Ep. 19 - Why You Feel Stuck After 50 (And How to Finally Move Forward)

There comes a point in midlife when you know exactly what you should be doing…

Eat better.
Exercise.
Set boundaries.
Take care of yourself.

But somehow you just can't seem to do it.

If you've ever wondered, "What's wrong with me?" this episode is for you.

In this episode of Tea With Sophie, I'm sharing why feeling stuck has very little to do with motivation or discipline—and everything to do with protecting yourself from emotions your brain is trying to avoid.

We'll talk about why disappointment keeps so many women trapped in the cycle of starting over, how unrealistic expectations sabotage lasting change, and the simple mindset shift that can finally help you move forward.

If you're ready to stop judging yourself and start understanding yourself, I think this conversation could be a turning point.

✨ Join my FREE live workshop here: https://sophieuliano.com/julyworkshopregistration/

I'd love to hear what resonates most with you. If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it helps more women discover Tea With Sophie.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I hear this all the time, Sophie. I know what I should be doing, but I just feel stuck and I just can't seem to do it. Whether it's eating healthier, whether it's strength training, whether it's being consistent with something that you've started, it could be writing a book, starting a new career, starting a new project, or simply getting your life back after menopause. Feeling stuck is one of the most common things that I hear and is one of the most frustrating places to be, or emotions actually to feel, because feeling it frustrated is a very, very unpleasant feeling. So in this episode of Tea with Sophie, I am going to unpack why you are stuck, because it's not why you think it is. It's a completely different reason. And once you understand it, then you can very easily become unstuck. So that is what we are going to be diving into today in this episode with tea, with having a cup of tea with Sophie on tea with Sophie. I'm actually drinking today an earl grey tea. I just had my kind of more lacy blouse on, and I'm like, you know what? I'm feeling very earl grayish. So do you like earl grey tea? I like it not all the time, but occasionally in the afternoon, I love a cup. It's funny because it's the summer right now, it's June, and here in Los Angeles it's pretty hot outside. And in the afternoon, I do like a cup of tea, which my family and others here find to be completely bizarre that I drink tea, warm tea, what many Americans would call hot tea, on a hot day. But in England, we just drink it in all weathers. And you know, to be, as I've often said before on this podcast, to basically heal and cope with virtually any mental, emotional, or physical difficulty you might be in. It's just sit down and have a cup of tea. All right, so let's talk about being stuck. So you're not stuck because you're lazy. That's the first thing. You you're just not. You're stuck because your brain is trying to protect you. And I'm going to explain why in a moment. So I think the relief of just understanding it's not me, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm not lazy. It's just an adaptive mechanism that is going on, which makes us stuck. And you might have got stuck at many different times during your life, but I think in midlife and beyond, it can get even worse. And you're going to understand why in a moment. So the brain isn't trying to make us successful. The brain does everything it can to make us feel safe. That is a huge distinction. And your brain will happily sacrifice growth if it means avoiding emotional discomfort. So we avoid emotional discomfort, difficult, unpleasant feelings at all costs. And that really is the core of the issue when it comes to getting unstuck or being stuck and then getting unstuck. So we avoid these unpleasant and sometimes they almost feel intolerable emotions. So reason number one is you avoid you're avoiding disappointment. Disappointment is one of the eight intolerable feelings, emotions that we will do everything that we can to avoid. Disappointment. Certainly, that has been my experience in my life. It's like I just, I'm not even going to try that because, or I'm not going to see this through, or it's not going well. And I'm just not going to see it through because I'm going to be disappointed. I'm so scared that I'm going to be disappointed. And that feeling of disappointing either myself or others is a feeling that I am I'm going to avoid. So there's that avoidance of disappointment. And that really can keep you stuck. It can keep you from you've started something, and then I don't know. I'm going to disappoint myself here. I'm going to disappoint myself or others. I'm not going to get the results. I'm not going to get the answer. I'm not going to get the outcome I want. I'm going to be disappointed. So either I'm not even going to start, or I start a little bit. I do a little bit of it, and then I'm like, no, I'm, I, uh, um, we're putting this away. Maybe you've started whatever. How many diets have you started in your lifetime? You've started gym memberships, you've promised yourself that this would be the year or this would be the week. And the brain remembers and it's almost saying to you, let's not do that again. And it's not because you don't believe you can, it's because you don't want to feel disappointed again. So the brain's going, No, no, no, no, we're not, let's just not do that. Because the when you experience disappointment in the past, it was so painful. So you're like, mm-mm, not doing that. Reason number two is that you had unrealistic expectations or your expectations were too high, which sounds odd because in coaching women, I coach women to bust through that upper limit and in many ways have you know expectations and have higher expectations than they might normally set for themselves. There's a flip side to that. And the flip side to it is you start something and you have very, very high expectations of yourself. I'll give you an example. It might be, okay, you're going to