How To Get To Where You Are Going When You Have No Idea Where To Start

Have you ever felt like you know something needs to change, but you have absolutely no idea what that change is?

Maybe you're feeling stuck, disconnected, frustrated, or simply aware that your current life no longer feels aligned—but every time you try to figure out your next step, you become overwhelmed by how big the change feels.

In this episode, we're talking about one of the most common questions I hear in clinic:

"I know I want something different... but I don't know where to start."

We'll explore why your nervous system often keeps you searching for certainty, how overwhelm can lead to freeze and avoidance, and why clarity rarely arrives through more thinking.

Instead, it comes through surrender.

I also share one of my favourite practices from Marianne Williamson's A Return to Love—the Four Questions—a simple but powerful tool that has helped me navigate some of the biggest decisions of my life.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why feeling stuck is often a sign of disconnection, not failure
• The difference between wanting change and knowing what change to make
• How overwhelm activates the nervous system and creates freeze responses
• Why we cannot jump from fear to gratitude overnight
• Finding relief and courage as the next emotional step
• What surrender actually means (and what it doesn't)
• The physiology of surrender and nervous system regulation
• Why intuition is easier to access when the body feels safe
• The connection between stillness, creativity, and clarity
• Marianne Williamson's Four Questions practice
• How guidance actually arrives in everyday life
• The role of trust, action, and co-creation in personal growth
• Why fear keeps us attached to outcomes—and how to move through it

Remember:

You do not need to fix your entire life today.

If this episode resonated with you, please rate and review the podcast. It helps more people discover the show and allows us to continue bringing meaningful conversations where science meets soul.

Connect with me:

