what feels possible - finding the cracks when you're stuck

in this episode, i explore the question "what feels possible" - an anchor phrase i started using five years ago and still reach for today with clients, and with myself. i talk about strategies to check in with your brain and body, and start there to make small but useful progress when you feel stuck and overwhelmed. get into it!! 

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Grad School is Hard, But...is a podcast by Dr. Katy Peplin of Thrive PhD! learn more at thrive-phd.com - can't wait to get to know you better, or get access to my free falling planning workshop here!

Transcript

 Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar. 

In this season,

I'll be sharing the anchor phrases, tools, and strategies that underpin all of the work that I do with clients as part of Thrive PhD, and of course, the things that work for me as I attempt to be a human and a scholar.

And make sure you check out the link in the show notes for my working more intentionally tool kit. Which is available for you totally for free. Now let's get into it



Today's episode is all about a question that I have used since the pandemic, but find more and more useful, honestly, every year since. The question is what feels possible right now.  And I started using this question with clients and with myself because there was so much overwhelm that I was seeing.

There were a million things. That people could do. There were a thousand things that needed to be done and all of that pressure, time sensitivity, it just led to a state of overwhelm, a state of freeze, and there would be clients and we would sit on calls and I would be like, okay.  I am not sure what to do.

Are you sure what to do? And we could intellectualize it all day long. We could say, oh, it would be most efficient if we started here, or it would be the easiest if we started here. And the problem that I kept seeing was that we could think through those things, but we couldn't get the body to actually do it. 

  I know that I've talked about the brain body split a couple of times on this podcast, but I think that it's really useful to turn to it when we're thinking about how we're moving through the day when things feel really sticky and tough. So check in with yourself right now. 

Take a deep breath,  let it out, and notice what's happening in your brain right now. Is it doing a thousand things? Are you listening to this podcast, but also thinking about what to make for dinner and what grading needs to be done? Is it busy, busy, busy? And then also check in with your body.  Maybe it's a physical movement thing.

Are you on a bus? Are you sitting in a chair? Are you doing the dishes? Are your hands moving? You could think about it on the level of movement, but you could also think about it on the level of sensation. Do you feel tightness in your throat or in your shoulders? Maybe you feel a sense of anxiety. That kind of prickly, tingly electrical feeling is how it shows up.

For me from the top of my head to the tip of my toes, that makes me feel restless. Restless, restless, but also like I can't really settle on anything.  Maybe you feel a little bit frozen. Your limbs could feel heavy, your senses could be a little bit dull. You might even feel pressure like you are underwater or in a big, heavy space suit and you can't quite move.

And  these are all different states that you could feel, or maybe you feel perfectly regular. You feel like there is energy and movement and you could go here or go there and your breath feels restorative and your senses feel on point.  The question, what feels possible?  Is a way to check in and think about where your brain and body can get synced up and you can maybe move forward with something if your brain is really leading.

I find that that looks like a lot of, for me, planning, strategizing, and in this. The very minute that you're doing it making that epic to-do list thinking through your schedule, making all of these plans, it really feels like you're moving forward. It's like, yes, I've proved to myself on paper that all of this can happen, but I notice that when I'm doing a lot of that planning, I, my brain is really active, but my body feels a little bit shut down sometimes that it seems to know that every.

Single thing that I put on that list is just another thing for me to do, another thing that needs to get done. And it feels heavier and heavier as I keep going, even if my brain is lighting up and thinking, yes, yes, yes, this is it. Sometimes  I am feeling really ready to go physically. Limbs feel good.

Pain feels good. I am. Physically limber and loose and you know, I'm moving around my house and I'm putting things away, but my brain, she's not checked in. She is not really capable of the high level work that say, like reading my draft, it might be, or writing a blog post or doing some grading. What feels possible.

Is a question that you can use to see, okay, where's my brain at, where's my body at? And what feels possible for me to do right now?  I will walk you through an example. This is a little bit vulnerable, but I will show you right now how it shows up for me. And so.  I am a person who hates getting in the shower first thing in the morning.

I find it a violent way to enter the day, but I also know that, lots of people recommend starting a shower every day. I live in a house with people who shower every day first thing in the morning, and it's one of those things that my brain has decided is a quote thing good productive people do.

