The Catholic Pursuit of Excellence

What to Do When You Just Don't Want to Do "It" Anymore

• Jessica Castillo • Episode 10

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#010 - Feeling overwhelmed and unmotivated or like you just "don't wanna" do anything? Let me share a time when I felt the same way and how I overcame it. 

We’ll explore the concept of buffering behaviors and how recognizing and managing these behaviors can be a game-changer in reducing our stress levels.

Ever felt guilty for not wanting to do what’s expected of you, especially in the context of your faith? We’ll tackle that head-on by reflecting on Jesus' struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

By the end of this episode, you’ll walk away with practical insights to tackle your own struggles with faith and resilience.


Are you ready to build high-impact habits of body, mind, and soul that actually stick? Check out the Catholic Path to Excellence today to find out how you can be more consistent in your habits and excel in every aspect of your life.

Feeling "stuck" in your life? Coaching could be the solution you need to break through whatever is holding you back. Book a FREE Call with me today to find out how I can help you.

Speaker 1:

Have you ever had a case of the adonwanas, a day where maybe you had an overwhelming amount of stuff on your plate but less than zero desire to do any of it? If so, I can 100% relate. In this episode, I'll share a strategy that I've found helpful to boost my motivation on days that I don't feel like doing anything. It's simple to learn and you can start. Today You're listening to the Catholic Pursuit of Excellence, the show that helps you accomplish more, stress less and become the saint God created you to be. I'm your host life and health coach, jessica Castillo, and this is episode 10.

Speaker 1:

I was recently in a call with a client who is dealing with a lot. She's a mom of many, she's caring for aging parents, she's working from home, she has so many things on her plate, and in the session I just asked her what was it that she really wanted? What was it that she really wanted? And her answer was just so honest and so real and she just said I don't want to do it anymore, and that really struck me. I could 100% understand that feeling and relate to it, because I've definitely had that feeling myself. The truth is, with this client's circumstances, we really couldn't change a lot of her circumstances. She couldn't stop working, she couldn't stop caring for her children, she couldn't stop caring for her parents. She kind of had to keep going. But how could we deal with the fact that she was tired and overwhelmed and didn't want to keep doing this anymore? Well, it just so happens, as often happens in my life, that literally the very next day, I started experiencing a lot of those same emotions myself in my own life, and my circumstances are different from hers. My children are different ages, my parents are deceased, so I'm not in the same exact circumstances. But in my own circumstances, I didn't want to do any of the things that I had to do anymore, and I noticed that when I start feeling that way which is not uncommon, by the way I just want to normalize this experience.

Speaker 1:

A lot of times, as Catholics, we think well, this is the cross that I've been given and so I must suck it up and carry it. And that's really not what I'm saying at all. Because, yes, this is the cross that we've been given. If you're in difficult circumstances, this is the cross that we've been given. If you're in difficult circumstances, then you can trust that this is God's will for you at this time, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be easy to deal with or that you're always going to want to just back up and do it. That being said, it's kind of impossible for us to walk away from. We have to live our lives. We have certain things that we have to do, so the question really is how do we deal with this? How do we deal with these feelings of I don't want to do this or I don't want to carry this cross, when it's necessary that we do? Well, that's kind of what I want to talk about in this episode.

Speaker 1:

What I noticed with myself when I'm in situations like this is that I tend to have a lot of buffering behaviors, and if you're unfamiliar with the concept of a buffering behavior, it's basically something that you do to escape feeling negative emotions. So, for instance, you're feeling overwhelmed or stressed or angry or sad or any number of negative emotions, and in order to numb or blunt that emotion or not deal with that emotion in the moment, you might turn to a number of behaviors that make it feel a little bit better, and this is really normal for all of us. We do this. It just helps to become aware that we're doing it. So for me, some of my buffering behaviors are I will start researching things that I already know, but I just enjoy learning and reading more about, especially for me as a health coach. I will start reading articles or watching YouTube videos on any number of health-related topics that I kind of already know. I don't really get anything out of these research rabbit holes. It just feels good for my brain to do and it's easier than anything else I have to do.