Instagram: @alannacrawford_

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Summit of Deck, where science meets goal and you don't have to pick one or the other. Hi, I'm your host, Elena Crawford, osteopathic manual practitioner and wiki mask teacher. On the pod, we're talking about body wisdom, energy, intuition, and becoming an expert on your own family. Whether you're looking to find yourself again, create a new version, or see, just here for the results, you're in the right place. I'm here to demystify spiritual curiosities while adding a layer of humanness to the healthcare experience. No gatekeeping, no pedestals. This podcast is for the woman who is ready to take her power back. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Hello everyone. Happy Thursday. I literally just recorded this podcast. And podcast FOPA 101, you should watch your garage band to make sure it's recording. Um it was not recording, so take two. I hope it's as good. All right. How did the full moon go for everyone? I feel like it was one of those moons people were really feeling. I posted a little video uh on my Instagram of the text conversation I had with my girlfriend about what house Sagittarius sat in with her. And so I actually had a bunch of people come into the clinic and say something along the lines of like, okay, so I did it. I looked at my birth chart and figured out what house Sag was in. And it's funny because the house it was in, that kind of stuff has like really been weighing on me lately, like the themes of the houses. Um, for some people it was relationships and not actually um relationships like like uh romantic relationships, but partnerships, either like uh long-term friendships or business partnerships. Um, and a couple of women had it actually in habits, which was really interesting because uh leading up to the full moon, we had really been talking about wanting to change habits but not really knowing where to start. Um, so you know me, if I get asked the same question three times, I make it a podcast episode, and a lot of people in clinic were like, yeah, I know I want change. The full moon really kind of like brought that out in me, but I don't know what that looks like, or I don't really know how to get started. And I do hear this a lot. It's like a recurring thing, especially in Reiki. People come in, they feel really yucky or stuck or angry, um, and they don't really know how to start making change or where to start making change. I also just want to say quickly, you can totally listen to this episode without having listened to last week's episode or any episode for that matter. It's not building on last week, it's just kind of something that came up because of last week's episode. Um, but you are in no way missing anything by not listening to last week or any other episodes for that matter. They're all standalone. Um, again, I just like to make my episodes based off like what walks into my clinic or questions that I'm getting asked a lot about. So if you're feeling yucky, um, it can be for a few reasons, and we're gonna talk about that today. And we're also gonna talk about, in my opinion, one of the best exercises or spiritual practices that you can do to get on your way with figuring out what it is that you want and how to take that first step. So let's do it. I feel like I needed music there. Like, I'm gonna get skilled enough to put a little song in there to break it up. Kind of like good hangs. She's got good music. Anyway, okay, so you don't feel good. You want change, you don't know where to begin. Um, you might not know where to begin for two reasons. One, you might actually feel like you have no idea what you want, you just know you want something different. Or two, you feel like whatever it is that you're wanting or thinking you need to happen is such a big overhaul to your life that it seems really daunting. And just for the sake of understanding what I'm talking about, I'm gonna give the example of abundance here. A lot of people want to call in abundance. So when we're talking about abundance, it can be money, it can be opportunity, it's it's anything related to acquiring more or something you feel like you don't have right now. Um, typically it tends to be financial in some way. I mean, who doesn't always want more finances? But um, I don't know, I'd love to call in abundance right now. We just finished a nine-month renovation. If you've ever done a renovation, it's just like constant spending. And yeah, it's the big things, like when you get your first um contract, you kind of have like the big stuff on there, but then it's like little things. Paint. I did not realize how expensive paint is. So over time, it really adds up. Um, and if you're like me and you choose to never check your credit card statement because out of sight, out of mind, you might also want to be calling in a little bit of abundance at the moment. So let's just look at abundance in terms of debt for the sake of this example. Let's say you have $20,000 of debt and you have no idea how you're getting out of it. Like maybe you're a salaried employee, there's no room for you there to make more money. Um, you could be a parent or not have a lot of time to pick something up on the side. Short of winning the lottery, we don't really know how we're getting rid of this debt. Um, so you think I want abundance, which is just it's very general because yes, we don't know how we're getting there. But when you think I want abundance like that, you're thinking 20k debt to nothing. And that's really overwhelming because you've exhausted all the analytical ways you think that you can make more money. Um, and like what kind of crazy change would you have to make, other again, other than winning the lottery, to get all of your debt drastically gone. So, what we need to do is we need to reframe here. We're not looking to go zero to a hundred. That is not how this stuff works. It's the same if you were like really down about a breakup or a divorce, and it was really affecting your everyday happiness levels because your frequency is low, right? Like you got a lot of shit you got to work through. And your overall goal might be I want a loving and healthy relationship. Well, you're not gonna walk out the door and find the next love of your life just because that's what you're calling in. Our nervous system, it can't handle that. It literally won't accept it because it doesn't feel safe. Because you're at this low frequency and love is like one of the highest frequencies. So you can't just make that big jump. Instead, we're gonna call in the next best thing. Like, let's take one step to move forward to the next best thing. If sadness is our entry point or fear is our entry point, we're not jumping to gratitude or love. Let's aim for like courage or relief. If we try to fix things overnight, we get really overwhelmed and we and we go into a panic state. And that panic state in the nervous system, it turns into um freeze or avoidance. So finding one thought that feels like relief or courage, one thought, one action. Because when we can get to relief or courage, it takes our foot off the gas. And when the foot comes off the gas, it slows us down for a second. And we can get into our bodies and we can get into our nervous systems, and they start to feel safe or connected really. Like the body and the nervous system come back as one. And we know that our intuition speaks best, speaks most clearly and directly when we have a calm or neutral nervous system. And that doesn't mean I need you to be the Buddha, but it simply means take your foot off the gas, we're cruising, okay. There's no break, but there's no gas. We're rolling in neutral, if you will. And that's when the intention, the intuition gets loud. And this is where this practice that I'm going to talk