The Tension Zone: Stuck between "This isn't it" and "Now what"

Most people assume that if they want change badly enough, clarity will eventually appear and it'll be smooth sailing from there.

But there’s a phase of personal change where the opposite happens:

You know something about your life isn’t working anymore. You think about changing careers, leaving a relationship, or redesigning your life entirely. You read books, listen to podcasts, and imagine different possibilities.

And yet… nothing actually changes.

In this episode, you’ll learn why wanting change isn’t enough to create it, how subtle psychological patterns keep people stuck in careers, relationships, and identities that no longer fit, and why the real work of this stage isn’t finding clarity.... but interrupting the automatic patterns that built your current life (that you want to change).

If you’ve ever felt stuck between knowing something has to change and having no idea what the next step is, this episode will help you understand exactly where you are in the change process and what actually moves you forward.

Book a free 30-minute Clarity Call here to cut through the noise and bring next steps into focus: https://www.megtrucano.com/book-a-call

***The REAL Change Kickstart (45-Day 1:1 Intensive)***

For women who know something needs to change and are ready to stop circling the decision.

***The REALignment Private Coaching Experience (3 or 6 Months)***

For women already mid-transition who want support integrating change in every aspect of their lives, not just initiating it.

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Transcript

Welcome back to the Change Ology podcast. Last time in last episode we talked about the instability zone, and as a refresher, that's the zone of change where change happens to you. You don't want it, but it's here anyway. It's like a terrible house guest you didn't invite, and it stays forever, right? This is things like layoffs.

Unexpected health diagnoses like institutional chaos, right? Your system goes into survival mode and clarity just fricking disappears in the instability zone. The work is not clarity, it is orientation and stabilization, right? So we talked about that last time, but today we're talking about very different territory.

This is not survival. This is tension. This is the zone where you want change. You crave it, you fantasize about it. You think about it on your commute and while you're brushing your teeth and you talk about it ad nauseam with your friends over drinks, and yet nothing actually changes. You are not in crisis.

You're not dis destabilized, you're just kind of quietly dissatisfied. This my friends is the tension zone and you know, you're in the tension zone. When you think some version of this, I don't know what it is that I want exactly just yet, but I know damn well this is not it. When you're inside the tension zone, desire for change feels incredibly intense and really, really, really uncomfortable.

And because you are a smart person and you're used to thinking your way out of sticky problems pretty effectively, you keep looking for clarity on your situation as a way to escape that discomfort. Right. You might find yourself consuming things like books and podcasts and social posts, but there's no action that results from that.

So your behavior doesn't shift and therefore your situation doesn't shift. Right. You feel this immense pressure to like figure it out, but every option that you're considering just kind of just feels wrong or premature. And this zone, this tension zone is so frustrating because desire is loud. Here it is all you can think about and.

When what you want, what you desire, feels so far away from your status quo and what you're living right now, or it feels completely inaccessible to you. That intense desire creates friction. And so naturally your brain goes looking for that clarity as a way to escape discomfort, right? So what's next?

What do I do? What's the right move? Right? Desire is really good at creating tension, but it's terrible at creating direction, and it doesn't help with clarity either. Wanting change, no matter how badly you want it. It's not enough to make it real because without examining the rules and the narratives and the shoulds that shaped your current life.

Right, the rules that effectively built the status quo, you're trying to escape, you're gonna keep looping back to those familiar, accessible options. And I see this a ton, this pattern in my clients all the time. Like just all the time, right? Let's say that someone wants a career change, okay? Maybe they're bored, disengaged, resentful.

Maybe their boss sucks. Maybe the workplace is toxic. Maybe their team drains their energy and they hate doing management. maybe the work feels empty or meaningless. Right? The the reason doesn't matter as much, right? It really doesn't. But when that desire for something to be different reaches its peak, when they're just at the top of their frustration, what do they do?

What would you do? Yes, exactly. They polish their resume. They scroll LinkedIn, they look at job ads. They imagine something different for themselves, and then something happens, A new project comes along, they get a raise, they get a promotion. Invariably, this is a good thing that happens, right? And suddenly the intensity of the desire for things to be different drops just enough for them to stay put in their status quo.

And you know, this is one of many cycles that I see, but that cycle, whatever it is, however it manifests, if it's not interrupted, we'll repeat indefinitely. There will always be some glimmer of hope inside your status quo. That's why people stay in crappy situations for a long time. Sometimes that glimmer of hope manifests as, you know, their partner unloads as a dishwasher and never has before.

Oh my God, this is the start of a new relationship, right? It keeps them in a status quo that they want to change, right?sometimes the cycle manifests as a pattern of like, oh, I really should be grateful for what I have, and then that is enough to silence your desire. For things to be different for a little while.

Okay. And I wanna be clear that this doesn't just apply to career pivots. It equally applies to relationships and to other kind of identity related things, right? Inside the tension zone, there are always, always, always, always cycles and patterns holding you inside a status quo that you want to be different.

This is the core of the tension zone and the tension zone. I hate to break it to you, but it's not about finding clarity. I know you want it. You want that clarity really, really badly. But this zone is actually about interruption. And interruption is a deliberate, intentional disruption of an automatic pattern or cycle that creates space for you to make different decisions.