End quote. So I can sit in bed and be completely.  Mentally amped up like, okay, here's my day. Here's what's going on. Here's my schedule. I have this at 10, I have this at 12, and I will hear.  In my sort of litany of the day that like, okay, you gotta get up shower first, and my whole body rebels about that.

And so I end up scrolling on my phone looking at my book. I might start even working in on my phone in my bed, which I don't necessarily love it when that happens, but because I've said, okay, I should take a shower first. I get stuck, I get frozen. I. Start doing things that don't feel necessarily lined up.

Because I have this big barrier. I have to take a shower first, and then I can get started with my day.  So instead of asking what should come first or what would be the best thing to do, first thing in the morning, I ask myself what feels possible. It might not feel possible to take a shower, but it might feel possible to.

Get up, use the bathroom, brush my teeth, put on some comfy clothes and start making breakfast.  It might feel possible to get up, brush my teeth, take my meds, and head down to my desk and see what emails are there, but look at them in a place that feels a little bit more supportive and not purpose driven for work, let's say.

It feels better for me to check my email and my computer than it does to check it on my phone. So if I say, okay,  what feels possible right now, it, it physically gets me up and out of bed and moving because I'm giving myself permission essentially, to move through what feels possible instead of what I think I should be doing. 

This might show up for you at your desk where you sit down and you think, okay, I really need to get started on that draft. I should get started on that draft. Everybody says to start with the most important thing, but your brain and body just straight up rebel, and so you end up shopping for, a bathing suit that you might not ever need, or you do what I do and look at the newest pen releases and think, man, I really need those rainbows out of pens.

That would really make this easier. And because you've told yourself that you have to get started with the writing first, that that's what you should be doing, you end up freezing. You end up doing things getting stuck in a swirl of procrastination and stuckness. So maybe you say what feels possible.

It might not feel possible to start right into your draft right away, but it might feel possible to open up your inbox and pick an email to respond to.  If you feel overwhelmed by the state of your inbox, it might not feel possible to say, okay, I'm gonna set a timer for an hour and I'm gonna sit here and respond to emails until they're knocked out.

But it might feel possible to respond to a specific email that's really been bugging you, and then see what happens from there.  I myself, very rarely sit down at my desk and jump into anything. High intensity intellectually. I often need a little bit of a warmup. And then once I feel that movement, they're like, yes.

That sense of checking things off. I feel a little bit less stuck. I feel a little bit less heavy, and I feel a little bit more confident with some of the higher, more intense tasks. What feels possible is a way to sense. The cracks in that feeling of overwhelm. So many of us sit down and we see a wall of everything that needs to be done, and instead of trying to climb that wall or go around that wall, or you know. 

Instead of trying to climb that wall or go around that wall, we just sit down in front of it, or we walk in the other direction or we move, do anything we can to not acknowledge the weight of everything that needs to happen. This question, what feels possible is a way to say, okay,  I sense that this part of the task, this part of the thing that feels so heavy, this part, this tiny part.

Feels a little bit more possible. It feels a little more doable. It feels like a way in. So you start there cracks are how the light gets in. As the old adage says, you start with the cracks and the what feels possible question helps you see those cracks.  Ways to know that you might need this question as a way to get started on your day or as a way to reset or just a question to use anytime.

If you are hearing a lot of should or would in your internal monologue, that's a really good sign that your brain is creating that vortex of stuckness.  I should start with this. I should shower first. I should eat the frog. I would really benefit from doing X, Y, or Z first. Instead, what feels possible as a guiding question helps you focus on the coulds. 

I could start with breakfast. I could put my library books away. I could start with my morning pages. I could respond to that email instead of, I should respond to all of these emails. I. Give yourself a little bit of permission to see if you can't start a little bit of movement, a little bit of a pathway out of that sense of feeling frozen and into a sense of possibility. 

What feels possible remains one of the biggest gifts of a time of a global instability and overwhelm. It's been a gift to me. I regularly have people tell me that they still use this question five years later. I still use this question five years later, and as so many of us are facing another period of instability and overwhelm, whether that's on a national scale or a global scale, or a university.

Kayla, or maybe just a personal one, I thought it might be useful to come and share that gift.  Thank you so much and I will see you soon.  

  📍  Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com.  Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show.  Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!