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141: Why You Feel Stuck: 4 Hidden Barriers to Making a Change · The Everyday Awesome Project

• 0:27
  Polly Mertens: Hey superstars, welcome back.
• 0:28
  Polly Mertens: Polly here.
• 0:29
  Polly Mertens: And Sam Pruitt.
• 0:31
  Polly Mertens: What's up, beautiful humans?
• 0:32
  Polly Mertens: Let's go.
• 0:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, let's talk about being stuck.
• 0:37
  Samantha Pruitt: This isn't okay.
• 0:38
  Samantha Pruitt: And just a little precursor.
• 0:40
  Samantha Pruitt: We're gonna talk about like why we get stuck or like what keeps us stuck, but we do we are gonna get a stuff.
• 0:44
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 0:48
  Samantha Pruitt: So let's set the stage, you know, like as we often do when we're you know have topics like why are we talking about this?
• 0:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Where did this come from?
• 0:57
  Samantha Pruitt: So I don't know.
• 0:58
  Samantha Pruitt: I've never experienced this myself or witnessed it in others.
• 1:02
  Samantha Pruitt: This is just some weird ass topic we came across.
• 1:05
  Samantha Pruitt: No, yeah, and this is literally a daily daily.
• 1:11
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, not with ourselves anymore on the daily, right?
• 1:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Like we're very good now at this point, yeah, in recognizing feeling a little stickiness coming on, even almost, you know, like a precursor to stuck, like the sticky vibe.
• 1:26
  Samantha Pruitt: And then we'll quickly get honest about it and then move the move the hell on, like sort it out and make a decision.
• 1:33
  Samantha Pruitt: But you and I coach a lot of people, we're around a lot of humans.
• 1:36
  Samantha Pruitt: We love a lot of people, so we're gonna see some shit, all right?
• 1:39
  Polly Mertens: Well, and that's and you know, it's really true.
• 1:41
  Polly Mertens: It's like coaches come into play when you're stuck.
• 1:45
  Polly Mertens: Like, no wonder we see so much of it, because if you were cruising along and life was like glorious, which it is oftentimes, you know, it's like you get or you're oblivious.
• 1:54
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, either you get into you get into, you know, sometimes it's a slow boil, you know, that like the the frogs don't know that they're boiling, you know, because it's a slow boil, like you're just and then you hit a like a crescendo or something, or you just have like we, you know, we'll talk about each of the four reasons, but we we definitely are not standing here, like I was we were talking just before we went on air, is like, well, let me think about a time when you know a real story.
• 2:18
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, oh, for God's sake, how many stories do we have?
• 2:21
  Samantha Pruitt: How much time do we have to go over all this?
• 2:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:24
  Samantha Pruitt: So this is like the child is one time at age 12.
• 2:29
  Polly Mertens: But we why this came up is we were both just uh, you know, humans in our life are you know fine coming to us or finding themselves in places where they're not willing, you know.
• 2:40
  Polly Mertens: So stuckness can occur like stuck in progress, like you hit a either a weight, you know, like a weight on your body, you know, and it's like, oh, I can't lose any weight, or you're not making gains in your business, or you can't find your way out of a problem, or you've got a relationship dilemma that's like, should I, shouldn't I?
• 2:58
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 2:59
  Polly Mertens: So stuck is just I find that stuck is another word for an a decision needs to be fucking made.
• 3:06
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, I had a conversation earlier, it was an addiction thing, you know, and some family addiction stuff.
• 3:11
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm like, well, yeah.
• 3:12
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, that's a painful place to be stuck, right?
• 3:16
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 3:16
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 3:16
  Polly Mertens: And and it's often putting off the decision that either you know you need to make or you need to find what the best decision is for you that keeps you in that holding pattern, that way that you don't want.
• 3:28
  Polly Mertens: The resistance comes up because it's like there's a something to decide here.
• 3:31
  Polly Mertens: You're confronting something that's uncomfortable, an emotion, a situation, a bodily condition that you need to face, or you know, the business is tanking, you know, it's like, ah, you know, or you've reached a plateau in your business, or your relationship is at a crossroads, or there's, you know, disarray in your life of some sort, right?
• 3:50
  Polly Mertens: So all of those things can lead to stock.
• 3:53
  Polly Mertens: But let's talk about like what keeps you there, right?
• 3:56
  Polly Mertens: And we talk about a decision, but like what are some of the things?
• 3:59
  Polly Mertens: And I can share maybe we were just working with AI with this because I had like things from all over the place when I was thinking about this topic.
• 4:06
  Polly Mertens: I was like, well, that can make them stuck, and that can make them stuck.
• 4:08
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, holy crap, this is like all over the place.
• 4:10
  Polly Mertens: And like, help me bring my ideas and my thoughts together.
• 4:14
  Polly Mertens: And it helped me coalesce them into four categories.
• 4:18
  Polly Mertens: I'm just gonna say them and we'll talk around them and into different arenas because I know you've got some to add to this.
• 4:24
  Polly Mertens: But I would say the one first one was your emotional state and the story that you have, like the space that you're in for, let's say, like you're in depressed or you feel gridlock or you feel anxious or whatever your emotional state and the story behind it of what's causing that state.
• 4:42
  Polly Mertens: Like I can't, I can't, you know, or I'm confused or I'm frustrated.
• 4:46
  Polly Mertens: So your story drives your state, and that determines, you know, what you have access to.
• 4:50
  Polly Mertens: Number two would be this is largely your nervous system, right?
• 4:54
  Polly Mertens: So, like a lot of people when we think about going into that fight or flight mode or parasympathetic mode, you know, that you just got your nervous system fried.
• 5:03
  Polly Mertens: You know, either it's like you're up against a lot in your life or you've been challenged in some way or whatnot.
• 5:09
  Polly Mertens: So the set point in your nervous system, you're just more that capacity or lack of capacity.
• 5:13
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 5:14
  Polly Mertens: There's oftentimes, and I like this one from Tony Robbins, he talks about we have these underlying needs that are, you know, being that we're always out to meet our needs, right?
• 5:23
  Polly Mertens: Yep.
• 5:24
  Polly Mertens: So there's these hidden payoffs.
• 5:26
  Polly Mertens: So something that keeps you stuck or why you're not making a change, why you're not moving, is because there's probably a hidden payoff that you're not present to.
• 5:34
  Polly Mertens: And then the fourth one is our environment.
• 5:36
  Polly Mertens: Like our environment, really, like the human animal is designed for sameness.
• 5:40
  Polly Mertens: It's like, nope, you know, like I know we have a need for variety and all of that, but it really likes low cognitive load because that puts low energy demand on the human brain, and it likes that calories in, calories out kind of thing.
• 5:53
  Polly Mertens: So your environment of relationships, your routine, your spaces, your body, things like that is what I would put into the environment.
• 6:00
  Polly Mertens: So anything you want to add to those, or we can start with those.
• 6:03
  Samantha Pruitt: I want to start with all of that because that's a lot, but I also want to just add one thing out of the gate, which is I also don't just think about it in terms of being stuck.
• 6:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 6:12
  Samantha Pruitt: What I also see and hear a lot of is so they maybe, or I or whomever, there is a stuckness, but then there's secondarily almost a compounded secondary arrow, we'd say in Buddhism, or stuckness, which is a resistance to the solution.
• 6:34
  Samantha Pruitt: So it can be like, yeah, I'm stuck and I'm ready, but then you have the I'm stuck and I'm ready.
• 6:40
  Samantha Pruitt: No, I'm not.
• 6:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Second arrow part of it.
• 6:44
  Samantha Pruitt: And the second arrow is the resistance to the offerings, the opportunity, the possibility for change, growth, and happiness, like all of that.
• 6:53
  Samantha Pruitt: That's so human.
• 6:55
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, so human.
• 6:56
  Polly Mertens: You know, I'm I'm as we were talking, what's getting clear to me is kind of like you're well, and I draw this when I meet with clients too, but I'll just try and create a picture in people's minds.
• 7:05
  Polly Mertens: So you're going down a road and you come to a why, right?
• 7:09
  Polly Mertens: And something has created that why, right?
• 7:11
  Polly Mertens: There's meant disease has been found, a relationship turmoil, whatever.
• 7:17
  Polly Mertens: And so what you're talking about is almost like they they take a little side detour and they go, I'm not gonna go down that why.
• 7:24
  Polly Mertens: Like let me come back to that.
• 7:25
  Polly Mertens: And they kind of go in a little U-turn and then they go back up the road, or they they do a little holding pattern, they just drive in circles at the Y, and they're like, Nope, can't, can't, I'm not gonna take one of these paths.
• 7:36
  Polly Mertens: I'm just gonna kind of circle the wagons and not or they just put their foot on the brake and just sit there and stare out in space.
• 7:45
  Samantha Pruitt: As if life is not passing them by.
• 7:47
  Samantha Pruitt: True, true, yeah.
• 7:49
  Samantha Pruitt: Just gonna hang out here.
• 7:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, yeah, okay.
• 7:53
  Samantha Pruitt: That's 20 years or something, yeah.
• 7:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 7:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah, it can be a really long time, which is a shame.
• 8:04
  Polly Mertens: So maybe we'll unpack each of these and let's add some color.
• 8:08
  Polly Mertens: So state and story.
• 8:10
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, in the world of emotional state, right?
• 8:13
  Polly Mertens: So you're you have a different state throughout your day, right?
• 8:16
  Polly Mertens: You know, I hope so.
• 8:17
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 8:18
  Polly Mertens: I mean, I'm just saying, like literally, our thoughts and the environment around us and our interaction with them creates our state, right?
• 8:25
  Polly Mertens: We can be deliberate about that or we can be a little less.
• 8:28
  Polly Mertens: Some people are more masterful, as we've taught on many podcast episodes about how to become the master of your state.
• 8:34
  Polly Mertens: But let's just say your emotional state is largely what you're focusing on, the physiology, you know.
• 8:39
  Polly Mertens: So, like if you're just eating bonbons and sitting on the couch all day or drinking beer, you know, till three o'clock in the morning and not going to bed on time, you know.
• 8:47
  Polly Mertens: So your physiology, how you're treating that, and then your story about things, what you're making up about the situation or what's going on.
• 8:55
  Polly Mertens: It can be held from underlying beliefs and a compilation of them that can be have you stuck in a story like this this will never change, or why is this always this way, or this person, you know?
• 9:05
  Polly Mertens: So it's usually something about yourself, other people, or the way the world is, right?
• 9:09
  Polly Mertens: And so it and it and there's an energy attached to that stuff.
• 9:13
  Polly Mertens: Ah, exactly, exactly.
• 9:15
  Polly Mertens: And like I said, we can go up and down through emotional states.