about is best done. And this is really where we are going to begin to create that big change you're looking for. We're just doing it in much more digestible pieces. This is not a fake it till you make it situation. And I think that's why people get really confused with this work. Oh, yeah, just love, light, and happiness. Like, no, you can't just jump there. Your nervous system knows it's fake and it's gonna be like, hell nah, sister. We just need to give the nervous system the next best thing and trusting the next best thing, feeling relief that we are just going to be able to go to the next best thing. We can say things like, I don't have to fix all my problems today. I can change one thought today. I'm okay with feeling 1% better today. And you can do this on your own. Like you can choose your thoughts or your actions that give you courage or relief. But let me just say that you've already chosen both of those things because you turned on this podcast today based on the title of the podcast or the podcast description. So you courageously said, I want change. I don't know what that is, or maybe you do and you're hoping for more guidance on how to get there. But either way, you took that one courageous step today, and good for you. Now you can take a breath, feel some relief because I'm gonna give you a practice that's gonna get help you get 1% better each day. Maybe it's more than that. Maybe you can jump higher than that, but understand that we can only receive as much as we are willing to surrender. So here we go with surrender. When we don't know what we want, or we know what we want, but we don't know the moves to get there, the best possible thing in the entire world you can do is go into a state of surrender. But we don't live in a surrender world. We live in a go, go, go. I need to think my way through this, or I need to jump into action. And that's often why we're not receiving or feeling like we're not receiving guidance, or our thoughts feel disjointed, or our moves don't feel aligned. That's why we need to get out of that state and we need to move into surrender. So surrender, and this is the most important part, and this is the part we have the hardest time with. Surrender is releasing the need to control the how. The how you're getting there. And surrender is becoming willing to be guided. So releasing the control on how and the willingness to be guided. It's loosening our grips on timelines and outcomes. This one is huge, guys. If you have these timelines or outcomes in your head and they're not working, it's because they're not guided or aligned timelines and outcomes. And we need to loosen our grips on those. We need to surrender those over and we need to make space for receiving direction. Now, a lot of people will write this off as giving up or passively letting the universe do everything, air quotes, in like a non-down-to-earth way, like avoidance or abandoning responsibility. But it's it's not that. And in order to understand why it's not that, I want to talk about the physiological aspects of surrender. Because the physical or physiological components of surrender are equally as important as the spiritual ones. So most of us spend our days in a constant state of doing, of thinking, planning, solving, anticipating, but most importantly, reacting. We are a very reactive society. And our nervous system becomes so focused on the next task, the next problem, the next decision, that we rarely create space for ourselves to simply be. Think about it. If you even have a second to like sit in your car or sit in a waiting room on the toilet for God's sake, we pull out a cell phone and we're scrolling, we're checking our emails, or answering texts, like we never give ourselves a second to not be reacting. And so we're in when we're in a stressed state or we're uncertain and we're searching for answers, the brain naturally is going to shift into problem-solving mode. It scans for threats, predicting outcomes, trying to create certainty. And that is a beautiful survival mechanism. We need that. We need that to survive. But it's not a great state for giving and receiving. And we can argue we're not living in a time where we constantly need to be in that state because, like, we're not threatened on every move we make. Okay. We're not threatened sitting in our in our MD's doctor's office that we need to be scanning, right? So we can just take a little breath and maybe think about surrendering or just being in neutrality. And when we do that, we can begin to receive our guidance. So whether you call it intuition, wisdom, creativity, God, the universe, or simply your own inner knowing, we are allowing space there so it's not getting drowned out by mental noise. And this is why surrender often feels difficult because you have to create the space and the time, the stillness. The mind believes that if it stops controlling, something bad might happen. But surrender isn't giving up control, it's creating enough safety in the body that control is no longer necessary for a moment. It's not like Jesus take the wheel and we're just letting go, but it's saying, like, I don't need control in this moment. I'm safe enough to just be. So when we sit quietly, we slow our breathing, we close our eyes, and intentionally let go of trying to solve the problem, several physiological things begin to happen. Our heart rate slows, our breathing deepens, our muscles actually begin to soften and release. The nervous system starts shifting out of a stress response and it sits more in a regulated, neutral state. And in that state, the body's no longer using its resources to scan for danger. And when we're no longer using those resources, we can become more receptive instead of reactive. It's shifting where our energy and resources go physiologically in the body. So this is why so many people will suddenly find clarity in like a shower or a walk or during meditation, even staring at a window if you actually don't have your phone, just like looking out the window. Because you get into that state. I will I will take showers when I've done so much analyzing and mulling over and I feel really stuck because I know I'm gonna have a moment of brilliance in the shower. And it's not like, oh, the shower gives me brilliance, but it's like I'm in a shower. I can't just jump out and react to something. I know I'm in the confines of the shower. I know I'm not in harm. I don't have a phone or something buzzing, something going at me, that I'm just in that state of neutrality and it allows the brain to become receptive. And that's when I get my big aha moments. So surrender is really giving your body and your mind an opportunity to catch up with one another. So it's creating that pause where you're constantly asking all of these questions, it creates a pause enough that you can actually hear the answer. And it's allowing space where there was previously a lot of pressure. And that pressure can be internal or external. Internal being like you're trying to solve something or do something, you're putting these deadlines on yourself, or external pressure, like you have very real deadlines in life and obligations and things you have to catch up with. But often it's in that space that we get our next most aligned step presented to us. And here's where it gets a little more spiritual because we all want the surrender and guidance, but we cannot receive guidance while gripping super tightly to the to an outcome or being too fearful to act on it. And that's a big one. So I want you to park that thought for a second. We're gonna come back to it. But understand that the first step of this practice is to be able to get into a state of surrender. So this is um called The Four Questions. It's a practice by Marianne Williamson, it's from a book called A Return to Love. Um, she wrote a