Speaker 1:

Another buffering behavior that I have is I will literally walk away. I love going for walks, and I know that walking is so good for me, it's good for everyone, it's so helpful. But I can actually take something healthy and good and use it in a not good way, and I think that's true of all of us too. So for me, sometimes, when I'm feeling really overwhelmed or I don't want to do anything that I need to be doing, I will literally go walk away and go for a walk that I don't have time for, that's longer than it needs to be, and it's literally just an avoidance behavior. And so when I come back from that walk, instead of feeling like I took a break or I'm refreshed, I actually just feel worse because now I have the same amount of stuff to do and less time to do it in. And the reason I wanted to just share that experience with you is because you probably also have behaviors that you turn to when you're buffering from.

Speaker 1:

This case of the I don't want is. And it's sometimes helpful to recognize the behavior that we're doing, because we might not actually have pinpointed the thought, and the thought here is I don't want to do this, I don't want to do any of this anymore, or something along those lines. These are very common and very normal. Really. I just want again, I want to emphasize this is a very normal human emotion. There's nothing wrong with you when you're feeling this way, but because you're in a circumstance that you can't just quit, it's really vital that you learn some skills for how to deal with the situation so that, when it arises, you can actually handle it in a healthy way that doesn't hurt you more and make your circumstances even worse.

Speaker 1:

So I want to share just a few tips and strategies that I found helpful and that I literally just had to use on myself very recently. So this is an ongoing process and I don't want you to ever think, oh, I will one day arrive where this isn't the situation anymore. This is going to come up for you again and again because you're human, and so I'm going to probably have to do this on myself again really soon, maybe tomorrow, maybe later today, I don't know. So I do want to share all of this and just let you have it as a tool in your toolkit that you can use when you need to. I also just want to say that I am recovering from a cold right now, so if my voice sounds a little bit froggy, that's why and it's also probably why I was dealing with the case of the anuanas because, just physically, I'm a little tired and I don't feel as well as I normally do. So let's talk about tips.

Speaker 1:

What do you do when you don't want to do any of the things that you have to do? Well, the first tip I have for you is to just acknowledge how you're feeling. So many times and, like I said, in Catholic circles we think, if I were to just acknowledge that I don't want to do this, that I'm somehow not being a good Catholic or I'm not carrying my cross the way I should be, and I just need to suck it up or I need to offer this up. I need to just buck up and do it. And what I've noticed is that too many times we're trying to hide from ourselves, we're trying to almost escape the reality that we're even feeling this way. And the truth is that we're also usually trying to hide this from God, so we're trying to pretend almost as if there's no problem here, there's nothing going on. We're just going to keep on keeping on.

Speaker 1:

And you know, the thing is, you cannot hide from God. You might hide from yourself, you might fool yourself for a little while, but God knows you in and out. He knows every hair on your head, he knows every molecule in your body, he knows every single thought and emotion that you're having. And, the thing is too, he also understands it better than you do. So just being really honest and acknowledging that this is how you're feeling, that can go a long way, and you don't have to identify why you're feeling this way, you don't have to justify it, you don't have to give yourself a list of reasons of why it's okay to feel this way. It just is okay that you're feeling this way, and so just acknowledge this is how I'm feeling and it's okay.

Speaker 1:

And the thing that helps me here is to just meditate on Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, because Jesus prayed for his cup to be removed from him as well. He saw what he had to do, he knew what he had to do and he didn't want to do it either. Or at least on his human level. He prayed for this cup to be removed from him because it was so hard and so awful and humanly he didn't want to do it. And if there was any other way, he asked that that other way could happen. You know, father, if it's possible, remove this cup from me. And he prayed that many times in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Speaker 1:

And so I like to meditate and reflect on that when I'm feeling this way, because I think, yeah, in my humanity I don't want to do these things. There are repugnant things in my life that I don't want to do. And it's okay to feel that way, because it was not at all sinful that Jesus felt that way. But the way he concluded his prayer was but not my will, but yours be done. So again, you can acknowledge that you're not feeling like doing something. You can acknowledge that maybe you're not feeling like doing anything that you have to do and still and still pray, but your will be done and that's. Both of those things can exist simultaneously. This isn't like an either. Or you can be choosing the Father's will while acknowledging that, humanly, you don't want to do it, and that's okay. So that's tip one.