• 9:17
  Polly Mertens: But largely I find like I think of it like bands of energy, sort of like bands of light, you know.
• 9:22
  Polly Mertens: If you had like ultraviolet and, you know, the white light, and then you have like the rainbow colors and stuff like that.
• 9:29
  Polly Mertens: So our emotional states can be like bands, right?
• 9:32
  Polly Mertens: And we tend to hang out in a band, you know, like a frequency.
• 9:35
  Polly Mertens: So depending on what your great analogy.
• 9:38
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and what you're doing.
• 9:39
  Polly Mertens: I mean, this is from the there's a whole uh diagram you get out there, the map of consciousness, it's actually tied to your emotional states and your frequencies are tied to bands of light.
• 9:48
  Polly Mertens: Because guess what?
• 9:49
  Polly Mertens: We're we're light beings, you know, hologenetic surprise.
• 9:53
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 9:53
  Polly Mertens: But enough on that.
• 9:55
  Polly Mertens: But your emotional state, right?
• 9:57
  Polly Mertens: And so if you have this home and you you see this, right?
• 10:00
  Polly Mertens: Like I think of you and like I get your audio messages, and I automatically my state goes up a few notches because it's like you're like, morning, right?
• 10:10
  Polly Mertens: And it's like so beautiful.
• 10:12
  Samantha Pruitt: And you know those people, you spend time with them, or they call you, or you just see people out in the world, they're just either it's frantic or low, or hey, I'm just chill, you know, or people can relate to it when you say like a high vibe person or a low vibe person, they know exactly what the hell we're talking about because they're surrounded by people all day long, and they also know within their own physical and emotional body what that feels like.
• 10:40
  Samantha Pruitt: 100%, 100%.
• 10:42
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, you know, that's your state.
• 10:44
  Polly Mertens: And how we correlate this to we talk about that why in the road or making a decision, or there's something you're you've got you're percolating on, right?
• 10:52
  Polly Mertens: Whether you see it as a why, or maybe you've got five of five whys, you've got five options here, whatever it is, but you're not choosing something.
• 10:59
  Polly Mertens: And so you're kind of in that holding pattern going in circles.
• 11:03
  Polly Mertens: When we have ourselves in a lower state, when we're facing that decision, when we think about that that intersection in our life, when we think about that choice that we need to make or we're avoiding, what we have access to in terms of like higher intelligence and the frequencies of thoughts and ideas and problem solving, and you know, where could this go?
• 11:26
  Polly Mertens: And possibility, right?
• 11:27
  Polly Mertens: Like I don't know about you, but you know, I'll talk to somebody, and that's just like the fucking door is shut to possibility.
• 11:32
  Polly Mertens: It's like slam, there's like nothing.
• 11:35
  Samantha Pruitt: This is how it is.
• 11:36
  Samantha Pruitt: I've seen nothing.
• 11:37
  Samantha Pruitt: It's always been.
• 11:38
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm going nowhere.
• 11:40
  Samantha Pruitt: These people are all blocking me.
• 11:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, totally.
• 11:43
  Samantha Pruitt: It's got such a funny vibe to it, just that whole way of being.
• 11:47
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 11:47
  Polly Mertens: So shifting your energy state, your story and your state, when you face that why, when you come up and you're like, okay, I'm gonna pull up that topic.
• 11:57
  Polly Mertens: If you have the same energy vibe going on, thinking about that topic, you're gonna have the same results.
• 12:02
  Polly Mertens: You're just gonna be like, nothing's ever gonna change, or I don't know what to do here, or I've thought about it a thousand times and there's no solution, or you just avoid it, you just keep avoiding it.
• 12:12
  Polly Mertens: But if you can put yourself into a different emotional state, like one of the things I was telling you before we went on air, I was like, What would be one of my stories?
• 12:18
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, the time I made the decision to tell my husband we were getting a divorce, you know, and it was like that was a moment.
• 12:26
  Polly Mertens: That was a moment, and I was a small decision, yeah.
• 12:29
  Polly Mertens: Not a small yeah, talk about like sitting at that why.
• 12:32
  Polly Mertens: I mean, because that felt like a yes or no, stay in or get out kind of thing.
• 12:35
  Polly Mertens: And not that I agonized over it, but I definitely it wasn't.
• 12:39
  Polly Mertens: I mean, the stories in my mind about being why you shouldn't, yeah, were very decide or very compelling.
• 12:46
  Polly Mertens: And you know, can we work this out?
• 12:49
  Polly Mertens: And you know, what am I doing that what how am I taking responsibility for this?
• 12:53
  Polly Mertens: And how can I shift that, you know, and all those things.
• 12:55
  Polly Mertens: And so for like six months we worked on things and addressed, you know, la la la.
• 13:01
  Polly Mertens: And then what shifted?
• 13:03
  Polly Mertens: So I went to an event and you know, had a you know, a lot of physiology changes and emotional, and then I was, and it was like possibility opened up, like I put myself in a different state instead of the fear of what what I could what I saw in the why, meaning the intersection before I made the decision, was I could only see how how bad things would be.
• 13:28
  Polly Mertens: I could only see this will hurt negative outcomes.
• 13:32
  Polly Mertens: This will hurt, I'll be judged by my friends, I'll regret it.
• 13:36
  Polly Mertens: Like there was just all these like stacking of pain.
• 13:39
  Polly Mertens: I'll have to admit I failed.
• 13:41
  Polly Mertens: Yes, yeah.
• 13:43
  Polly Mertens: Like, what will people think?
• 13:45
  Polly Mertens: What will why would I, you know, la la la.
• 13:47
  Polly Mertens: And there was only like I just stacked the negative, and I I almost couldn't have access to anything good coming out of it.
• 13:54
  Polly Mertens: It was like I was in enough pain and in enough like just dissatisfaction, and then I only saw more pain, right?
• 14:03
  Polly Mertens: But then I went to this event and it was like I saw like my whole life.
• 14:08
  Polly Mertens: I saw like who I am, and like I've had good times in the past.
• 14:12
  Polly Mertens: I don't have to, you know, and it was like, hold up, wait a minute, you know.
• 14:16
  Polly Mertens: Let's say I, you know, fast forward and create a new possibility five years from now.
• 14:20
  Polly Mertens: What could my life be like if I did do that decision?
• 14:23
  Polly Mertens: Oh, okay, I could do this and I could do this.
• 14:25
  Polly Mertens: And it was like, like suddenly I had access to new thoughts and new ideas, and like I wasn't held back by that's only gonna go bad, you know.
• 14:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Like it's only I'm only a couple key things.
• 14:36
  Samantha Pruitt: You changed the physical environment you were in, right?
• 14:40
  Samantha Pruitt: You changed the community or the energetic uh environment you were in, who was around you, what kind of people, what was the space like, etc.
• 14:49
  Samantha Pruitt: That's all a massive shift.
• 14:51
  Samantha Pruitt: And then you did this really interesting, you know, the sides of the coin.
• 14:55
  Samantha Pruitt: What have I historically, who have I historically been and what have I experienced?
• 15:01
  Samantha Pruitt: So what is me?
• 15:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 15:04
  Samantha Pruitt: And then you had this other completely other side of the coin, which is what is possible for me now.
• 15:10
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:11
  Polly Mertens: Like possibility opened up where I had been only in going home to the same home, having the same conversations, thinking through the same kind of rut, if you will, sitting at that intersection, just doing loop to loop to loop, you know, month after month.
• 15:25
  Polly Mertens: Okay, maybe this will just change, right?
• 15:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:29
  Polly Mertens: So that's one example.
• 15:30
  Polly Mertens: Anything that that you want to share or any stories that you've seen with your clients or anything.
• 15:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, I've quit a lot of relationships, so I don't think we should go down that one, but also a lot of like jobs, you know, so the work environment.
• 15:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, I've done a lot of that sort of like, you know, being stuck or feeling sticky and resisting change because of the security, because of the money, because of the prestige, because of the whatever, whatever all that kind of shit is.
• 15:58
  Samantha Pruitt: I have frequented that box several times, you know.
• 16:03
  Samantha Pruitt: But what I think of a lot, and maybe because I work with so many people with their physical bodies, and I do a lot of physical body things around health, fitness, etc., is how people can really, really resist and be stuck within what they think their physical body should look like, does look like, how does it feel, how does it operate, how does it perform, if it's illness, if it's health, all of that kind of, I mean, the spectrum is so huge when you think about the physical body, you know, and everything that's going on with us.
• 16:38
  Samantha Pruitt: It can be very complex.
• 16:40
  Samantha Pruitt: And I've had, of course, my own share of health problems, right?
• 16:45
  Samantha Pruitt: But then there's been times in the past where I didn't have maybe sufficient access to knowledge or support systems or the right environments to find my path out quickly into healing, health, and wellness or fitness.
• 17:02
  Samantha Pruitt: And so I understand where these people are coming from and having a tricky relationship with my own body growing up, like all of that stuff.
• 17:09
  Samantha Pruitt: I totally get it.
• 17:10
  Samantha Pruitt: But that resistance in particular, this sticky part I keep referring to, you know, so many of us have preconceived ideas about our physical bodies and the state of the health of this body and brain that we've been dropped into and gifted to, that are so non-reality based, you know, and that's difficult to sit in.
• 17:37
  Samantha Pruitt: But at the same time, it's also not difficult because your body will speak louder than anything.
• 17:44
  Samantha Pruitt: Like if something is not working in this, you're gonna find out ASAP.
• 17:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, like you're gonna it, these aren't even minor things like, oh, I just don't feel great today.
• 17:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Sure, lots of people hover in that area on the regular and they just seem to be fine hanging out there.
• 18:00
  Samantha Pruitt: But your body very quickly is gonna tell you pre-disease state, whether that's mental or physical or even spiritual.
• 18:06
  Samantha Pruitt: You're gonna bubble up symptoms that are pre pre-disease states, right?
• 18:11
  Samantha Pruitt: And so it doesn't even have to be you saying, I think maybe X, Y, Z.
• 18:17
  Samantha Pruitt: No, you're gonna get a blood test, you're gonna get some kind of test result, you're gonna wake up tomorrow and feel like shit, and then the next day and the next day, like you're gonna see things so quickly.
• 18:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Pay attention, right?
• 18:31
  Polly Mertens: So that's the key.
• 18:32
  Polly Mertens: As you were saying, all this, I'm like, a lot of people aren't noticing, dude.
• 18:35
  Polly Mertens: No.
• 18:37
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, so there's a a couple camps of people, yes, that I have experienced.
• 18:42
  Samantha Pruitt: There are people that aren't noticing, and they're by the way, they're just cruising through life and they're gonna be fine.
• 18:47
  Samantha Pruitt: They're actually not as problematic as this other bucket, which is generally the people we work with, which they're noticing.