run a marathon and you're training for a marathon, and maybe your high expectations are that even though you haven't run or done any kind of training, your expectations are that out of the gate, you are going to be able to complete, I don't know, go on a two-mile run or a five-mile run. And you can't because you haven't been training. If I suddenly went for a five-mile run, it would not go very well. Honestly, if I went for a two-mile run, it wouldn't go very well right now because I don't run. Um, but you then get um you get very discouraged because you don't have the instant gratification of like, yay, yay, I hit the thing. I got, I did it. And it I see this very, very often with women who are on weight release, you know, programs. They're that they're just like they have those high expectations. I've started this diet or I've joined this program. My expectation is that I'm going to, the number on the scale is going to rapidly go down. It's that instant gratification. When we don't have that instant gratification, we can start feeling unpleasant feelings, unpleasant emotions, such as frustration, such as anger with yourself, or I didn't do it, I couldn't do it. Disappointment can bleed into this one as well. But either way, you had these high expectations. So when you don't get that instant gratification of I'm I'm I'm crushing it, I'm doing it, it's amazing, then you can start falling into having feelings that you avoid. So then you stop even making expectations for yourself. It's an easy switch, actually, because it's just making the expectation smaller. You know, it's instead of I'm gonna, you know, lose 10 pounds in two weeks, you know, maybe I can release, you know, two to four pounds instead of running two miles, I'm going to just gently run walk half a mile. And so that's that's a that's a lot more productive to do that. Okay, reason number three is perfectionism, which I see so much in the women that I coach. I've got to do it perfectly. This is such a trap. I've got to do it perfectly, or I'm a failure. And if I'm a failure, then this opens up to some of the other emotions, the really unpleasant emotions that we avoid at all costs, such as embarrassment. Okay. If I'm not doing it um perfectly, then I it's going to be embarrassing. You know, I'm embarrassed, I'm I'm I'm uh ashamed of myself. It can get some shame can come in there. That's that's a another shame is another emotion that we, unpleasant emotion that we do everything that we can not to feel. And then into that one also can come if I'm not perfect or if I'm not doing it right, then I might have to feel um frustrated, disappointed, embarrassed, shame, frustration, all of these three reasons, all of them. Whether it is the first one, which is you don't want to be disappointed, you'll avoid disappointment at all costs. The second one is your expectations were too high. These are all patterns and little traps you can fall into. And the third one is the perfectionism. Either way, what all these have in common is that you do not want to feel unpleasant emotions because it's not about the thing, it's not about the food, it's not about the exercise, it's not about the career, it's not about the book that you're trying to write. It's all about avoiding emotions, disappointment, frustration, embarrassment, shame, helplessness, and vulnerability. And when you understand that, everything changes because the real pain, the real suffering is in the avoidance of the feelings that you're trying to avoid. And how to get unstuck is to welcome in and allow those feelings that you are trying to avoid because that's the way that you're gonna move through every single one of these patterns. Imagine for a moment, if you were willing, willing, and I'm even gonna go a step further. Imagine that you're actually happy. Well, maybe that maybe that's too too much of a stretch, but you're willing, you're absolutely willing, and you would say, Sophie, I am absolutely willing, bring it to feel those unpleasant emotions. I'm willing to feel embarrassed, I'm willing to feel shame, I'm willing to feel disappointed, I'm willing to feel vulnerable, helpless, frustrated, angry, even, angry with myself, angry with whatever it is, sad. I am willing to feel those unpleasant feelings. I'm willing to feel them. I know that they're not going to kill me. So what I want in terms of moving forward is more important to me than the pain of avoiding these feelings and emotions. That is what changes absolutely everything because now you're absolutely unstoppable. If you know that you can weather unpleasant, difficult, and sometimes painful emotions and feelings because you can, you absolutely can, because when you fully allow them, which is what I teach my uh clients to do in my program, when you fully allow those emotions, you you literally process them, you ride the wave of them, they dissipate in 60 to 90 seconds, they're gone. That's the beauty of getting unstuck, and yet we can spend literally years doing everything we can not to feel those emotions, but it gets keeps us stuck because of those patterns. Okay. So perfectionism. I don't want to be disappointed, I don't want to be vulnerable, I don't want to fail. And so we don't do it. We don't. We start it and then we just stop. We get out, we get out and disappear before we have to face those difficult, unpleasant feelings. We go disappear. Oh, it didn't work, oh this isn't for me, oh I can't do this, or oh, I'll put it off, or oh, I'll do it later. It's very, very slippery. You'll slip every which way. I've seen it happen over and over again because I'm a coach and I take a stand for women to do pretty difficult things. You know, when they come into the Ignite method and work with me, this is not a cakewalk. This is embracing change, which can sometimes be uncomfortable and difficult, and doing things that we don't always feel like doing. And so I've seen it over and over again in the years that I've been coaching and mentoring women, that it's those who are willing to stay, to show up, to move through what's can be deeply, deeply uncomfortable, have such an incredibly mind-blowing transformation because they