Speaker 1:

Now the next thing that I would recommend doing is running a model on your thoughts. So a lot of people, if you're listening to this podcast and you're familiar with Catholic coaching or coaching models, you've probably heard of the model, and the model is something basically borrowed from cognitive behavioral therapy that really emphasizes how our thoughts impact our emotions, which then impact our behaviors, which then impact our results. So the basic flow of the model is that you will have circumstances and then you will have thoughts about those circumstances and then, based on your thoughts, you will feel certain emotions, and when you feel certain emotions, you behave in certain ways, and when you behave in certain ways, you have certain outcomes or results. And the thing about the model is, for most of us, this is kind of always running unconsciously because your mind is always having thoughts. I've heard it referred to as like your heart is always beating while your mind is always having thoughts, and some of these thoughts are true. Some of these thoughts are not true. These thoughts are just sentences in your brain and they're happening all the time, whether you're aware of them or not.

Speaker 1:

And a lot of times what happens is we'll be having these unconscious thoughts, we'll be running these unconscious models that are not examined, they're just running and we'll behave in ways that we don't really understand or that don't even make sense to us, or we'll think I'm not even having thoughts, I'm just feeling a certain way. But if you were to parse it out and dig into it, there are usually thoughts behind what you're feeling. This is just happening. Again, there's no judgment. There's nothing wrong with the way that you're thinking. It's just that it is. But Jesus tells us that we can examine everything by its fruit, and so you can look at the fruit of the thoughts that you're thinking. Is this good fruit? Is it helping you? Is it making it easier for you to carry your cross, or is it hurting you and making everything a little bit harder and making you feel worse?

Speaker 1:

The beauty of the model and how it can be used is that it's a tool that you can consciously choose to examine how you're feeling how you're thinking, how you're behaving, and then, at any level of the model, you can choose to make a change. Sometimes you can change your circumstances, but in cases like what I'm referring to today, you kind of can't. Sometimes you know it's not like you're going to give your kids away, it's not like you're going to quit your job. You still have stuff you have to do and there's no getting out of it. So your circumstances may not change at all. But what we can do with the model is we can kind of examine what are your thoughts and could you, in a very conscious way, using your intellect and will choose thoughts that are going to bear different fruit, because, as humans, we have the ability to deliberately choose what we think sometimes.

Speaker 1:

Now, like I said, your mind is always having thoughts, so there's going to be plenty of thoughts that are just happening. But when you take the time to actually pay attention to your thoughts and consciously choose, this is a thought that's serving me better and a thought that's not serving me as well. And that distinction is important too, because it's not so much that there's something wrong with your thinking or you're thinking wrong or you shouldn't even have these thoughts. That's not helping you, that's not serving you. You're just beating yourself up with more thoughts that are not helping you, and it's just this. Radical self-compassion is so important in this process. But once you've recognized, okay, there are some thoughts that are making me feel a certain way, that are making me act a certain way.

Speaker 1:

Now it's time to do something about it, and the way I would recommend doing this. Most of the time you're not going to have time to do something about it, and the way I would recommend doing this most of the time you're not going to have time to actually sit down and journal all of this. But if you are really stuck, then literally sitting down with a pencil and paper or pen and paper or even a Word document and just letting yourself go run the model on yourself and write out each phase and each step and what's happening, can actually be really helpful. It only takes a few minutes. Again, you probably won't do it like every single time you're ever having a negative emotion, but when you're really stuck it can be very helpful, and this is what I did for myself helpful, and this is what I did for myself.