• 18:56
  Samantha Pruitt: So something is not right.
• 18:58
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't feel good, whether it's physically, emotionally, spiritually, whatever the dynamic is.
• 19:03
  Samantha Pruitt: But but even though the resources are there, there's knowledge, there's information, there's so many resources now.
• 19:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Like it's mind-blowing.
• 19:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Science is always emerging, there's all experts in all the fields.
• 19:17
  Samantha Pruitt: Your own curiosity has to be there to get, you know, get into that cycle and start learning.
• 19:23
  Samantha Pruitt: But at the same time, all of that can be there, and the people are still, no, I don't want to make the dietary change that's required or the lifestyle change, or I'm not interested in getting more sleep, or I really don't want to rebuild this body that is broken down in whatever capacity.
• 19:43
  Samantha Pruitt: That's problematic, right?
• 19:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Because that's really what we're talking about here today is that stuckness.
• 19:51
  Samantha Pruitt: There, to me, in my experiences, there generally is something underlying that.
• 19:56
  Samantha Pruitt: And we're talking, we talked about story, we talked about capacity payoff.
• 19:59
  Samantha Pruitt: We'll get into that related to the physical body.
• 20:02
  Samantha Pruitt: But there's this really deep underlying I don't know what it's like to feel good.
• 20:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Maybe I don't deserve to feel good.
• 20:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Because we're providing resources, the resources are available and they're still resistant.
• 20:14
  Polly Mertens: So that's that's the answers and the how to be healthy is not a mystery anymore.
• 20:19
  Polly Mertens: It's not a mystery, right?
• 20:20
  Polly Mertens: So it's it's other things, it's it's things that are keeping people, it's limiting beliefs, it's the capacity, like you talk about these hidden payoffs, the sameness.
• 20:29
  Polly Mertens: Like, oh, like I love when I don't love, but like I it just amazes me when people say, Well, but the people in my house eat this way, so I eat like them, and I'm like, because they're holding the fork and spoon.
• 20:44
  Polly Mertens: I know, like, okay, or so-and-so does the grocery shopping.
• 20:48
  Polly Mertens: That's who you're gonna have, like, and that's how like snap out of it.
• 20:53
  Polly Mertens: Okay, so let's go, okay.
• 20:54
  Polly Mertens: So let's so yeah, yeah, you're right.
• 20:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, yeah, so state and story, state and story can be in these instances the doctor knows better than me, as if they live in your body 24-7 and they've been there for you know 50, 60 years, whatever.
• 21:07
  Samantha Pruitt: They met you for five minutes.
• 21:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, they're looking at one little piece of paper, they're not even actually looking at you and listening half the time, right?
• 21:14
  Samantha Pruitt: They're like, they see you as a chart and as you know, these little in the most basic blood tests that could possibly, whatever that looks like, right?
• 21:22
  Samantha Pruitt: So there's so many states and stories around our physical body.
• 21:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Everyone in my family is obese, everyone in my family has diabetes, everyone in my family is an alcoholic.
• 21:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Every whatever we all smoke, yeah.
• 21:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Like there's all of these storylines that are underneath that place.
• 21:42
  Samantha Pruitt: And to me, the stories are the stickiest place because that's more psychological than it is like external environmental.
• 21:52
  Samantha Pruitt: That's the story I'm circulating up in here.
• 21:55
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, well, and let me just like PS, we've got another episode on this, but like where those stories and beliefs come from is just thoughts you keep thinking.
• 22:03
  Polly Mertens: Like you made that up at one point and you just started believing it, you know, whether you you know a good visual.
• 22:10
  Samantha Pruitt: I basically just got a visual because I've been doing reading all these scientific studies.
• 22:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Forgive me, they're on mice.
• 22:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so this is just what it is.
• 22:18
  Samantha Pruitt: But They're medicine energy stories.
• 22:20
  Samantha Pruitt: They're really fascinating.
• 22:21
  Samantha Pruitt: But I immediately got this idea of a mice in the little hamster thing.
• 22:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, or the hamster in the little wheel going on.
• 22:27
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's like there's ticker tapes.
• 22:29
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, and each of the little things is a thought and a thought and thought.
• 22:33
  Samantha Pruitt: And you're basically like this.
• 22:35
  Polly Mertens: Oh, right.
• 22:35
  Samantha Pruitt: I am this.
• 22:36
  Samantha Pruitt: I look like this.
• 22:37
  Samantha Pruitt: My body is this, right?
• 22:38
  Samantha Pruitt: And that so that regurgitation of that ticker tape or that thing at the bottom of the newscast, you know, you're actually not listening or paying attention.
• 22:47
  Samantha Pruitt: You're just stuck on that all day long.
• 22:49
  Samantha Pruitt: And that's programming you.
• 22:50
  Polly Mertens: Change the channel.
• 22:52
  Polly Mertens: Turn the TV off.
• 22:53
  Polly Mertens: Turn the TV off, change the channel.
• 22:55
  Polly Mertens: The other one is it's a wheel.
• 22:57
  Polly Mertens: Guess what?
• 22:58
  Polly Mertens: Exit to the right, step up on the wheel and get on the treadmill.
• 23:02
  Polly Mertens: Get on the, you know, get on the road ahead, right?
• 23:05
  Polly Mertens: Not the sameness.
• 23:06
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 23:06
  Polly Mertens: Totally.
• 23:08
  Polly Mertens: Totally.
• 23:08
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 23:09
  Polly Mertens: But yeah.
• 23:09
  Polly Mertens: And so a lot of, you know, when beliefs, when thoughts are thought long enough and they start to pick up evidence, right?
• 23:16
  Polly Mertens: So like you you have a thought and you're like, oh, maybe that's true.
• 23:19
  Polly Mertens: And then you see that person does that twice, and then other people do it.
• 23:23
  Polly Mertens: And then, like, oh, you start to get all this evidence, right?
• 23:25
  Polly Mertens: Because it's it's law of attraction.
• 23:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, oh, that thought is a family reunion in your life.
• 23:30
  Polly Mertens: It's energy, like more of this.
• 23:31
  Polly Mertens: And then you have get on a forum online.
• 23:33
  Polly Mertens: And oh yeah, people are like this, you know, right?
• 23:35
  Polly Mertens: Like, of course, you're justified.
• 23:37
  Polly Mertens: Like, but is it serving you?
• 23:39
  Polly Mertens: Like, is it serving you to have that belief?
• 23:41
  Polly Mertens: Like, I love it when people say, Well, yeah, my family, everybody in my family, or so-and-so percentage of a family has diabetes or dies of this.
• 23:48
  Polly Mertens: I go, So what?
• 23:50
  Polly Mertens: Like, that's not your body, like that's a percentage of your DNA.
• 23:53
  Polly Mertens: It's not the whole you, right?
• 23:55
  Polly Mertens: Like, that's just okay, that's them, and that's their lifestyle choices and whatnot.
• 23:59
  Samantha Pruitt: It's like the second part of the story is the state, which I mostly call that the energy field that we talked about, or that vibration, right?
• 24:07
  Samantha Pruitt: So, like again, you can choose to submerge yourself back into that same energy every day, or you can decide to recalibrate that energy.
• 24:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes, that does require work.
• 24:18
  Samantha Pruitt: That piece of efforting, action, efforting is where I think a lot of people hold themselves back because it might feel scary, but it also does require genuine effort.
• 24:33
  Polly Mertens: Well, you know, and from the neuroscience perspective, uh, you know, I'll give you two things.
• 24:38
  Polly Mertens: One, I just want to say, like, so in my example of my making the decision to go down the road of getting divorced, right?
• 24:44
  Polly Mertens: So the pain was the the initial conversation was the the strongest pain to it was like I have to tell this person some really fucking bad news, you know, or like or maybe it's you know, whatever, and I have to like be there and then I have to tell the other, you know, and just whatever, and as the unfolding and then the moving and the selling the house and you know, all that stuff.
• 25:03
  Polly Mertens: And then it was like, we right.
• 25:05
  Polly Mertens: So the pain you might say, or the the difference of what I was experiencing, which guess what was a lot of pain, by the way.
• 25:11
  Polly Mertens: You know, that's the thing.
• 25:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Pick the pain, the pain that lasts forever, right?
• 25:17
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, or the pain that is through the catalyst of change, a temporary, like ripping a band-aid off, right?
• 25:24
  Samantha Pruitt: You just rip the band-aid off, and for a second it's horrible, and all the hair comes off your arm, and then you're like, whatever.
• 25:30
  Polly Mertens: Yep.
• 25:31
  Polly Mertens: Moving on now.
• 25:32
  Polly Mertens: Moving on.
• 25:32
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, you know, it's like the pain of regret, you know, weighs tons.
• 25:36
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:38
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 25:38
  Polly Mertens: So okay, velocity, nervous loss of the other thought.
• 25:41
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 25:41
  Polly Mertens: Anyway, so like the thoughts you think gain momentum, you start to create a belief, and then pretty soon, if you attach it to yourself, that's your identity, right?
• 25:49
  Polly Mertens: And nothing is stronger in the human psyche than the need to stay consistent with our identity, right?
• 25:54
  Polly Mertens: So that resistance that you talk about arises because the brain's like, well, that would take a lot of calories, and that's a lot of unknown.
• 26:00
  Polly Mertens: And what we don't know how that's gonna be.
• 26:02
  Polly Mertens: We'd rather stay in this yucky, safe, unsatisfying relationship with the tribe over here, yeah, yeah, with with or like with my people, hiding out.
• 26:11
  Polly Mertens: It could for me, it was like hiding out in a relationship that I didn't want to be in, right?
• 26:15
  Polly Mertens: So yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 26:16
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 26:16
  Polly Mertens: So let's so anything else on that one?
• 26:19
  Polly Mertens: I want to no.
• 26:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, we could go on for days, but let's move on to capacity and nervous system.
• 26:24
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 26:25
  Polly Mertens: So, like our nervous system and capacity, you're really good about describing capacity.
• 26:29
  Polly Mertens: So, how would you see, you know, this this I look at everybody from this perspective?
• 26:33
  Polly Mertens: No, when you when we started talking about this, I can't not see it.
• 26:38
  Polly Mertens: I know.
• 26:38
  Samantha Pruitt: I know, I just I just can't because super helpful.
• 26:42
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't know.
• 26:44
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, this is just maybe what I attract.
• 26:46
  Samantha Pruitt: So I whatever, this is my personal experience, but like I don't know anybody who doesn't want something better for themselves.
• 26:54
  Samantha Pruitt: That isn't always physical, it can be lots of things, you know, opportunities, relationships, finances, whatever.
• 27:00
  Samantha Pruitt: And so, in that wanting something better, whatever that piece is, right?