Let me repeat that because it's really important. Interruption is a deliberate. Intentional disruption of an automatic pattern or cycle that creates space for you to make different decisions. You need to do things differently to create different outcomes for yourself, right? It's that old definition of like, you know, insanity doing the the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, right?

But in order to do that. You need to interrupt the existing patterns, or they're just gonna keep going on indefinitely. And this is how you find yourself, like me, and you spend decades inside of a pattern that you don't particularly want for yourself. And by the way, this is exactly the work that we do inside the Real Change Kickstart.

We practice this interruption, we identify the insidious shoulds and the narratives that are keeping you stuck. They are things like, I have this expensive law degree, so I should put it to good use, even though I'm miserable as a lawyer, right? There are narratives and shoulds that are keeping you stuck where you are.

So we examine those and then we dismantle those. And then we work on strengthening your ability to decide without outsourcing your authority. So if this is the kind of work that you know you need to do to break out of your rut, to identify your pattern or cycle, check out the real change kickstart and you can learn more by clicking the link in my show notes.

So again, interruption is hitting pause where autopilot used to run and it means identifying what doesn't fit anymore, right? And being really honest with yourself about what that might be. It might be time to hang up that that job as a high powered lawyer. Just because you have the degree doesn't mean that you need to keep using it, right?

That might not be your situation, but. It really requires us to sit down and be honest about what doesn't fit anymore. It also means becoming aware of the rules that you're quietly following without realizing it. And please do check out the episode that I did on the Insidious Shoulds. It's really helpful, especially if you haven't heard it yet.

So many of us, and I have definitely been guilty of this too. Default to chasing a definition of success that we created at age 22, and we really never updated. Right? So right now, I'm gonna take a couple minutes to ask you a few questions. So ask yourself these questions. Are you still clinging to a version of success that you learned from your parents?

If you haven't examined your working definition of success recently, within the last couple of years, I would say, I can almost guarantee you that it's outdated and I can almost guarantee you that it's probably based on some version of success you saw modeled growing up, or you inherited rather than one that you personally created.

So ask yourself, are you still clinging to a version of success you learned from your parents? Second question, are you basing your life decisions on what you see your peers doing? And I don't mean to reduce this to like some peer pressure type situation. No. I'm talking about do you feel that constant?

Pressure to own a home or have kids or climb the corporate ladder because you see your friends doing it or you see that that is what people your age are doing, right? Or, and this happens a lot too, if your friends or peers have it and you don't, you feel less than like you're behind, right? So that is the second question.

Are you basing your life decisions on things that you see your peers doing? And the final question I'm gonna ask you is, are you holding onto a plan for your life that originated with a past version of yourself? This is the one that I got trapped in, right? I had a plan for how my life was gonna go from when I was very little and when it wasn't going like that, I just made myself wrong.

I, I felt like I was doing something wrong when actually what needed to happen was I needed to update my version of what success actually should look like. Right. So your life has changed since you were young, right? Or outta college or whatever. You are a different person. You are a different person, and odds are really good that you don't necessarily value the same things now that you did when you were younger.

So you need to take that into account when you're evaluating your definitions of success, right? So these are all really good questions to ask ourselves as we begin the work of interrupting those old cycles and psychological patterns. Okay. At this point you might be thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. But where do I even get started with that?

If I knew the patterns, I would obviously be working on breaking them. Right? So how do I even know which patterns I need to interrupt? So. If you need help identifying the pattern that needs interrupting, take the personal change pattern assessment. It takes five minutes, totally free, and it helps you diagnose that dominant psychological barrier that's keeping you cycling in that same pattern.

and so at the end of the assessment, you'll know exactly where to. Start interrupting things, right? So instead of trying to fix everything at once, right, and forcing clarity that is not accessible to you yet, this assessment will help you see which pattern actually needs disrupting, right? So you'll find the link to that assessment in the show notes.

Another part of the work that. Is inside the tension zone is very much related to interrupting old patterns, right? Is to practice that interruption without seeking permission. Right. This is super, super hard for a lot of people. It's very hard for me, it's especially hard for people pleasers, for overthinkers, for overfunctioners, for people who struggle with anxiety or A DHD or Neurodivergence.

It is especially hard for people who want absolute certainty of success before they make any moves. So. Just remember that inside the tension zone, clarity, and especially certainty aren't available. The tension zone is not about seeking clarity. It's about interrupting the patterns that are keeping you stuck.

Okay. To summarize the tension zone, clarity still not available yet. Interruption is the work. Change is an absolute deep desire here. An interruption is the moment you stop living on autopilot and start choosing on purpose. So first we had the instability zone, and in that zone you don't want change, but it showed up anyway.

And the work is to stabilize your situation here in the tension zone. You want change real bad, but before you can do any of that, you have to interrupt the old patterns. And next time we're going to talk about what happens. After the interruption of those patterns, it's when action begins. It's when you start to build momentum and it's when clarity actually becomes available for the very first time.

That's the movement zone, and we'll talk about that next time. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.