53 | If You Feel Stuck, You’re Not Done Yet

Do you feel stuck and tired of trying?
Do you feel like life is not moving forward the way you want?
Do you keep thinking, “What’s the point?” 

Feeling stuck does not mean you are failing. It often means you are in a season where your brain is trying to protect you from disappointment, so it starts pushing you toward giving up before you even start. 

In this episode, Jessica Davis shares 6 lessons inspired by the book Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. You will learn how to redefine what “winning” means, how to stop waiting for the perfect moment, and how to treat setbacks like part of the path forward instead of proof you are not meant for more. 

Important note about the book mentioned: Greenlights is written for adults. If you are under 18, please get parent permission before reading it. 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode
• Why “winning” starts when you accept the challenge, not when you get the outcome
• How to treat life like action, not waiting
• A simple mindset shift, look for a reason to do, not a reason not to
• Why a red light from someone else can turn into your green light
• How to turn the page when you feel trapped in an old version of yourself
• Why setbacks don't mean you're stuck for good, they can lead to growth 

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⚠️ Disclaimer:  Block Out the Noise provides personal insights and practical stra...

Transcript

Welcome, Credentials, And Resources

Why Greenlights Inspired These Lessons

Lesson 1: Accept The Challenge

Redefining Winning And Fear

Lesson 2: Life Is A Verb

Failures As Paths To Momentum

Lesson 3: Reasons To Do

Lesson 4: Red Light Or Green Light

Shifting From Excuses To Action

Trusting Instincts Despite Doubt

Lesson 5: Turn The Page

Authoring A New Chapter

Lesson 6: When Fear Shrinks

Seeing Green Lights Ahead

One Lesson, One Day, Repeat

Jessica N. Davis 0:07

In life, there are different seasons where we feel stuck. We can feel as though life isn't moving forward the way we want, stuck in a career we don't like, or we can struggle seeing the point in things. It can lead to this mentality of giving up before we even try because we're so used to feeling like things won't go our way. At some point, everyone's been in this place. But I read a book that literally changes our views on what stuck really means. And it came from someone I honestly did not expect. This book had so many lessons, but I'm sharing six of them that I think will genuinely change how you view not only being stuck, but what living really means. Hi, and welcome to Block Up the Noise, a space to quiet the noise of anxiety, self-doubt, and overthinking. I'm Jessica Davis, a licensed therapist, mindset coach, and the creator of the Courage Method. I specialize in helping teens and young adults build confidence, courage, and purpose. If anxiety ever hits fast and you wish you had something simple to guide you through it, there is a free anxiety survival toolkit linked in the show notes. It's made for moments where your thoughts start spiraling and you just need help to calm you down in the moment. Quick reminder: this podcast is here to support and guide you, but it is not a replacement for talking to someone in real life. If you're struggling with your mental health, please reach out to a therapist. And if you're in crisis, contact Emergency Services or a local helpline. You don't have to go through it alone. Also, before we dive in, the lessons I'm sharing today are inspired by a book called Green Lights by Matthew McConaughey. It's not a book I'd recommend to anyone under 18 without parent permission. The content is meant for adults. And I'm not your parent, so don't try to get me in trouble. But the ideas inside lined up so much with what I believe in about fear, hard moments, and moving forward that I had to share them with you. Alright, so let's jump in. Lesson one, we win when we accept the challenge. I fell in love with the story that Matthew shared about his experience in West Africa. He's on this journey of trying to figure out more about himself, feeling really cold to get answers from a dream that he had. When he arrives, he tells the guy that his name is David, and he's a writer and a boxer. I have no idea why out of all the careers he could have chosen, he decided to pick a boxer. But that's what he landed on. So during the trip, no one cares that he's a writer, but word starts to spread through different villages that he's a boxer. A man comes in to challenge him, but backs away after another man shows up, or should I say, the man, the village champion. There's a crowd that's formed, and Matthew knows in this moment that the decision he makes will stick with him no matter what. He decides to step up to the challenge even though he has hardly any experience in wrestling. He doesn't understand the language, but you can feel the tension in the book. Of course, Matthew McCanahe doesn't win, but the interesting thing is he doesn't lose either. You would assume that he would, that he potentially would get knocked out, but he held his own and because of that the crowd cheers like he won. Later he asked the guide how he won. And the guide explained that the winning occurred when he accepted the challenge. That stuck with me in so many ways. I think we all get caught up in believing