• 27:06
  Samantha Pruitt: I, and if they come to me or we're having a conversation about it, so I'm experiencing their desires, I very quickly do a scan of what I perceive to be their capacity, because capacity for change does require, like I said, effort, yeah, action, real action.
• 27:26
  Samantha Pruitt: It's an actual verb doing and the action might be the stopping.
• 27:31
  Polly Mertens: It might be resisting, like the stopping of old behavior.
• 27:34
  Polly Mertens: So the action can yeah, the stopping.
• 27:37
  Samantha Pruitt: So in conversations, if I'm gonna be coaching them or I'm coaching them or whatever the capacity is, there needs to be a very quick assessment and conversation around is right now, do you have the capacity for change?
• 27:48
  Samantha Pruitt: So depending on what the thing is, the capacity needs to be massive or maybe minor.
• 27:55
  Samantha Pruitt: It could be very subtle.
• 27:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Some subtle changes in lifestyle or some subtle decisions over here will have a downstream effect and you'll be moving in the right direction and winning.
• 28:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 28:06
  Samantha Pruitt: But sometimes it's an incredible lift to make the change, the habit change, the lifestyle change, the psychological mindset change, right?
• 28:14
  Samantha Pruitt: So, and if the person doesn't have capacity, because also currently at this time they have 10 other things going on.
• 28:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Like if you would have come to me in the last year while I was dealing with family death, after family death, after back surgery, after the gut infection, and you said, Hey, let's launch a business.
• 28:32
  Samantha Pruitt: That is completely insane.
• 28:35
  Samantha Pruitt: I would say I have no capacity for that.
• 28:38
  Samantha Pruitt: I am a little bit in survival mode, physically, psychologically, emotionally, and I need to be all up in this and taking care of myself and my family at this time, right?
• 28:47
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's me recognizing I don't have the capacity.
• 28:49
  Samantha Pruitt: But many people don't.
• 28:51
  Samantha Pruitt: They'll come or I'll hear, I want to make a career change, but I'm also having health problems.
• 28:57
  Samantha Pruitt: And by the way, I want a divorce.
• 28:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so we got to pick one.
• 29:00
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 29:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, we can't change all of these things at once, but maybe the career and the physical things are because your home life is so disruptive to you or whatever, right?
• 29:12
  Samantha Pruitt: So you have to really analyze capacity.
• 29:14
  Samantha Pruitt: So my point is if somebody doesn't have a regulated nervous system or know how to regulate their nervous system, and doesn't have emotional capacity, psychological capacity at this moment for big change, it's not the right time for big change.
• 29:29
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 29:30
  Samantha Pruitt: It's okay to take a step back, take a deep breath, maybe find some other relief in other ways.
• 29:38
  Samantha Pruitt: There's lots of ways to recalibrate the nervous system and to build capacity, but that's what you need to be doing first.
• 29:47
  Polly Mertens: I was thinking three things.
• 29:49
  Polly Mertens: Let me see if I can.
• 29:50
  Polly Mertens: So one is I would waver that too with the criticalness or the critical need or the pain that you're in.
• 29:58
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:59
  Polly Mertens: Like, what is that?
• 30:00
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, if if somebody has like all these things going on, but like you're facing a death sentence if you don't shift something.
• 30:06
  Polly Mertens: It's like hold up, you know, like, oh yeah, I'll just keep doing all that capacity because I'm avoiding this thing.
• 30:11
  Polly Mertens: So you've got to, you know, weigh that.
• 30:13
  Polly Mertens: But aside from that, if this is not optional, but it's not a level 10, like, you know, do something now.
• 30:19
  Polly Mertens: One of the ways that I've described it, so a new analogy started coming to me as you were talking about that.
• 30:24
  Polly Mertens: I was thinking, because I have friends that are taking classes and and like Jill's in school right now, and I think about like school load, like, you know, it's like new learning.
• 30:34
  Polly Mertens: Well, just think like if you so if you talk to a college student and you're like, how many units are you taking, or how many hours, or whatever you call it, you know, and they're like, I got a full load, right?
• 30:42
  Polly Mertens: Whatever that is, six units, four units, whatever.
• 30:44
  Polly Mertens: And you go, Yeah, you couldn't go, oh hey, guess what?
• 30:47
  Polly Mertens: You know, I'm gonna add like six more, three more classes on here.
• 30:50
  Polly Mertens: Like they just don't have the capacity to and take on like time sitting in school, doing homework and stuff like that.
• 30:57
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 30:58
  Polly Mertens: So that's a bit of the capacity.
• 30:59
  Polly Mertens: The other thing I was thinking about, I've described capacity in terms of emotional capacity, and this helps me visualize it too.
• 31:05
  Polly Mertens: Like we talk about somebody just not being emotionally well resourced, emotionally, energetically, because they're not sleeping well, they're not fueling well, they're not moving their body, you know, the stress load is a 10, whatever.
• 31:22
  Polly Mertens: I think of it like if you had a glass jar, right, like a bowl, and if we, you know, dropped a little pebble in there and it's, you know, how depending on the thickness of the glass, right?
• 31:31
  Polly Mertens: That's the capacity of the glass.
• 31:32
  Polly Mertens: It's like, oh, okay, no problem.
• 31:34
  Polly Mertens: But if that glass is super thin and we drop like a big, big, heavy rock in there, or a tornado goes off inside that glass jar, it's like it's frail and it cracks, right?
• 31:44
  Polly Mertens: And so that capacity, so it's like, how thick are those walls?
• 31:48
  Polly Mertens: How stable are you in terms of you know, your sleep regimen and your nutrition?
• 31:53
  Polly Mertens: Are you feeling emotionally, physically, spiritually well balanced that something could shift and it won't just crack the walls?
• 32:01
  Polly Mertens: So that's a little what I think about capacity, right?
• 32:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and having the resources for change, and that might mean the support of others.
• 32:11
  Samantha Pruitt: It might not just mean time and space and you know, patience and emotional stability and physical health and stuff like that.
• 32:20
  Samantha Pruitt: It could also be you'd actually need some support from others in this path.
• 32:25
  Samantha Pruitt: And we need to align that as well, right?
• 32:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Like that's a capacity point.
• 32:29
  Polly Mertens: You know, and something you and I have talked about, and I see this like when when I do this in business coaching and in personal coaching.
• 32:34
  Polly Mertens: In personal coaching, you have someone that you do like a wheel of life, like, okay, what's what's going on in your life?
• 32:39
  Polly Mertens: And if there's three redlining areas, you know, that are just like which is very common, right?
• 32:46
  Polly Mertens: You gotta pick one, right?
• 32:47
  Polly Mertens: And so you like stack you stack, you know, and then same in business.
• 32:51
  Polly Mertens: It's like, well, you can't remodel the whole business.
• 32:53
  Polly Mertens: It's like, oh, Christ, you lost your team and you you're behind in your death, you know, like all you gotta like do it in an order, right?
• 33:00
  Polly Mertens: It's not like snap your fingers and everything just shifts magically, but thinking of it in in an order, like, okay, what you know, triaging, if you will, what do we need to address first to keep the patient alive and keep this, you know, trains on the track.
• 33:14
  Samantha Pruitt: So exactly, exactly.
• 33:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, and so what we have said is you know, that keeps a lot of people stuck or resistant to the process.
• 33:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Things you gotta do it all at the same time, like I'm gonna change all this.
• 33:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, exactly.
• 33:27
  Samantha Pruitt: They have this idea that everything needs to be fixed together and that all the things are broken.
• 33:35
  Polly Mertens: And now we've got to do it.
• 33:36
  Samantha Pruitt: And I want it tomorrow.
• 33:39
  Polly Mertens: I want to have the weight loss, I want to have the new job, I want to have like relocate, and it's like and you know, and and I think I've heard other coaches talk about it.
• 33:47
  Polly Mertens: It's like it's it's a it's we overestimate what we think we can get done like in a year, and we underestimate what we can get done in a couple of years, right?
• 33:54
  Polly Mertens: So it's like, you know, like we we see I see that if you know dude, we underestimate what we can get done in a freaking week.
• 34:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:02
  Samantha Pruitt: These days, it's a week.
• 34:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, people say it's a whole other timeline.
• 34:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Totally, totally.
• 34:09
  Polly Mertens: So, okay, so that's like your nervous system, your capacity is like how resourced are you?
• 34:14
  Polly Mertens: And do you need to just like sh shore up?
• 34:16
  Polly Mertens: Do you need to like eat a little better, sleep a little more, get some support in your life to take on this why in the road, the leaving the job.
• 34:26
  Polly Mertens: Okay, like let's look at the finances, or let's look at the support that you need, or you know, if you're caring for a household, okay, what what does that look like?
• 34:33
  Polly Mertens: So that what comes on you doesn't just crack your glass and just you know leave you, you know, not able to keep moving forward down the road.
• 34:41
  Samantha Pruitt: So exactly.
• 34:43
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 34:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Payoff.
• 34:44
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and some of that might be emotional mastery, you know, like we've taught in other videos or you know, other episodes, have a listen to those, but emotional mastery is where you get some of that capacity back, right?
• 34:56
  Polly Mertens: It's you know, and I was listening to I'm I'm starting, and we'll talk about this another time, but I'm starting to listen to the audiobook of autobiography of a yogi, right?
• 35:06
  Polly Mertens: And talking about, and it just reminds me, I mean, I have been doing a gratitude practice and meditation in the morning.
• 35:12
  Polly Mertens: I don't know how many years, but it's been close to 10 or pushing more than that, something like that.
• 35:17
  Polly Mertens: And I hadn't realized how pivotal that is and why my life works in all the other areas.
• 35:25
  Polly Mertens: Like, yes, I have emotional mastery, I understand it.
• 35:27
  Polly Mertens: Yes, I have good fitness and all this stuff.
• 35:29
  Polly Mertens: And I have a morning gratitude practice and I have emotional regulation.
• 35:34
  Polly Mertens: I come back to my my seat of my soul each day.
• 35:38
  Polly Mertens: Like, ah, like that's where I'm coming from in this morning.
• 35:42
  Polly Mertens: Like before all the people get up in the morning, you know, before 5 a.m.
• 35:45
  Polly Mertens: in the morning, I am like grounded in who I am on the bigger scale and stuff.
• 35:50
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, wow, I really lose track of that, of how important that is when I see clients or I see people so dysregulated.
• 35:57
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, oh yeah, I've been doing this and I lose sight that I have that, you know, that Mr.
• 36:02
  Polly Mertens: Miyagi, like it's part of my my woo-way, whatever now.
• 36:06
  Polly Mertens: You know, it's like, okay, I got that.
• 36:08
  Polly Mertens: You too.
