Latest / Lean Out Podcast / Solocast: What to Do When You're Lost or Stuck

Transcript

Solocast: What to Do When You're Lost or Stuck · Lean Out Podcast

• 0:01
  Welcome to the lean out podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:04
  Don baker.
• 0:05
  Are you looking for a new approach to finding authentic and sustainable work-life balance?
• 0:10
  You've come to the right.
• 0:11
  Place.
• 0:11
  For inspiration.
• 0:12
  information.
• 0:13
  and a community.
• 0:14
  community.
• 0:14
  of like-minded.
• 0:15
  Professionals.
• 0:16
  Let's get to the show.
• 0:19
  Hello?
• 0:19
  Hello.
• 0:19
  Thanks for being here.
• 0:21
  I was just looking at my podcast stats and I'm happy to report that there are 40 episodes and there are over 4,000 downloads.
• 0:30
  I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you so much for your support and for contributing to this lean out community.
• 0:38
  If you haven't done so already, please take a moment to go over to iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts and leave a review for this podcast so that other people can find it easier.
• 0:54
  Today, we're going to talk about a story that I teased in the last episode with Aaron dot belt.
• 1:01
  I was mentioning that we recently got stuck, trying to get.
• 1:04
  From our mountain homestead to our nearby town.
• 1:08
  So.
• 1:10
  I'm going to talk today about what happened, how we handled it and what I learned in hopes that maybe you can learn something too about how to deal with being lost or stuck.
• 1:21
  The things that I realized in this experience aren't just for, when you literally get lost or stuck, they can also apply to just the feeling of being lost or stuck.
• 1:32
  Most of the time when I've had an inquiry for my coaching services, the person who is inquiring is either feeling lost or stuck in some way.
• 1:42
  And this can look like a few different things.
• 1:45
  You know that you're not your best self, but you don't know what you want or how you want things to look.
• 1:52
  You might be unsure.
• 1:53
  You're crowdsourcing for answers, but you've lost touch with your own intuition.
• 1:58
  You might have an opportunity, a new opportunity for a specific work change, or a new job, but you just can't make that decision.
• 2:08
  Or maybe you have a particular vision that feel like there are too many obstacles in front of you to make the changes needed, to realize the vision.
• 2:17
  Okay.
• 2:17
  So in regards to what happened.
• 2:22
  I need to give a little bit of background so that you understand the situation.
• 2:26
  Our mountain homestead is located about an hour from a decent sized town.
• 2:30
  It's not a big city by any means, but it's a town with some good amenities.
• 2:35
  And that is an hour by car.
• 2:38
  So.
• 2:39
  You go from the town up a mountain highway with some switchbacks is very pretty.
• 2:43
  Kind of a steep canyon.
• 2:45
  And then you drive another 10 miles around a lake.
• 2:49
  And about six of that, 10 miles is a dirt road, that is not paved and it is also not maintained in the winter.
• 2:58
  So it's not plowed.
• 3:00
  And when quite a bit of snow gets on it, usually around December or January, it's like that until about.
• 3:07
  Now, in fact, there are rumors going around right now in the beginning of may, that.
• 3:12
  They're about to plow part of the road.
• 3:14
  They finally, take mercy on everyone who wants to go camping around the lake and the county decides to plow it.
• 3:21
  There are a couple of ways that we can drive in currently.
• 3:25
  But if you want to go the most direct way, you have to have attractive vehicle from about December or January until may.
• 3:34
  And what that means is like a snowmobile or utility vehicle with tracks.
• 3:40
  That's what we have is a utility vehicle with tracks and it costs as much as a car, but it's definitely been worth every penny.
• 3:48
  It runs on tires in the summer and the fall and on tracks in the winter, in the spring.
• 3:54
  So we were driving the other day, our tract UTV from our place up to the highway, which is where we store a vehicle.
• 4:02
  And it's kind of a loud.
• 4:04
  Ride.
• 4:05
  So we usually pop in headphones and we listen to podcasts or music on our own.
• 4:10
  And ironically, I was listening to an episode of the podcast 2% with Michael Easter, and he was talking about the benefits of getting lost.
• 4:19
  He shared a situation that he had been in with his cousin getting lost in the desert on a hike.
• 4:24
  And he talked about how in modern days, people very seldom get lost.
• 4:29
  He argues that getting lost can really up your resilience because it teaches you to be raised, focused and mindful.
• 4:36
  It teaches you your weaknesses in planning in the gear that you brought in your physical abilities.
• 4:42
  And in other ways, maybe in your thinking.
• 4:45
  It also makes for good memories and stories that you definitely won't forget.
• 4:51
  A few minutes after I was sharing these insights with my husband, we're climbing slightly up a little bit of a hill toward the lake, and I felt something unusual.
• 5:02
  And then a grinding sensation under my feet.
• 5:05
  So I said, something's wrong.
• 5:06
  You should stop.
• 5:07
  We both step outside to see that one of the four large tracks, which is like a big conveyor belt was completely sheared off.
• 5:16
  It had turned 90 degrees onto its side.
• 5:20
  It was just sitting there, grinding in the snow.
• 5:23
  So after uttering some four-letter words and exclamations of disbelief, we had to collect ourselves and figure out what to do.
• 5:31
  The kicker was, we were exactly five miles away from our home and five miles away from where we keep our car.
• 5:38
