

[00:04:37] What would you do if you knew you could be successful at anything? Removing all the external factors and getting down to if anything were possible, what would you want? Because the truth is, anything is possible like you're not limited. The only limits are the ones that we place on ourselves in our minds.

[00:04:57] And I could have limited myself. I could have blocked myself and said I couldn't become an online fitness coach without having any prior experience training people in person. But that was a lie because I became an online fitness coach without experience. I got my certification and was as capable as any other personal trainer to train people online. That was just a lie that my ego was telling me because jumping straight into an online business was fucking scary.

[00:05:25] But that was what I wanted. So ask yourself, is this what you really want? And if not, what is it that you really want? And it doesn't matter how scary that thing is because we're going to address all the reasons why you why that's scary, or why you don't think that's realistic or possible for you, in the second question.

[00:05:44] Okay, so the second question is, what bad things do you think might happen if you get what you want? If you go after that dream, what might happen? So this is where all of the shit is going to come up. This is where all of your limiting beliefs are going to start yelling at you, and your ego is going to start screaming and throwing a tantrum because it's fucking scary, right?

[00:06:12] These could be very deep-rooted limiting beliefs. So there are things that are going to come up that are on a conscious level, your glaring fears of what if it doesn't work out right? But there might be things that are so deep-rooted and subconscious that you don't realize they're holding you back.

[00:06:32] You might want to work for yourself, but you might have these deep-rooted beliefs that say, don't do it. It's not safe. And if they're operating on a subconscious level, they will manifest as self-sabotage. If you feel like things are always going wrong when you try to launch your business or if you're consistently not seeing the results that you want in your business, there could be subconscious beliefs that need to be brought to the surface and worked through. So really spend some time on this question and dig deep because it's going to be so freaking powerful. So what bad things do you think might happen if you go after that dream?

[00:07:16] So a lot of times, these are the common fears of what if I don't make any money? People are going to judge me. What if my friends don't support me? What if my parents don't support me? That can be a huge one. There could be a lot of guilt associated with making a career change. So like for me, my parents paid for me to go to college.

[00:07:42] My parents paid for me to go to grad school. They invested a lot of money for me to become an accountant. And just a year into my career, I told them I was quitting accounting. That could be something that holds people back, or you're the first person in your family to go to college.

[00:08:02] And to graduate and to get a high-paying job, and you have this great, stable career, and everyone's so proud of you, and then you realize it's not what you want to do, and you're like, well, what are they going to think? What does this mean if I quit this career, I'm so lucky to have? Maybe you think it means that you're not grateful for everything you have now, that changing your careers will mean that you're not grateful for having an amazing, stable job that pays you well and provides great benefits. You may even be supporting some of your family members. Maybe you are married or have kids, and you're like, I, I need to support them, so I need to stay in this stable job. Whatever it is that comes up. A really powerful example is something that came up with one of my clients who grew up in a family environment that was very focused on scarcity. Never having enough money. You always have to work hard to earn money. There's never enough. You have to get a safe job. You have to work until you die, and work isn't something you do for fun. Work isn't something you enjoy.

[00:09:13] You hate it but do it because you have to survive. And that's a pretty common situation. But for her, she felt like if I take this chance, if I make this change, if I completely change my career path and work toward my dream of working for myself someday, my family's not going to understand that.

[00:09:37] My parents aren't going to understand that. They're not going to accept that they're not going to support me. And whether that's true or whether that's just in her head is one aspect of that, but her ego does not think that it is safe for her to change career paths because her family might not accept her anymore.

[00:09:59] That shit is real, and it is deep, and if you don't work through that, then it's going to manifest in other ways, right? So even if she got to a place where she decided to go after her dream, she decided to quit her job and change career paths; if she had not worked through that underlying belief that it's not safe for her to change career paths, she would self-sabotage along the way.

[00:10:28] This can happen without us even realizing it, but it's basically like there's a part of you, which is your ego. There's a part of you that literally does not think it's safe for you to do this, so it's going to block you from achieving that dream. And anytime you get close to actually doing it if she started her business, it might show up as her not signing any clients or making any money.

[00:10:56] So that she can then go back to her stable job and her ego won't feel scared anymore. And again, this might not even be operating on a conscious level, but that's why it's so important to bring these things to the surface and work through them so that they don't make you self-sabotage for weeks, months, or years.

[00:11:17] Another question that might come up is, do you trust yourself? We often have this underlying guilt and shame for choosing the wrong career path. Maybe you've always known that accounting wasn't right for you, but you went with it because it's what other people told you to do. It was like I didn't know what I wanted to do, and people told me that accounting was a good career path, so I went with it.

[00:11:47] I've heard stories from people who had debated changing their major in college, and they didn't, and they regret it because they hate accounting and knew they would hate accounting, but they still got themselves here. There might be guilt and shame around the fact that you made the wrong career choice in the past.

[00:12:05] Do you trust yourself to make the right choice now? What if you make this choice to change careers, and it wasn't the right choice? You just end up feeling stuck again. You end up not enjoying what you're doing again. That could be a fear that's underlying, or even, and this always sounded crazy to me until it happened to me, until I experienced it.

[00:12:29] I was like, that's not a thing, but you might have a fear of success. And you're like, well, that makes no sense. I want to be successful. But here's the thing. What bad things do you think might happen if you actually are successful, if you actually make your dream happen if you actually start your business?