• 36:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Mine is moving my body, but see, we all have our different thing, and it's gonna be different and look different for everybody.
• 36:16
  Samantha Pruitt: But the point is we have a thing.
• 36:19
  Polly Mertens: And we can fall back on that thing.
• 36:21
  Polly Mertens: So that helps you build that it's like building that foundation or that floor.
• 36:25
  Polly Mertens: It's like whatever those things are that for you, you know, it's your fitness and wellness and you know, sunshine and stuff.
• 36:32
  Polly Mertens: So just knowing what your capacity and the walls of your glass, what makes that crack, right?
• 36:36
  Polly Mertens: And storing that up.
• 36:38
  Polly Mertens: Okay, number three, let's go into these are fun ones, those hidden payoffs.
• 36:44
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and people think, what do you mean if I'm suffering and miserable and uh broken?
• 36:52
  Samantha Pruitt: There's no payoff, really, and you've been doing it for weeks and months and years because you don't think there's a payoff?
• 37:01
  Polly Mertens: Surprise! Yeah, yeah, there's a freaking payoff, hidden, hidden from your mostly conscious or default perspective of things.
• 37:09
  Polly Mertens: So things like safety, avoiding risk, loyalty to a current version of yourself.
• 37:15
  Polly Mertens: It's like, well, just because that's who I know myself to be, right?
• 37:19
  Polly Mertens: And it's like, well, that's that's your payoff, you know, and it could be looking good or you know, not looking bad in the world, it could be like I was doing in my relationship.
• 37:28
  Polly Mertens: The hidden payoff was like, well, I didn't have to, you know, be vulnerable and be honest with my friends, what was going on inside my relationship, or you know, things like that.
• 37:36
  Samantha Pruitt: It's like whole lot of times it is external and it's other people's belief around our identity and how we serve a purpose in their life, like what would be our role in the family?
• 37:47
  Samantha Pruitt: What would be our role at work if I didn't operate like this kind of person?
• 37:51
  Samantha Pruitt: What if I all of a sudden came into work, you know, the next day and was a different person?
• 37:55
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, so there's all these layers to that.
• 37:59
  Samantha Pruitt: What if I didn't continue to be the way I was yesterday?
• 38:05
  Samantha Pruitt: What would I quote unquote lose, which I feel is some sort of security and safety element to me?
• 38:14
  Polly Mertens: I would say two questions to help you start to discover for yourself.
• 38:18
  Polly Mertens: If you find yourself stuck and not making a decision or any of this resonates, two questions I would give you is like that sound that are similar to what finding the hidden payoff is like, how is this actually serving me?
• 38:31
  Polly Mertens: And be honest.
• 38:32
  Polly Mertens: Like, like how is this actually like doing it this way?
• 38:34
  Polly Mertens: Like, how how is it what am I getting out of this?
• 38:37
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, the other one was like, Yeah, what what's the payoff?
• 38:39
  Polly Mertens: Like what what what's what am I getting out of this by being this way?
• 38:44
  Polly Mertens: If I was really honest with myself, right?
• 38:47
  Polly Mertens: And it might surprise you, you're like, Well, that's stupid.
• 38:49
  Polly Mertens: And you're like, Yeah, that's probably it's but yeah, that's but you know what?
• 38:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Maybe we developed and learned that behavior.
• 38:58
  Samantha Pruitt: By the way, it could be pre-birth, we inherited it into our freaking, you know, from our DNA of ancestors or whatever, or it could be some sort of childhood experience we had, like, hey, when I was younger, you know, I was the youngest child and this behavior really worked for me.
• 39:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, but now I'm a 57-year-old woman and it doesn't work for me anymore.
• 39:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, you gotta really look at that stuff.
• 39:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Sometimes it's hard to look at.
• 39:24
  Polly Mertens: You know, and I'll just say, like, laced in this, and there's work on this from Tony Robbins.
• 39:28
  Polly Mertens: So if you want to go research that, feel free.
• 39:30
  Polly Mertens: But I'll just briefly touch upon it because it's a beautiful body of work.
• 39:33
  Polly Mertens: And he talks about how, you know, we will do so such crazy things to have our needs, hidden or not, have our needs met, right?
• 39:43
  Polly Mertens: And two of two of the primary ones are need for certainty, need for variety, need for significance, looking good, being unique, feeling special, and love and connection, right?
• 39:54
  Polly Mertens: So if if you look at those four, there's two other ones that they're more spiritual, but a lot of these four, if they get unhealthy, they can be driving the bus and you're not really quite aware of it.
• 40:04
  Polly Mertens: But if you get at the root of those, one of those four needs, and he says that things that become addictive, they meet three of them.
• 40:11
  Polly Mertens: So if you meet three of those, addiction, right?
• 40:14
  Polly Mertens: So just you know, it's the hidden payoff because we were like, why would I, you know, I don't know, as an addict for 20 years, I'm like, why the hell would I keep doing?
• 40:25
  Polly Mertens: Like I would, I'm a smart person.
• 40:27
  Polly Mertens: I would wake up each morning and just be like, how like last night I said, that was the last time, right?
• 40:33
  Polly Mertens: And then, you know, you pick up the alcohol, you pick up the food, you pick up the whatever your addiction is, and it's like you can't outrun that identity, those needs are being met, you know.
• 40:43
  Polly Mertens: Like I had all this stuff underneath that I was, you know, and when you what happens too when you see this in addiction and recovery is if you work on the surface shit, you know, like some of this, like what we're gonna be talking about is like these some of this hidden planes and why we're going into these like deeper, because we could just talk about like stuckness is like we could stay at story and state.
• 41:02
  Polly Mertens: It's like a lot of people just stay up at that, but there's multiple layers here.
• 41:06
  Polly Mertens: And if you just work at the superficial level, like, oh, change your story or whatever, and you don't get into some of these deeper level, somatic levels, hidden needs and stuff like that, you will go back, you know, like you will start to see change and then you will go back, or like why do we regress when you know, or why do I go back to him, or why do I, you know, why do I keep doing this to myself?
• 41:26
  Polly Mertens: Because there's these payoffs, right?
• 41:29
  Samantha Pruitt: So yeah, and I just want to remind people in case they forgot that addiction can be behavioral addiction, it can be relationship-based addiction.
• 41:39
  Samantha Pruitt: There's all these other pathways to addiction, it's not the you know, big terror ones that everybody sort of thinks of.
• 41:45
  Samantha Pruitt: So everybody goes, Well, that's not me.
• 41:47
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, I'm not uh how can I be in an addictive relationship?
• 41:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, very easily.
• 41:54
  Polly Mertens: It doesn't have to be a substance, yeah.
• 41:56
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, it could be chemicals, like you know, the chemical bodies, because we get a hit, we become very addicted to the the chemicals that get released in our body as a you know, uh antidepressants or you know, whatever you want, because the the body's a chemical factory based on the emotions and the thoughts that we're thinking, right?
• 42:12
  Polly Mertens: And so having that, you know, why do people, you know, why do people addicted to social media, right?
• 42:18
  Polly Mertens: Like they're they're not eating it or drinking it or you know, whatever, but like those emotional hits that they get from the chemicals of it is why it becomes same thing, yeah, yeah.
• 42:29
  Polly Mertens: Same thing, and you can call that emotional from a relationship, right?
• 42:33
  Polly Mertens: As you talked about.
• 42:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:35
  Samantha Pruitt: You can get addicted to that rage pattern.
• 42:38
  Polly Mertens: Totally, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:41
  Samantha Pruitt: So that's one's environment.
• 42:43
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:44
  Polly Mertens: So and there's a lot of this.
• 42:46
  Polly Mertens: Is this pretty surprising?
• 42:48
  Polly Mertens: You know, I remember one time I was talking with another eating disorder coach, and she didn't believe me when I said how important the environment was.
• 42:55
  Polly Mertens: Like she thought it was all mental.
• 42:56
  Polly Mertens: It was like mental game, mental game.
• 42:58
  Polly Mertens: Like you just gotta like resist and I was like, Hold up.
• 43:03
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, if you don't shift stuff in your environment, like it reminds our environment reminds us.
• 43:08
  Polly Mertens: People don't have that kind of willpower.
• 43:10
  Samantha Pruitt: That's just not how the human brain and body is made.
• 43:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, so you can't just muscle this shit.
• 43:17
  Polly Mertens: Let's just kind of define a little bit like environment.
• 43:20
  Polly Mertens: So people can get like your physical space, right?
• 43:22
  Polly Mertens: Your environment can also be the relationships.
• 43:25
  Polly Mertens: So those people that you see in your life, whether it's frequently in the office or at the gym or at home or people that you talk to regularly, your family, right?
• 43:35
  Polly Mertens: So relationships can be part of your environment, your routines, your own things that you've put yourself in.
• 43:41
  Polly Mertens: Like I had this one thing that I was doing the other day, and it was asking me, what in your environment is within three feet of your reach at all times?
• 43:50
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, Holy shit, what do I always keep right near me, like within a arm's reach?
• 43:56
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, my phone and a cup of water, and like my daytime.
• 44:00
  Polly Mertens: I was like a cat.
• 44:01
  Polly Mertens: It's interesting.
• 44:02
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, they come and go.
• 44:04
  Polly Mertens: If I could, you know, totally.
• 44:06
  Polly Mertens: So your spaces and then also your environment is your your inputs.
• 44:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, right.
• 44:13
  Polly Mertens: Like, like what are you considering?
• 44:15
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm obsessed about that part.
• 44:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah because people don't think about that as their.
• 44:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Environment, but yet they literally all day long receive inputs from the world through their eyes, their ears, their mouth, the smell, the taste, the sun, the air, like everything.
• 44:32
  Polly Mertens: You know, it's amazing how many.
• 44:34
  Polly Mertens: I I don't know if there's studies out there, but I'm pretty sure when people even just like I went to that, like that workshop, and I was out, like you said, I was out of my environment.
• 44:43
  Polly Mertens: I was in a physical different space with people that were all having breakthroughs and you know, all this stuff.
• 44:48
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, wow, right?
• 44:49
  Polly Mertens: The environment reminds you of who to be, like who you've been in the past, right?
• 44:54
  Polly Mertens: So, like we have, I have a couple of friends that have done say that again.
• 45:00
  Samantha Pruitt: The environment reminds you of who to be.
• 45:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, that can be positive or negative.
• 45:07
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 45:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Speaking from someone who just backpacked for 20 days about reminding who I was.
• 45:13
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm like, oh, I'm a tree.
• 45:14
  Samantha Pruitt: No, I'm a bird, no, I'm a rock.
• 45:16
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm now part of the water.
• 45:19
  Polly Mertens: Oh, yeah, that's me.