  With our child, our geriatric dog, who does not do well in snow and a vehicle full of stuff that we were taking to town because we were going to spend the night.
• 5:49
  So let's talk about what to do when you get stuck or when you just feel stuck.
• 5:55
  The first thing is don't catastrophize.
• 5:58
  This should go without saying, and I think most adults are pretty good at this, but definitely kids are not.
• 6:05
  Our child behaved pretty well in this situation.
• 6:08
  She complained more about being bored than anything.
• 6:12
  But I remember when I was a little bit older than my daughter is now.
• 6:16
  And our car broke down on the interstate.
• 6:19
  I was so scared.
• 6:20
  And I remember thinking and shouting out loud that we were all going to die.
• 6:25
  Obviously, this was not true, nor was it helpful for the situation?
• 6:29
  And actually it could have been detrimental.
• 6:32
  It takes energy and focus away from solving the actual problem.
• 6:36
  In the situation that was happening on the mountain.
• 6:40
  My first thoughts were.
• 6:41
  Categorizing what was good and what was bad?
• 6:45
  The bad was we were a far walk from our home and we were a far walk to the car.
• 6:49
  But they were both doable.
• 6:51
  The good was we had phones.
• 6:54
  The road has spotty cell service, but we know where the spots are.
• 6:58
  And we had water and food.
• 7:00
  And it wasn't a bad weather day.
• 7:03
  That was key.
• 7:04
  There wasn't snow in the forecast.
• 7:06
  It was a spring day.
• 7:07
  The snow was kind of slushy, which is probably part of what caused the problem.
• 7:12
  But the weather was nice and we weren't going to freeze.
• 7:17
  So, how do you apply this to the more metaphorical kind of stuckness?
• 7:21
  Remember that evolutionarily catastrophizing did help us as a human race.
• 7:26
  So it's very normal to have that feeling initially, but it's not the case now.
• 7:32
  We don't need that anymore.
• 7:34
  The problems that you're likely waiting through, have a worst case scenario.
• 7:39
  So you can imagine it to diffuse its strength in your mind and gain some perspective on what might happen.
• 7:46
  Focus on what is more likely to happen?
• 7:49
  What would you bet your money on?
• 7:51
  And then discard the rest.
• 7:55
  So number two is to slow down and focus.
• 7:59
  For us in our UTV, we methodically thought about different ways that we might be able to temporarily fix the track with the tools we had.
• 8:09
  Once we realized that none of our ideas worked, we moved on.
• 8:14
  To the next possibility, which was that someone was going to have to come and get us.
• 8:19
  And we're going to have to leave the vehicle in the snow temporarily.
• 8:23
  There is only one full-time neighbor down that road.
• 8:26
  With the same kind of UTV.
• 8:28
  And so that was our first idea for a call.
• 8:32
  And then if that wasn't going to work, we had a second person identified.
• 8:37
  Down the line.
• 8:38
  The third thing would be to just call the county sheriff and have them come to get us.
• 8:43
  When you focus and you monotask, you remove distractions, you become mindful of every detail and you live fully in the present.
• 8:52
  Now, you guys know how much of a fan I am of having a regular mindfulness practice for all different aspects of your life.
• 9:00
  And I encourage you to tap into it when you need clarity, if you're feeling lost or stuck, it's the key to building those mental muscles.
• 9:09
  I'll drop a link in the show notes to an article that I wrote about easy ways to cultivate a mindfulness practice.
• 9:17
  If you're lost, you're stuck and you exhaust all your options, which we didn't end up doing.
• 9:22
  Then my next tip is to take a break.
• 9:25
  Think about something else, spend a little time alone, reflecting.
• 9:30
  If you're a situation allows and most situations do then go back to brainstorming after this works for both literal stuckness and figurative stuckness.
• 9:42
  To tell you what ended up happening.
• 9:44
  We decided that one of us needed to walk the mile or so in the snow to get the cell service, it ended up being me and the rest of them stayed behind at the UTV.
• 9:55
  I called our one neighbor and luckily she answered her phone.
• 9:59
  She came a little while later and took us to our truck at the end of the road a few days later, my husband and some friends recovered the injured UTV.
• 10:09
  We were very fortunate, that this happened in the spring and not in the middle of a horrible blizzard or something like that.
• 10:15
  I'm sure.
• 10:16
  Our actions would have been different if it had.
• 10:19
  The key thing is we didn't panic and we work together to solve it.
• 10:24
  I hope you found this story interesting.
• 10:26
  And the ideas for what to do if you're lost or stuck helpful.
• 10:30
  Have you ever had a thing like this happen to you?
• 10:33
  Are you feeling stuck right now?
• 10:35
  Send me a DM on Instagram at practice balance.
• 10:38
  And tell me about it.
• 10:40
  Thanks for listening to the lean out podcast.
• 10:43
  If you find these conversations inspiring and useful, please forward them to a friend and also leave a review on iTunes or Spotify so that other people can find them easier.
• 10:55
  If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me at my website, practice balanced.com, where you can subscribe to my newsletter and get updates regularly about new podcast episodes, blog posts, speaking, engagements, and coaching services.
• 11:11
  You can also support my work by buying my book, lean out a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work-life balance for yourself, a friend, family member, or coworker.
• 11:24
  Have a great day and we'll see you next time