Speaker 1:

Now I'm going to just share with you really briefly, kind of what I did here. So I wrote the circumstances, what was going on, all of the things that I had to do, just in the circumstances. You can think about this as being what can be proven in a court of law, not how you feel about it, not what you're thinking about it, just the details. So I wrote what meetings I had, what podcast interviews I had coming up, what kind of obligations I had on my plate that were weighing on me, and I just wrote what there was on my list that I don't want to do. And then I just did kind of a brain dump on my thoughts, and my thoughts were running along the lines of there's too much to do today. I don't want to do anything that I have to do. I'm overwhelmed, I don't want to do this. I don't think I can do this. This is too much, I can't do this. These are my real thoughts. This is what I was thinking not very long ago. So I just want to emphasize again this is really normal and even for coaches, we have thoughts like this, and it's okay.

Speaker 1:

Now the next step of the model is your emotion. So how did I feel when I was thinking these thoughts? Well, I felt overwhelmed and defeated and tired and resentful Again. These emotions were leading me then to have certain actions, and so the action line or the behavior line of the model was I just acknowledged what I was doing when I felt that way, and what I was doing was a lot of buffering and avoiding. I would waste time on YouTube or seeking dopamine. I would be in my office but I wouldn't be working. I would go for a walk just to get away, but I wouldn't enjoy it because I would the whole time be feeling stressed, because I knew I was supposed to be doing something else, and so I would feel that stress that comes from misalignment, of doing something that you knew wasn't the right thing to be doing. Then the result would be that I didn't get anything done. I would feel even worse because now there's still a lot to be done, I have less time to do it, and this was the unconscious model, and I think this is where a lot of us can be. We run these unconscious models.

Speaker 1:

So then, going down in my notebook, I wrote my intentional model how would I rather this model went? So in the circumstance line. Well, the circumstance didn't change. I still had all of those same things on my list, all the same things to do. That was the circumstance.

Speaker 1:

Well, then I started thinking what are some thoughts that I could intentionally choose to think that would help me actually accomplish the things that I had to do? And so some of the thoughts that I wrote down were all I have to do is the next thing with love, jesus will take care of the rest. This is what God wants me to do, and one thought that was really powerful for me was I can make my father proud. And when I practiced thinking those thoughts, my emotions changed. The emotions that I started feeling instead were expectant hope. I could expect good things. I felt peaceful surrender. I felt confidence. I even felt humility and awe, and I felt humble because I knew I couldn't do everything on my own, but I felt awe because God could and he would, and I knew that he would help me. These were the different emotions I experienced when I practiced thinking these other thoughts.

Speaker 1:

And how do I show up when I feel expectant hope, peaceful surrender, confidence, humility and awe? Well, I show up by faithfully doing my best with each task, one thing at a time, with my full intention and a good attitude. That's how I show up in those situations and then the result is that everything that's really important gets done and I end the day marveling at God's goodness and love and what he can accomplish in and through me when I really trust him. So that's a personal example. I literally just had my notebook open and was sharing with you the models that I ran, but you can do this for yourself. So whenever you notice either thoughts, behaviors or emotions that are not serving you, you can run a simple model on it yourself. And, of course, if you're working with a coach, this is a perfect thing to bring to coaching, because a coach can walk you through this model as well.

Speaker 1:

Now my next tip here tip number three, is to then just focus in discrete time chunks, and the perfect example of this that I can think of from my own experience is when I was in cadet basic training at West Point. It was a really hard time. Everything was really challenging and overwhelming. You're getting yelled at all the time. You're having to march from place to place to do hard things. You're tired. It was just a lot, there was a lot, and I felt very overwhelmed by it.