winning is crossing the finish line or getting an A or the result of something. But what if just deciding to face something is the win? Think of how much would be unlocked in our lives if we lived by that motto. We win when we accept the challenge. If you try to build new friendships, you would win just by deciding to talk to someone new. If you were overwhelmed by a project and just got up and started working on it, you would have already won. JK Rowling was rejected by 12 publishers. She was a single mom on welfare. She was told not to quit her day job. She kept going anyway. Steven Spielberg was rejected from film school three times, so he made his own path. They didn't win because everything worked out perfectly. They won the moment they decided not to let fear make their decision. There are countless examples I could use, but this one story in Matthew's book is really the way I think we should strive to live, by saying yes to things that we're so afraid of or riddled with anxiety to do. This podcast wouldn't exist if I wasn't willing to say yes despite all the reasons and fears to say no. I wish that when I was a teen, someone had told me, say yes more than you say no. And you would be shocked at the person you become by stretching yourself outside of your comfort zone. Lesson two Life is a verb. And the book Matthew's father has just passed away right after he got his first acting job. He came back to work four days after the wake on his family's suggestion. He arrived on set that night and he was talking to the director, Rick Linklater. He told him that life is about living. He said something on the lines of, even though my dad isn't physically here, his spirit is still alive in me for as long as I keep it alive. But what I take from this is that life is meant to be lived. Doing things that make you feel things that make you engage with life. There's a quote in the book, just keep living. Lowercase because life is nobody's proper noun. And there's no G on the end of living because life's a verb. I honestly have no idea what a proper noun is, and I really don't need to know at this stage in life. But a verb, I definitely understood. It's action. Anxiety sometimes tries to convince you that sitting out, not talking, waiting for the right moment is the best option. But that's not living. So many people are afraid of failing, so they don't try. But what if through failure you really find your rhythm, your stride, your opportunities that wouldn't have presented themselves without failing first? Because at its core, he's teaching us that red lights, which are the difficult moments, the setbacks, actually help us to get to the green lights, the moments that we celebrate. Lesson three, look for a reason to do, not a reason not to. This lesson is tied to the same story from lesson one, where Matthew, or should I say David, accepting the challenge to wrestle. His statement is some people look for an excuse to do, others look for an excuse not to. This one felt like a punch the gut, and it was all truth. If we sit with this for a moment, there's a freedom that comes with finding the reasons to avoid doing. Funny enough, I was talking to a client about this last week. They were saying how they were trying to just do what came to mind instead of letting the thoughts sit. Before, this client would allow themselves to think about why they shouldn't get out of bed, why they didn't have the time or energy to complete tasks. But now they weren't allowing those excuses to stop them from doing. This is the same lesson just formulated in a better package by Matthew. You can look for the reason to do versus allowing yourself to get lost in the reasons not to. You can always talk yourself out of something. But what if you challenge yourself to talk yourself into more things? Think of how many doors would be opened just by that shift. I can't believe we're only on lesson three to be honest, but this is why I love the book. I've only given you three takeaways so far. And if you implement even one, you will be in a better place mentally, physically, and emotionally. Lesson four. The red light might be your green light. This one might be my favorite one, to be honest. Matthew, while in college, he realized that he no longer wanted to be a lawyer. He wanted to pursue acting. He knew he had to call his dad and tell him, but he wasn't sure how his dad would take this news. So he called him, he shared it, and there was this five-second pause. And if you know that pause, you're like, this is where the person is thinking, and it's long enough to feel like minutes have passed instead of seconds. But his dad told him, and excuse my language, I'm just using his dad's words, but don't half-ass it, giving Matthew the green light he needed. But it led me to wonder, what if his dad had said no? What if the green light that he actually got was a red light? Would Matthew have kept the lawyer path? Would he have still pursued his real dreams? And got me thinking about how many teens and young adults are looking for their family's approval on so many different things. They want them to be on board with their choices, just like Matthew's dad was. But it doesn't always play out that way. There are moments where the people closest to you will give you a red light, and that red light could be out of fear, their worries, or the unknown. Multiple people in my life had told me