book, A Return to Love, on practices and things she took from a course in miracles, which is a very, very tough, dense read. Um, a return to love is so beautiful. I think I reread it like every two to three years, and I take something different from it every time. Anywho, these are the questions. I'm pretty sure they're verbatim, but it's been a long time since I actually took them out of the book. So this is this is what I say, but I'm pretty sure it's verbatim. So step one, I do this. I did it before I had a kid when I would wake up in the morning and before I'd like leave my bedroom, but you can do it anytime you have like a spare five minutes. So um put your feet on the floor or sit up nice tall in bed, take a deep breath in, and you're going to say in your head, I surrender and be here and breathe and try to get to that neutral state, and you start to feel the body do those physiological responses. And once you've hit that point, then you're gonna say in your head, where would you have me go? Take some breaths. What would you have me do? Take some breaths. To whom would you have me speak? Take some breaths. And what would you have me say? Take some breaths. This practice shifts you from that grip of control to create to co-creation. And it allows your intuition to open up and to speak to you. And again, you can call it intuition, your guides, ancestors, teachers, gods, universe, whatever you want to ascribe to this practice, it does not matter. All that matters is you are surrendering to whatever higher power you believe in and being open to receiving input. And know that, like, it's not just going to jump out at you right away. It might, and that's cool. But we have to understand here, we're not asking guides, show me my entire future. We're asking, what is my next best step? And like, you're not gonna hear the big, the big booming voice that's like, go to this address on this day and your life will change. Again, you could, you really could, and good for you. Um, but most of us mere mortals, it just shows up as a pull or a tug, reoccurring thoughts, moments of clarity, synchronicities, feelings like pulling you towards something. And I don't want to give examples here of myself or of clients because it's really going to be different for everyone based on your willingness to surrender, based on your willingness to sit in that stillness and being able to listen, but most importantly, and we're circling back here, your ability to act, to not give into the fear, to walk into the uncertainty and act on those tugs and thoughts and clarity and opportunities. Because here's the thing: people want change. People always say, I want change, but when it does present itself, they get scared and they say, Oh, no, no, not that. That's too big. That will uh that'll change my lifestyle too much. I don't want that. And typically they're not big things right off the bat. Typically, these things do start small and they build their nudges, their conversations, their connections. But sometimes it is really big things. Sell the house, move, get out of the relationship, quit your job, go back to school. And this is where the releasing of control of the outcome needs to come in. I get people in my clinic, I call them frequent flyers, probably every four to six months. They come in for Reiki, they keep asking the same questions and they keep getting the same answers, the same steps, but they don't act on them. And then they come back, same thing, same thing. And what they want, they want that same outcome, but they want a different route of getting there, a more comfortable one, like a have your cake and eat it too situation. And that is not how it works. If you really want a big change, if you really are tired of feeling just like good enough and you want to just feel like really friggin' good, if you want to become a new version of yourself, you have to let go of the fear of uncertainty and you have to step right into surrender and you have to take the actions that are being presented to you. The universe is always offering up these things to you. Now, whether you take them or not, that's on you. That's not on the universe, that's on you. I have risked it all two times. I'm about to walk into the third. And both of those times, it has worked out better than I could have ever imagined for myself. And I'm not saying that it wasn't hard work and that it wasn't trying on me because it was. But you have to act on the nudges and put in the work. Because both times I could have ended up broke and back at square one. Like those were very real realities if it didn't work out. But I knew and I had faith of stepping into that uncertainty. If I just trusted what was being shown to me, it was going to work out and I did. Because you're not going to be shown something, you're not going to be nudged towards something for it to epically fail. That's not, why would they ever do that? That's not how, that's not how this works. But it is scary, and you have to be willing to do it. When I look back at my original Joe Dispensa meditation, so I started Joe Dispensa in 2020. Um, it's a whole thing, but one of the one of the parts is like kind of writing down, he doesn't call it manifestation, but I'm just gonna use the word manifestation. So I wrote down a manifestation list, a massive list, right down to like what time I wanted to start my work day at. Three or four months ago, I look back on that from 2020. I have every single thing, every single thing, right down to manifesting a forerunner. Like I surrendered and I stepped into the unknown and I trusted that everything was being guided for my highest and best. And how I did that was by doing this four questions practice every single day for about three years. And I still do do it now, it's just not every day. I do use other tools, but same concept. But this is a really easy entry point because you can do it in like five minutes. As I got more into it, I would build a meditation onto it. I added in Dr. Joe, but for the most part, like this is what did it for me. And and really, like, what do you have to lose? It's five minutes of your day. It's so funny when I hear people say, Oh, this stuff doesn't work, manifestation isn't real, the universe doesn't give you signs, yada yada, yada. Okay, but have you tried it? Like, have you tried it correctly? Because I have never met someone who works with this stuff. It's like, yep, I put in some really solid work, I really did get to their surrender, I disregarded the fear and nothing happened or it ended terribly. People don't say that because it doesn't happen. People say it doesn't work, one, because they they just want it done for them. They don't want to put in the work, and like that's a lot of people. But two, and I would say arguably the bigger thing is people are afraid. They're afraid to make the changes that it actually requires of them. People are happy in their comfort zones. I talk about comfort zones all the time. They're not a good thing. Yes, they feel good, but they feel good because they're predictable to the nervous system and the brain, not because they're what's best for you. As I have regretfully tattooed on my body at the age of 18, I still love the sentiment. I just don't love it living forever on me. We need to get that removed, but it says, fear is the enemy of progression. Let that sink in. And try this. Again, what do you have to lose? And when it works, because it will, I want you to DM me or email me and you're gonna tell me all about it, and we're gonna celebrate. All right, that's all I have for you today. I will catch up with you guys next week. Please, please, please rate and review the show so we can entice some really cool guests to come on and you don't have to always listen to me talk. I love you all, and I will see you next Wednesday. Bye bye.