• 45:20
  Polly Mertens: Talk about how your environment shifted.
• 45:22
  Polly Mertens: I mean, you had some amazing.
• 45:24
  Polly Mertens: There's another episode, guys.
• 45:25
  Polly Mertens: We're gonna launch that's gonna go live here very soon.
• 45:27
  Polly Mertens: Sam's you know, backpacking trip.
• 45:29
  Polly Mertens: So stay tuned for that.
• 45:30
  Polly Mertens: But we're it's already live as we record this, so we'll listen to that.
• 45:34
  Polly Mertens: But tell us a little bit about what that was like, right?
• 45:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, that's just the whole that's this extreme, extreme, you know, dichotomy of I'm reminded who I am by either my everyday sort of household chores, routines, patterns, work environment, driving the car down the freeway, blah, blah, blah, whatever, you know.
• 45:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, I'm just a human in the cog of civilization.
• 45:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 45:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, you know, earning the paycheck, doing the thing, right?
• 46:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, so that can be one way you're reminded of who you are when you put on that suit every morning or whatever you're all doing out there.
• 46:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Or the extreme is like leaving all of the known comforts and the normal everyday routine into something that's so completely out of your regular regimen, like me just you know, dropping myself into nature and saying, Okay, you're gonna survive in the wilderness for 20 days, and everything that you need will be on your back.
• 46:29
  Samantha Pruitt: And if you're not carrying it on your back, you don't have it.
• 46:32
  Samantha Pruitt: So you will have to be getting it from nature, and that's it.
• 46:36
  Samantha Pruitt: And everything that you need to be capable to do the thing is inside of you because it's there.
• 46:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Now you tap into that shit.
• 46:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, like right.
• 46:47
  Samantha Pruitt: So you learn very quickly.
• 46:49
  Samantha Pruitt: I think I have the capabilities and skills because I'm willing to take the risk to find out, right?
• 46:55
  Samantha Pruitt: But you don't really know.
• 46:57
  Samantha Pruitt: This will be the same with you doing Trail Mont Blanc, right?
• 47:00
  Samantha Pruitt: You don't really know till you show up and start climbing mountains.
• 47:03
  Polly Mertens: And then you find out.
• 47:04
  Polly Mertens: Well, and then I think about you, like when we talk about inputs, talk about some fucking magnificent inputs that you had out there, you know.
• 47:12
  Polly Mertens: I mean, it wasn't like you were looking at the the back of someone's head, you know, for eight hours or you know, a computer screen.
• 47:18
  Samantha Pruitt: My computer screen screen.
• 47:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 47:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, uh no, my phone was turned off.
• 47:23
  Samantha Pruitt: I was basically either looking at the ground so I didn't fall and trip, or I was looking at nature, yeah, and I was surrounded by nature.
• 47:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Like those were my visual inputs.
• 47:33
  Samantha Pruitt: My audital, the audible inputs were the nature sounds around, or even my own humming or singing or something that might have been going on inside my own head.
• 47:43
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, that was a thing.
• 47:45
  Samantha Pruitt: And then the smells and the tastes and the textures and like all of it is so rich.
• 47:51
  Samantha Pruitt: And with all of that comes an incredible energy back to state, that vibrational energy that you can receive as inputs, right?
• 48:00
  Samantha Pruitt: If it's there and available to you, if you don't put yourself in that environment because you're locked in a cubicle or in your home office for 10 hours a day in front of a screen, you're really limiting your inputs, right?
• 48:13
  Samantha Pruitt: You're being very narrowed and specific to what you're gonna experience.
• 48:16
  Samantha Pruitt: And of course, that's gonna affect everything.
• 48:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Everything, 100% on a cellular level.
• 48:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh, it's just, yeah.
• 48:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, don't even get me started on the cells.
• 48:28
  Polly Mertens: What that does.
• 48:29
  Polly Mertens: You know, and I think too, you know, I am a big, so I'm definitely more I would I don't consider myself introvert or extrovert, but I definitely like to be home more than being out, let's say.
• 48:40
  Polly Mertens: But I so in my there's this thing called, I think it's Jinkeys or my human design, I forget, but I'm what's called a hermit opportunist, right?
• 48:48
  Polly Mertens: So I'm I tend to be like I primarily love being home, kitty cats and making my own environment, my home, all in my home office, whatever, yummy.
• 48:56
  Polly Mertens: But I'm opportunistic, you know.
• 48:58
  Polly Mertens: So, like, oh, there's the thing, right?
• 48:59
  Polly Mertens: And I think about like in the past 45 days or whatever, I've gone to a volleyball beach volley or sand volleyball game, met the whole new people over there.
• 49:08
  Polly Mertens: Like, wow, okay, you guys are cool.
• 49:09
  Polly Mertens: This is great, right?
• 49:10
  Polly Mertens: Then I went to a tarot card reading club and I was like, oh, look at you guys are fascinating, right?
• 49:15
  Polly Mertens: And and I create my own little group around my landmark work, like I'm meeting them tonight, right?
• 49:19
  Polly Mertens: Like we're getting together.
• 49:20
  Polly Mertens: And it's like putting yourself in with new people and new food and new spaces.
• 49:25
  Polly Mertens: And you know, like I remember there was a time, you know, when you moved, it was like trying different gyms and you know, you travel and then you go different places, right?
• 49:33
  Polly Mertens: And so just mixing things up, like find one or two things, right, that can, you know, break that monotony or make that sameness and start to have us go, oh, like a little crack in the the matrix, if you will.
• 49:45
  Polly Mertens: You know, it's like that's what it is.
• 49:48
  Polly Mertens: It's a freaking chisel on the matrix, you know.
• 49:51
  Polly Mertens: Take a chisel to that shit.
• 49:52
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, break it all.
• 49:54
  Polly Mertens: So, well, so I think we've covered was there anything else in the, you know, that covers a you know, the you know, and there's so much depth to each of these.
• 50:03
  Polly Mertens: I mean, we could probably do episodes each one of those.
• 50:06
  Polly Mertens: But I hope that's given people an idea of what keeps us in a pattern, right?
• 50:11
  Polly Mertens: Like what keeps us at that why, or in the you've got 10 options in front of you, not doing anything and just go in circles.
• 50:16
  Polly Mertens: So, but let's talk about ways to get out, like how to get unstuck.
• 50:20
  Polly Mertens: What hire a coach, like you want to like bam bam, you know, like it's kind of the obvious, right?
• 50:26
  Polly Mertens: Right, but you know, what the coach is uh gonna just gonna help you do are these things, right?
• 50:30
  Polly Mertens: So let's take a look at what's what can shift.
• 50:33
  Polly Mertens: So we look at, you know, I would say generally speaking, we'll go into each of these the physical plane, your mental plane, and your spiritual plane, right?
• 50:41
  Polly Mertens: So let's start with the physical plane, like this is your absolute your domain, right?
• 50:45
  Samantha Pruitt: So address it's kind of the easiest place to start because people live so much in the physical body.
• 50:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, not everybody, some people are very disconnected from their physical body, so I shouldn't generalize here.
• 50:56
  Samantha Pruitt: But you have a body and walk around in it every day, it belongs to you, nobody else.
• 51:05
  Samantha Pruitt: You own it, like that's a real thing, by the way.
• 51:07
  Samantha Pruitt: And that relationship should be cherished.
• 51:10
  Samantha Pruitt: But in many instances, how you can start to make a change possible for yourself to get the out of the stick or the unstuck place is to start with the physical body.
• 51:22
  Samantha Pruitt: So that is a change to the energy state of the physical body.
• 51:26
  Samantha Pruitt: So that would be through movement, through breath, through doing things differently with the physical vessel that you're living inside of.
• 51:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so that's gonna be a very quick pathway in, or also physical is the external environment that I'm putting this body and brain in, right?
• 51:46
  Samantha Pruitt: So we talked about both of those things, but like this is you want quick change, move this thing, move this thing, just start moving this thing.
• 51:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Whatever the hell, there's no one way.
• 51:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Again, it's incredibly individual, and it can be something as simple because maybe I have to sit at this desk for eight hours a day or whatever the thing is I've told myself, right?
• 52:08
  Samantha Pruitt: But last time I checked your breathing, at least I hope you are, otherwise, we have a whole other problem here.
• 52:13
  Samantha Pruitt: But people don't even have awareness of the most basic human command of the body, which is the breath, right?
• 52:20
  Samantha Pruitt: So you can start with something that simple.
• 52:23
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and I would say I'll go a little bit on the opposite of that and say a radical change.
• 52:29
  Polly Mertens: So depend, yeah.
• 52:30
  Polly Mertens: So like depending you're like severity.
• 52:33
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, I mean, if you want to instigate something to be different in your life, like take on a radical physiological shift.
• 52:42
  Polly Mertens: And it doesn't have to be ongoing, it could just be in that moment.
• 52:45
  Polly Mertens: So, what that could look like, for example, when I say that, is you know, if I'm used to coming home and like grabbing a glass of wine and sitting on the couch and you know, la.
• 52:56
  Polly Mertens: Like I have a friend who she and her husband did this, what do they call it?
• 53:00
  Polly Mertens: The no couch month or something like that.
• 53:03
  Polly Mertens: I forget, whatever.
• 53:04
  Polly Mertens: But like they're not, they can't sit on the couch for like a month, right?
• 53:08
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's like I love this, right?
• 53:10
  Samantha Pruitt: No that's so good.
• 53:11
  Polly Mertens: No couch month.
• 53:12
  Samantha Pruitt: And I don't know.
• 53:12
  Samantha Pruitt: And now they're laying on the floor.
• 53:14
  Polly Mertens: Well, so like one of the things, like you know, she was just sharing, like one of the things was they like the husband was like, Well, you know, and they're like, Okay, what do we do?
• 53:22
  Polly Mertens: You know, like you know, it just puts you in a place of get creative.
• 53:26
  Polly Mertens: So now what?
• 53:26
  Polly Mertens: Go for a walk or whatever, do yoga poses, or go hang out with a friend, go sit on their couch.
• 53:32
  Polly Mertens: I don't know.
• 53:32
  Polly Mertens: I don't know.
• 53:33
  Polly Mertens: Or nice closets, whatever.
• 53:35
  Polly Mertens: So they did one of the things was uh let's grab because they live near the beach.
• 53:38
  Polly Mertens: It was like, let's grab some chairs and go sit by the beach.
• 53:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, that's so lovely, you know.
• 53:43
  Polly Mertens: So it was like, okay, so so radical shift can be something along those lines, or for yourself.
• 53:48
  Polly Mertens: So, especially with you know, when I was coaching with eating disorder, so you know, you get into this, you know, like I mean, it's literally felt like when you get into an addictive pattern, it can feel like autopilot, like like my car would drive to the grocery store by itself almost.