that I picked the wrong group for my podcast. I shouldn't be speaking to teens and young adults. I should be speaking to their parents. They could be right, but what if they're wrong? What if just because no one else is speaking to teens and young adults doesn't mean I shouldn't? I could have taken those red lights and switched gears. But I decided to follow my instincts and trust my gut. Isn't that better than going down a path that I don't fully feel passionate about? So sometimes when you get that red light, it's really a green one because it helps you see how convicted you are in your decisions. When you can stand in a situation where people you care about are saying no and you still say yes, how can you fail? You really can't. If you just stay the course and take all their doubt and use it as motivation, you can't miss. Lesson five, you can turn the page. Sometimes in life we feel like we can't turn the page. We keep replaying the same situation over and over, beating ourselves up over the choices we've made. There's guilt and shame attached to the choice. So we think that if we just stay in it, that it somehow will atone or make amends for what we did. But sometimes it's not even about mistakes. It's also about how we are identified. We struggle letting go of things because we're unsure of how we or others will view us. The athlete who decides to step away from sports, the overachiever who decides to take a path that doesn't equate to maybe financial stability, the stoner who decides to quit. Sometimes other people box us in, but sometimes we box ourselves in. And when we're finally ready to shed it, to leave it behind, we're afraid to turn the page. Matthew understood that sometimes we're in such an unhappy place and we feel so trapped that really all we have to do is make the decision to turn the page. It's our decision to make. And when we finally make it, it's freeing. He explains it that if you feel stuck, you are the author of your own life and you have the power to turn the page and start a new chapter. We honestly don't give ourselves enough credit. We put ourselves in the small roles in other people's books, but you are the main character in your own story. You get to be the hero. You don't have to be the sidekick or the person who fades in the background. You can be the one that brings the story to life. So ask yourself, am I happy with the book I've written so far? And if not, turn the page. Lesson six. Red lights can become green lights. This is really the heart of everything I've been sharing today. When I was a teenager, I got in a car accident and hit a kid who had a crush on me in high school. I was devastated, afraid, and I didn't want to go back to school. And I knew everyone knew because the school bus got there right after it happened. Yeah, talk about massive embarrassment. My mom, though, told me I had to face it because if I didn't, my fears would only grow. My fear was people saying things and not being able to cope, not being able to face the ridicule. But I wasn't going to not listen to my mom. My fear, though, I thought had come true. When I got into my first class that day, someone did say something. But luckily a peer stuck up for me. She didn't have to, but she did. She told them to leave me alone, and they did. And I honestly didn't have a single issue for the rest of the day. I learned that day that sometimes the fear you create in your mind doesn't happen. I actually ended up having a pretty good day, you know, under the circumstances. That red light turned into a green one. I've seen this over and over again with the clients that I work with. Clients who didn't want to go to treatment and ended up being exactly what they needed to grow. Clients who went through one of the hardest moments of their life and it became the thing that helped them take a harder look at themselves, repair relationships, and finally stop pretending everything was fine. Clients who went through painful breakups, and through the pain, they found their voice, their boundaries, and started falling in love with who they actually are. Here's what I've noticed. The people who stay stuck aren't always the ones who have the hardest circumstances. They're the ones who've stopped believing a green light is coming. They hit a red light and think this is proof things aren't going to get better. But what if that's just not true? What if you're just not seeing the green lights yet? Sometimes I believe they're ignoring the green lights, but that's a whole nother conversation. What if the red light you're sitting at right now is actually setting you up for something you can't see from where you're standing? That's what Matthew got. And that's why I resonated so much with this book. Red lights, yellow lights, they can all become green lights when you stay open to where they might lead you. I know this was a lot, and there's still so much I wanted to unpack, but I didn't want to make this a super long episode. But just go back and pick one lesson that resonates with you from today. And just try to embody it for one day and then another day. And just keep going. Whichever lesson you choose, if you stick with it, you are going to feel better about yourself, your mental health, and who you're becoming. Thank you for listening. Until next time, keep moving forward. Trust yourself, and never forget you have what it takes to block out the noise.