[00:12:49] So what if you start getting clients and don't deliver results? What if I started getting fitness clients and couldn't help them? Like that's a real fear that could come up. Or as you grow your business, the more successful you are, the bigger your business grows, the bigger the decisions you have to make.

[00:13:14] Do you trust yourself to make decisions about investments, people to hire, and things like that? The more successful you are, the more exposed you are, the more people know about you, the more your name is out there, and the more people watch your live videos on Instagram; what if you say something stupid?

[00:13:37] More people are going to see it, right? So things like that, or even the more successful you are, the more taxes you have to pay. That one can hold people back sometimes. Or a huge one is what if you make a lot of money? Money Mindset is a whole other thing that I could do a whole podcast series about in and of itself.

[00:14:01] But a lot of times, we have these negative beliefs about people who have a lot of money. We think that rich people are greedy, whatever it is, whatever bullshit lies our brain is telling us that we've picked up from our parents or whatever. If you think that rich people are bad or greedy, you won't want to be rich.

[00:14:22] You do not want to make a lot of money, so you won't want to be successful. And even though that's what you want on the surface, there's this underlying belief in your ego that you might not even realize is holding you back. Or you may think that if you start making a lot of money, you'll lose friends like your friends won't understand you. They won't want to hang out with you anymore, or maybe even your family won't want to. There can be so many dynamics here that play into the fear of success and can hold you back just as much as the fear of failure. Okay, so that was a lot, but diving into what bad things you think might happen if you go after your dream and if you actually are successful and get what you want.

[00:15:09] The third question is, do you feel worthy of it? Do you feel like you're good enough? Good enough to start your own business, good enough at what you want to do? So I mentioned this earlier, but that is all about your self-worth and belief in yourself. It's really not about your skills in a certain field.

[00:15:34] As I said, I started my online fitness coaching business with zero experience ever training anyone in person. And I could have held myself back and held onto the belief that I'm not good enough at training people yet, so I can't start my own business doing it. But I didn't do that because I realized that that was a bullshit lie, limiting belief, and instead, I chose to fucking believe in myself.

[00:16:03] I believed that even though I didn't have a lot of experience, I would be a good fitness coach, even though I haven't been in the field for any length of time, that I would be able to help people, that I would figure it out, that I would learn as I go, that I would get better as I go. That I was fucking good enough that even though I knew nothing about fitness and nothing about starting a business, I was going to figure it out along the way.

[00:16:31] And it's not about your knowledge and skills; it's about your self-worth. It's about your belief in yourself and your ability to figure things out and be successful. You don't have to have all the knowledge and all the skills yet. And another part of do you feel worthy is: do you believe you deserve to get paid for doing something you love?

[00:16:55] And this is a belief that fucked me up for my whole first year in business, and I did not even realize it because it was so subconscious, because I fully believe that we all deserve to be doing work we love. But I also had this underlying belief that was instilled in me since my childhood, just from the way that I was raised.

[00:17:18] I believe that you need to work hard to deserve to be paid. So, on the one hand, I believed that I deserved to be doing work I love and making a living, but I didn't believe that I deserved to be paid unless it felt like I was working hard. So I could love the thing that I was doing, but I was making things in my business so much harder than they needed to be in order for me to feel worthy and feel like I deserved to be getting paid for it.

[00:17:48] The irony is that I ended up self-sabotaging and not making as much money as I could have because I was making things so complicated. I would overcomplicate my programs; I would make my marketing confusing and unclear. I would make my sales process harder than it needed to be. And the result was either fewer people signing up for my programs or more people saying no, whatever it was.

[00:18:16] So the most, I don't want to say dangerous, but the most powerful things holding you back are not your conscious fears. It's not the immediate fears that come up, that you are not going to make enough money, that people are going to judge you, whatever that is for you. It's the ones you don't even realize you have within you, inside your brain, inside your ego. Those are the ones that are going to keep you stuck forever and keep you in this cycle of not seeing the results you want or never going after that dream because you don't even realize that you're self-sabotaging because your ego is so fucking scared.

[00:18:59] And because you have all these underlying beliefs that you might not even realize you have, that contradicts that dream and that thing you want so badly. Still, there might be something within you that doesn't want it, that's scared to get it, that's scared to go after it, that thinks something bad will happen, that doesn't feel worthy of having it.

[00:19:23] And until you address those things, you'll be stuck, either never going after your dream or not seeing the results you really want. So, as I said, spend some time, ask yourself these questions, dig deep, and journal on them. Shit might come up. You might cry. I still do this every day. I'm asking myself, what are my underlying beliefs?

[00:19:50] What might be holding me back and digging into that because you have to bring that shit to the surface in order to clear it out. So we got a little bit deep and a little bit heavy with this one. But I hope that you have an amazing Monday and an amazing week. I hope that this results in some breakthroughs for you.

[00:20:09] If anything came up and you're like, holy shit, I didn't realize that I have this belief holding me back, I would love to know about it. Send me a DM on Instagram. My handle is @lindsaymhanson. If you thought this episode was powerful, please share it with a friend, share it with a coworker, put it on your Instagram story, and tag me.

[00:20:28] I always love seeing that you're listening. I love you. I appreciate you and I'll talk to you in the next episode.