• 54:06
  Polly Mertens: It would, you know, put the food and the, you know, it was just this like auto other thing took over type of thing.
• 54:12
  Polly Mertens: So radical shifts are like like okay, you know, like you're sitting, you're used to.
• 54:16
  Polly Mertens: So I had a client who this wasn't so radical, but she would always eat, not always, but she found herself overeating, often standing up, grazing in the kitchen.
• 54:27
  Polly Mertens: It was like radical shift was you only eat sitting down at the dining table, you know.
• 54:32
  Polly Mertens: So I mean, I'm not saying that.
• 54:33
  Polly Mertens: So radical shift can be, especially if you have addictive or if you're in slumps.
• 54:38
  Polly Mertens: Like I find that radical really helps when energy and movement is just stuck.
• 54:43
  Polly Mertens: So it's like, oh pep pow, you know, like you've had us doing these runs in the morning on the treadmill and stuff, and it's like so energizing, like fuck, you know, like I get off that thing and I'm just like flying home.
• 54:56
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, you know, into my day, right?
• 54:59
  Polly Mertens: Like, so that's so good.
• 55:01
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 55:01
  Polly Mertens: So good.
• 55:02
  Polly Mertens: So like your workout is you know at a level two, take it up to a level three or a four for a while.
• 55:07
  Polly Mertens: If you're at a you're freaking fried because you're always at a four, downshift it, like get into some yoga, like radical shift some of these, you know, these environments in the physical world.
• 55:19
  Polly Mertens: Like, like Jen, like, dude, she like totally redid her kitchen, you know.
• 55:23
  Polly Mertens: She's like, you know, clean out the closets, the drawers, and you know, like there's nothing like some free space and free energy in your house, right?
• 55:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Work somewhere different, work with different people.
• 55:36
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, maybe you've been doing this thing and you're like, la la la, this is what I do.
• 55:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Go find a different work team or find a different project or work in a different physical place.
• 55:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, there's so much you can do related to your work, and people do not think about that at all.
• 55:51
  Samantha Pruitt: I have to go to the office and sit at the desk, and everybody expects me to be there for eight hours answering the phone and emails.
• 56:00
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't know.
• 56:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Do they though?
• 56:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Do they though?
• 56:02
  Polly Mertens: Get up and do, you know, go a flight, a couple of flights of stairs and come back, you know, like a couple times a day, or go for a walk.
• 56:08
  Polly Mertens: It's like that meeting on a freaking phone with a earbud, like, hello, there's technology.
• 56:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Like you can be walking and taking all kinds of calls.
• 56:16
  Samantha Pruitt: People have no idea.
• 56:17
  Polly Mertens: So let your brain run wild with the like, I'll just insert radical, you know, shift, if you will.
• 56:23
  Polly Mertens: But that's um anything on the physical plane can be gentle, and maybe that you know, it needs to be gentle, especially if you're in that capacity, is like you need to shore that up.
• 56:32
  Polly Mertens: Then, you know, and radical maybe going to bed an hour earlier than you used to.
• 56:37
  Polly Mertens: Who knows?
• 56:37
  Polly Mertens: You know, so all right.
• 56:39
  Polly Mertens: So mental, the whole mental game.
• 56:43
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, looking at the story, yeah.
• 56:46
  Polly Mertens: So naming the payoff, right?
• 56:47
  Polly Mertens: Like, so like getting clear, we were talking about those underlying human needs.
• 56:51
  Polly Mertens: So, like, you know, what is the this is where coaches are really handy.
• 56:56
  Samantha Pruitt: It's hard to look at the mental stuff by yourself because your own brain is kind of what got you there, and your own brain's what's keeping you stuck.
• 57:04
  Samantha Pruitt: So, unless you have friends like we have each other and we have a circle of people like us, that's amazing.
• 57:10
  Samantha Pruitt: But if you don't, like there are people like us that this is just what we do.
• 57:15
  Samantha Pruitt: We literally, this is what we unpack to get to all the other things.
• 57:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Because if the mental isn't on board and the emotional and mental integrity of the human isn't ready for action, the action part's gonna be very difficult.
• 57:30
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, I think sometimes it can be hard for us to see our own way out of our own thoughts.
• 57:35
  Polly Mertens: And then the other thing I was thinking is you know, our brain's freaking tricky when it wants to keep you the same, you know, like it'll hide stuff from your, you know, like you won't be able to see it, you know.
• 57:46
  Polly Mertens: Like I'm always like, why am I keep doing this?
• 57:48
  Polly Mertens: Or what's what's going on here?
• 57:50
  Polly Mertens: Why do I why does this scenario keep showing up, right?
• 57:52
  Polly Mertens: Like you need some reflection, right?
• 57:54
  Polly Mertens: I love that.
• 57:55
  Polly Mertens: I love that.
• 57:56
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, just looking at what thoughts you're thinking, you know.
• 58:01
  Polly Mertens: So we talked at length, I think, at the beginning of this of like what is leading to it, the story, the beliefs underlying it, the hidden payoffs and the human needs.
• 58:10
  Polly Mertens: So really examining that, and you know, where I think too people can get lost is not catching it.
• 58:17
  Polly Mertens: So it starts with self-awareness, right?
• 58:20
  Polly Mertens: So if you're not even aware of the thoughts that you're thinking, start with your emotional body, right?
• 58:24
  Polly Mertens: So your body's giving you all kinds of signals.
• 58:27
  Polly Mertens: You can use this bad boy, you know, for a regulator and say, Oh shoot, why do I feel so yucky, resistant, whatever, you know, whatever the yeah, why, why, what, what's this going on in my body?
• 58:40
  Polly Mertens: Because your natural state is free and peace and you know, doing good.
• 58:44
  Polly Mertens: High vibes.
• 58:45
  Polly Mertens: If when you notice your body is sending you a signal emotionally unregulated or out of at capacity, go upstairs and look at what thoughts you're thinking.
• 58:53
  Polly Mertens: Like, what, what, what do I have to be thinking and believe to be true in order for me to feel this way?
• 58:59
  Polly Mertens: And then it's like, well, is that true?
• 59:01
  Polly Mertens: Love work of Byron Katie.
• 59:02
  Polly Mertens: You know, that's one way you can kind of self-perpetuate kind of uh inquiry with yourself.
• 59:08
  Polly Mertens: You know, the work of Byron Katie is a whole thing, you can find that online.
• 59:12
  Polly Mertens: But it's like uh finding what the thoughts are that are keeping you in that emotional state.
• 59:17
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 59:18
  Polly Mertens: Cool.
• 59:19
  Polly Mertens: Anything else on that?
• 59:21
  Samantha Pruitt: No, but that's that's a lot of work.
• 59:24
  Samantha Pruitt: It's big, yeah.
• 59:25
  Samantha Pruitt: It's a big it can be a big I'm not saying that to be discouraging.
• 59:29
  Samantha Pruitt: No, what I'm saying is like be patient with yourself because it's so layered and so deep.
• 59:36
  Samantha Pruitt: OMG.
• 59:38
  Samantha Pruitt: It's it's a magical place though, because as you are willing to look at all the things over time and through process and have honest dialogue with yourself or with another, whatever that might look like for you, like dude, that's freaking magic.
• 59:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Because that's also where the unlock comes to pure potential.
• 1:00:01
  Samantha Pruitt: So, like there's one thing to just like get unstuck and make a change, right?
• 1:00:06
  Samantha Pruitt: But I'm talking about like, oh no, that's a scratch of the surface of getting out of suffering and discomfort.
• 1:00:13
  Samantha Pruitt: But the shit that's over here just hanging out, waiting, like if you're willing to do the work and really realize what's possible for you.
• 1:00:22
  Polly Mertens: So I, you know, I want to just double-click on one thing before we leave this because that's just coming to me.
• 1:00:26
  Polly Mertens: And this unlocked so many things for me in so many ways through my beginning of my eating disorder recovery journey.
• 1:00:33
  Polly Mertens: And that is, and now I see it as I told you that story earlier around my divorce.
• 1:00:38
  Polly Mertens: I just want to put in to the to your ears, my beautiful listeners, is the word possibility.
• 1:00:44
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 1:00:45
  Polly Mertens: And so when you can believe something else is possible other than the way you've been believing or seeing things, or the lens through which, like I had the glasses on that I could only see the pain that I was in and this dysfunction of our relationship and the bad things that were gonna happen if I, you know, went down this road of divorce.
• 1:01:08
  Polly Mertens: I didn't even see the possible, all these other things that my life could become, and you know, like I didn't even think that I could ever have another relationship.
• 1:01:16
  Polly Mertens: It was just like that's the end of relationship, right?
• 1:01:18
  Polly Mertens: And it was like, oh, geez, you know.
• 1:01:20
  Polly Mertens: So I just want to put in your beautiful ears the idea, if you're feeling stuck in something that feels mentally like it's got a hold on you and you're in the cage, is there is possibility.
• 1:01:31
  Polly Mertens: Like, what else could be possible?
• 1:01:34
  Polly Mertens: Just asking yourself questions that open up possibility.
• 1:01:38
  Polly Mertens: Like, what if I didn't believe that that was true?
• 1:01:40
  Polly Mertens: What if?
• 1:01:41
  Polly Mertens: What else could I believe?
• 1:01:43
  Polly Mertens: What else could be possible, right?
• 1:01:45
  Polly Mertens: So if if that thing that I'm saying is true about myself, about people, about the way the world is or whatever, what if it weren't true?
• 1:01:53
  Polly Mertens: What if something else were possible?
• 1:01:55
  Polly Mertens: What if another belief could there could be something else out there?
• 1:02:00
  Polly Mertens: And then you could just allow it to be like that's the opening that sort of unlocks that mental constriction, if you will.
• 1:02:09
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 1:02:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Keeps I mean, it's being able to open your eyes, period, like you know, we call it waking up or whatever, whatever we call all these things in the woo-woo world, right?
• 1:02:18
  Samantha Pruitt: But only seeing yourself in the mirror in a certain way, and your life in the mirror in a certain way, is the most small, limiting belief in dark sunglasses in a dark room with no lights on.
• 1:02:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Like it's insane, right?
• 1:02:35
  Samantha Pruitt: But that's literally, it makes no sense.
• 1:02:38
  Samantha Pruitt: But that's where many people do stay stuck, right?
• 1:02:41
  Samantha Pruitt: So maybe first you turn the light on, and then maybe you take your sunglasses off, and then maybe you step outside, or maybe you have a conversation with somebody else, or you look up for a minute and you start looking around.
• 1:02:53
  Samantha Pruitt: And I say, Oh, well, my friend Polly lives this other kind of life.