Speaker 1:

But I remember, even as a new cadet in cadet basic training, I told myself, well, all I have to do is make it to lunchtime, or all I have to do is make it to dinner. All I have to do is make it to this next milestone. And I would just really focus in that discrete time chunk because if I looked at all of basic training, I couldn't do it. I was very overwhelmed. I thought there's no way I'm going to make it. If I went even further and looked at all of my first plebe year at West Point, I would think there's no way I can't do this. And this is a strategy I've used so many times, not just in my army training.

Speaker 1:

Since then, either on deployments or even when I was at airborne school and I was afraid of jumping out of airplanes, I would look at just a very discrete time frame and this is helpful no matter what your life circumstances, there's probably going to be a meal in your future, so maybe you think I just need to make it until lunchtime, or I just need to make it until afternoon snack time, or I just need to make it to nap time. Whatever it is, it can be really helpful to just think to tell yourself all I have to do is just this next time chunk, and just show up as best you can in that time chunk. Because what we tend to do is we snowball, we start looking at all the things and we're like, oh, but then later tonight I have this appointment and later I have this obligation that I have to do and later I'm going to be doing this engagement, and it's like, okay, you can let yourself spiral and think about all of the things that you will be having to do, or you can just choose to focus intently on the next little piece, because if you focus on, if you try to focus on everything, first of all it's impossible and second of all, you're going to feel even more overwhelmed and even more like I don't want to do it, because you're trying, your brain is trying to give yourself the energy and motivation to do everything all at one time, and we just can't do that. So just let yourself have enough motivation to do just this next time chunk. And then my final tip, tip number four, is to trust God with the outcomes, and I know I mentioned this in my own model, but this is really just that attitude of trustful surrender where we say, lord, I feel like you got this. So I'm going to trust you, I'm going to surrender this situation to you and trust that you're going to take care of the outcomes.

Speaker 1:

I had the image recently, when I was talking with my spiritual director, of just being a newborn baby in God's arms and God just looking at you with so much love and so much tenderness, just like a new parent, holding a baby, and studying every detail of you and your life and knowing you and loving you so deeply. And that's how God, the Father, looks at you with love and knows you in every circumstance. You're in every detail of your life. And the thing is, we are all like those newborn babies. We think that we're capable of so much, we think that we can do so many things, but really, when we compare what we're capable of and what we can do with what God can do, we really are like newborn babies. In comparison, we can't actually do much of anything, but God is still looking at us with so much tenderness and so much love that the more we can become small, the more we can become childlike. When this is the spirituality of St Therese of Lisieux, this is the spirituality of every great saint that says to enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus tells us we have to become like little children. So the more we can acknowledge hey, I can't do everything, but you can, lord, that's when we're going to actually be able to keep doing the things that we need to do and we can actually let ourselves be overwhelmed with awe at what God is able to accomplish in and through us when we give him this kind of surrender.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so just a really quick recap here. When you are feeling a case of the adonis which could happen to you at any time and will happen many times, especially if your life is full of difficult circumstances what you can do is first acknowledge how you're feeling, without having to identify it, why or justify it. Just acknowledge this is how you're feeling. The next step is to run a model on your thoughts. So tip number two run a model on your thoughts and choose to run a model that's a conscious model, like that's really all you can do in this situation. It's very, very helpful. Step number three is to focus in discrete time chunks. What is just the very next time chunk that you can focus in? And then the final tip number four is to trust God with the outcomes and just completely surrender to him.

Speaker 1:

I think I said steps, tips and I don't know, but these are the four things that you can do and I hope that that was clear, even if I use different words for the numbers. So that's the recap. I really hope that that was clear, even if I use different words for the numbers. So that's the recap. I really hope that this is helpful for you. I know that this has been really helpful for me. I pray that it will serve you well whenever you're in a situation like this, and if this was helpful to you, then I would love if you could share this podcast with someone you know who might also be facing a case of the Yadawanas. It might just be what they need today to take their own faith to the next level and to keep on keeping on in their difficult circumstances. So that's it for me this week. Until next time, remember that it is Jesus who inspires you to do something great with your life, so don't let yourself be ground down by mediocrity. Bye for now.