get unstuck. They keep moving through. So, how to actually get unstuck? You need to get into action. So you need to start or restart whatever it is that you stopped that you got stuck with. And I know this firsthand from certain creative projects, like writing a book. In fact, I'm actually writing a book right now, and so I'm I'm I'm I'm sort of teaching myself right here. Is you you get into action, you get into action and you commit that you will see it through until it is complete and you will keep moving no matter what. That is how you get unstuck. And then within that will be all of the emotions that I know in writing a book, even just showing up for the page every single day and looking at crappy writing and you know, never mind everything that comes with the creation of any creative project, you know, all the possible rejection or all the different emotions that might come in. Half the time when you're putting yourself out there and writing something, you know, it it includes a lot of difficult emotions and has done over the years for me, such as feeling very vulnerable, feeling helpless, feeling embarrassed, feeling shame, all of those emotions, all of them I've been through. But the beautiful thing is that I'm not afraid of feeling them anymore because I know that they're not going to kill me, those emotions and feelings, they're just not. But what is going to harm me is avoiding them. Because in avoiding them, I'm going to on in some way, on some level in my life, I am going to be stuck. And I don't want to be stuck. I want to keep moving forward. Too much to do here, too much to create, too much to be. And I know you have too much to do, too much to create, too much to be. And especially in midlife, we want to get moving. So my invitation to you is to either start again with whatever the thing is. And you can, if you're watching on YouTube, you can let me know in the comments what is the thing that you stopped doing? Is it a project? Is it a hobby? Is it a new career? Is it a new way of eating? What is that thing that you're like, no? I just, I just got stuck and I and I'm stagnating now. You're feeling stagnant. Um, so if you're stagnant, you need to get into action, you need to begin, you need to take the first tiny action, tiny movement, tiny commitment. I call it the in you've heard in some of my uh other episodes, I call it minimal viable action, the next small thing that you can do. Because I always say that motivation doesn't come first. I'll remind you this on multiple podcasts: action comes first. It's action, doing what you don't feel like doing, pushing through unpleasant feelings and emotions. Okay, it's like, okay, I don't feel like doing it. Well, I will say to myself, well, duh, of course you don't feel like doing it. Because in doing it, you might even have to face all those other difficult emotions that I've just spoken about, the ones that we want to avoid. So you just take contrary action, opposite action, opposite of what you feel like doing, smallest, minimal, viable action, and you get moving with it. You get into action because then you will get motivation. And then the beautiful thing is that that will gain momentum. Think of pushing a really heavy car. If you've ever been stuck in a car, run out of gas. Yes, that has happened to me many times in my youth, run out of oil and gas and everything else. But you know, there'll be two of us trying to push this car, and it's the first couple of inches that you're like, this thing is not moving. Then once it starts rolling, it is rolling. Another, I just thought of another analogy just now is if you're trying to do a zipper up and it's that first couple, you've got to wiggle it, you've got to put, you've got to, and then you get, and then the zip goes all the way up suddenly. Um so the hardest part is it is is the is the beginning. Um, but that's um that's how it happens in our brains. So every tiny action provides evidence that you know you're somebody who keeps on going. So begin or begin again. Okay, that's what midlife is to me. It's a new beginning. We're constantly rebeginning after children, empty nest, after grief, after menopause, after illness, after divorce, after whatever it is that you've been through, right? Rebeginning is not failure, it is part of the beautiful process. So if you're stuck today, do not ask yourself, how do I get motivated? Ask yourself, what feeling am I trying to avoid? Okay, what feeling am I trying to avoid? And then allow yourself, welcome it in to feel it. Because once you're willing to feel disappointment, frustration, vulnerability, shame, embarrassment, now you become free. You're empowered now, totally empowered. You become free to move, movement creates momentum, momentum creates confidence, confidence creates a completely different future. So remember, confidence isn't what gets you moving, movement is what creates confidence. So just remember that. Now, on this note, I have a really incredible announcement for you. I am going to be holding, hosting a free live coaching 90-minute workshop coming up, which is all about getting unstuck. And this podcast episode is just, it's almost like the little tiny paintbrush stroke on what is going to be available to you in terms of live coaching. I go into this so that it is a deeply felt and coached experience for you personally, where you can come along and be in a room and be coached by myself and my coaches. So, really, really exciting. Um, if you are in time, if you're watching this in time. So, I'll drop a link to register. You must register because I am limiting spots for this live coaching experience. So the link is in the description, it'll be on the podcast page. Get yourself signed up, grab your spot because this is something you are absolutely not going to want to miss. And I love doing these live workshops because it's not just me talking to you on this podcast, it is actually being with you, meeting you, and coaching you. Okay, so I hope to see you there. With that, I am going to take a sip of my almost cold Al Grey tea. And if I don't see you on the workshop, I will see you on the next episode of Tea with Sophie.