• 1:02:57
  Samantha Pruitt: And then, you know, my loved one over here is doing this, and then I've got this coworker over here who's starting around.
• 1:03:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Like you start to actually get outside of yourself, which is that ego trap of the dark sunglasses and the mirror in the dark room, you know.
• 1:03:11
  Polly Mertens: That's a self-fulfilling prophecy, just like the other one is just believing something else could be possible.
• 1:03:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Because it is, and it can be.
• 1:03:22
  Samantha Pruitt: And well, and by the way, that's just the nature of everything, everything is constantly changing.
• 1:03:27
  Samantha Pruitt: There is uh only a hundred percent truth to truth to that.
• 1:03:31
  Samantha Pruitt: That's just called science.
• 1:03:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, nothing stays the same, including you, human.
• 1:03:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Impossible.
• 1:03:37
  Polly Mertens: And surprisingly changing right now, just sitting here.
• 1:03:40
  Polly Mertens: Surprisingly, we're actually keeping it in place, you know.
• 1:03:43
  Polly Mertens: Like if we really are honest with ourselves, we're the one that's keeping it in place in some form or another, right?
• 1:03:48
  Polly Mertens: Like we're keeping the bad habits, the relationship, like we're actually doing it, and it's uh us to unlock it, right?
• 1:03:56
  Polly Mertens: To believe in something different.
• 1:03:58
  Polly Mertens: So awesome.
• 1:03:59
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 1:03:59
  Polly Mertens: Well, then let's talk also about the spirit.
• 1:04:02
  Polly Mertens: So we talk about the physical plane, the mental plane.
• 1:04:04
  Polly Mertens: Now let's talk a bit about the spiritual plane, right?
• 1:04:07
  Polly Mertens: And I would call this one like surrender to a new outcome, right?
• 1:04:10
  Polly Mertens: Like surrendering.
• 1:04:12
  Samantha Pruitt: So let's depends what your beliefs are, right?
• 1:04:14
  Samantha Pruitt: It's gonna be totally unique to the individual, and you do you.
• 1:04:17
  Samantha Pruitt: We don't have a prescribed anything here, we're not dogmatic in that way, but like whatever your belief is is there a higher order or higher power?
• 1:04:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Is that within me?
• 1:04:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Is that the universe?
• 1:04:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, what is that?
• 1:04:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, and creating some connection to that for yourself, whatever that needs to be for you, right?
• 1:04:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Whoa, give your shit up to that.
• 1:04:42
  Samantha Pruitt: That's an easy way to do it.
• 1:04:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Hey, this isn't working anymore.
• 1:04:48
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm gonna drop this on your doorstep.
• 1:04:51
  Polly Mertens: And I look at it like it's surrendering to our soul.
• 1:04:54
  Polly Mertens: Like what you know, when we when we when when things aren't working out, I just think that is a sign that we are anti what our soul most wants.
• 1:05:05
  Polly Mertens: It's like, you're not supposed to be in this corner, silly.
• 1:05:09
  Polly Mertens: Like, no, there's something else you're supposed to be looking at or doing, you know, like whether you know it's this job that's like frustrating or sucking the life out of you, or this relationship that you're tired of being in, whatever.
• 1:05:19
  Polly Mertens: It's like that's a sign from your soul.
• 1:05:21
  Polly Mertens: Like, like get in tune with what you most want, right?
• 1:05:25
  Polly Mertens: Like, get in, like find the possibility in you and in the universe or who whatever your belief is, right?
• 1:05:31
  Polly Mertens: But like work at that level, this mental chatter is largely driven by a brain that is like two million years old and it's only about your survival.
• 1:05:39
  Polly Mertens: So you gotta go deep, right?
• 1:05:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:43
  Samantha Pruitt: And I think of it like as a universal energy or a source, not with any religious attachment to, but like, oh, there's a whole other plan.
• 1:05:51
  Samantha Pruitt: You need to you need to get on board with this because you you want to get punched in the face.
• 1:05:56
  Samantha Pruitt: We can do that for a long time.
• 1:05:58
  Samantha Pruitt: You're just gonna end up really boot bruised and battered.
• 1:06:00
  Samantha Pruitt: It's not gonna be good, right?
• 1:06:01
  Samantha Pruitt: But like at some point, if you can recognize that there might be a higher order or purpose to your life, I mean, that's incredibly empowering.
• 1:06:12
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, it's not scary at all.
• 1:06:14
  Samantha Pruitt: It's like, yeah, okay, well, you're obviously telling me what I'm doing isn't working, so let's try some new.
• 1:06:19
  Samantha Pruitt: New things.
• 1:06:20
  Samantha Pruitt: What do you want to bring my way?
• 1:06:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Bring it.
• 1:06:23
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, you know, we've talked about our favorite analogy of why humans come to planet Earth, you know, is the earth school.
• 1:06:29
  Polly Mertens: It's like we're in this damn earth school, right?
• 1:06:31
  Polly Mertens: And if we know and it's like, okay, this challenge, this moment, this decision, this why in the road, this thing that you're procrastinating and suffer living, you know, find yourself suffering through, there's something here just for you to get like at the spiritual soul level.
• 1:06:50
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 1:06:51
  Polly Mertens: It's a class, fool.
• 1:06:52
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 1:06:52
  Polly Mertens: Pay attention.
• 1:06:53
  Polly Mertens: If you want to get out, you know, if you want to graduate, get on to the next class that your wants to get up to.
• 1:07:00
  Polly Mertens: Like, oh, let me get this lesson.
• 1:07:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, if you keep getting enough, you know you stay behind, right?
• 1:07:07
  Samantha Pruitt: They hold you back.
• 1:07:08
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, this is kind of what happens, right?
• 1:07:10
  Samantha Pruitt: In public school, this is no different.
• 1:07:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Earth school is no different.
• 1:07:13
  Polly Mertens: You're getting held back for a reason, fool.
• 1:07:15
  Polly Mertens: We came here to graduate.
• 1:07:17
  Polly Mertens: We did not come here to just ride out first grade for you know 80 years or virtuity.
• 1:07:22
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 1:07:23
  Polly Mertens: So find out what your soul most wants, not just your egoic thought, you know, looking good self on the outside, right?
• 1:07:31
  Polly Mertens: Like what's really going on?
• 1:07:33
  Polly Mertens: So, like, do that, you know.
• 1:07:34
  Polly Mertens: You know, we talked about the mental work is one thing and the soul work, you know, because your your soul is in that still and silent place that if you can find it in whatever chaos your life may look like, we can all find a moment in a closet, in a bathroom, in a car ride, in a some sort of quiet.
• 1:07:53
  Polly Mertens: That's where you're gonna find your answers to the way out of this.
• 1:07:57
  Polly Mertens: And like, hey, why why are you in this?
• 1:07:59
  Polly Mertens: You know, like why did I put myself in this situation?
• 1:08:01
  Polly Mertens: Okay, well, let me take a some honest look here.
• 1:08:04
  Polly Mertens: What is my soul most wanting to grow from this, not to stay in this?
• 1:08:08
  Polly Mertens: Because if you're doing loop-de-loops at the intersection of this scenario, it's time to like check with check in with yourself, right?
• 1:08:18
  Polly Mertens: Your soul big capital S self, I mean, right?
• 1:08:23
  Samantha Pruitt: And no higher power source wants you to suffer.
• 1:08:26
  Samantha Pruitt: That is an old story, dude.
• 1:08:30
  Samantha Pruitt: No, no, suffering's optional, yeah.
• 1:08:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Totally.
• 1:08:33
  Samantha Pruitt: It's like the suffering is there as a way to put up warning flags, red lights on the dashboard, whatever, like, oh, got it.
• 1:08:42
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, let me no, no, no, whatever.
• 1:08:45
  Samantha Pruitt: The learnings, all the lessons and learnings.
• 1:08:47
  Samantha Pruitt: But signing up for suffering because you feel like that is what you deserve, or what is expected, or what is part of the story that you've been told, or whatever, uh only you can uncouple that because that is like so not a reality.
• 1:09:05
  Samantha Pruitt: That's just not a thing.
• 1:09:06
  Polly Mertens: Not a thing, not a thing.
• 1:09:07
  Polly Mertens: That's not why we're here.
• 1:09:08
  Polly Mertens: And I would say, you know, from what we've seen or I've seen in my own life too, is you know, if you just work at some of that superficial level, when we look at that list of what keeps you stuck, and we talk about the physical plane, mental plane, and spiritual plane or dimensions that can of where the work can lie to unstick you, if you will.
• 1:09:26
  Polly Mertens: If you just stay at that superficial, either you'll you-turn and come back and you'll keep finding these scenarios, just repeat or whatever.
• 1:09:33
  Polly Mertens: What you really want, you know, is like some spiritual growth out of all this stuff.
• 1:09:37
  Polly Mertens: So do do a little inventory of each one of those.
• 1:09:40
  Polly Mertens: So it might be some physical work, it might be cleaning up the environment and cleaning out some drawers or some relationships or some you know bad conversations that you need to like get clear.
• 1:09:49
  Polly Mertens: It might be toxic.
• 1:09:50
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yep.
• 1:09:52
  Polly Mertens: Some physical you might need to get that move body moving in new ways and get yourself to bed earlier, mental plane, you know.
• 1:09:58
  Polly Mertens: You got some sloppy thoughts, you know, you got some sloppy thinking going on that's just not serving you, right?
• 1:10:03
  Polly Mertens: Some unhealthy behaviors and patterns that it's time to get in and unroot those things, right?
• 1:10:08
  Polly Mertens: And spiritually, it's like get honest and get clean with yourself.
• 1:10:12
  Polly Mertens: Like, what do you most want?
• 1:10:13
  Polly Mertens: You know, when I did that soul searching with my relationship, it was like, I don't want to be in a relationship like this.
• 1:10:19
  Polly Mertens: I don't want to do this work for the next 40 years.
• 1:10:21
  Polly Mertens: This this isn't it, this isn't the one, right?
• 1:10:23
  Polly Mertens: And I realized I had chosen, you know, poorly, and that was that's on me, right?
• 1:10:28
  Polly Mertens: And I had to take the repercussions of the mess I had to clean up for, you know, a couple years after that.
• 1:10:33
  Polly Mertens: So be it.
• 1:10:34
  Polly Mertens: Get to that work, man.
• 1:10:35
  Polly Mertens: And my spirit got free, you know?
• 1:10:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 1:10:38
  Samantha Pruitt: And you can plug yourself into this energy source to be the change catalyst.
• 1:10:44
  Samantha Pruitt: So sometimes you don't feel like you have the energy for the action that is required for change and for real life, lifestyle habit change.
• 1:10:54
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, there's action and work required.
• 1:10:56
  Samantha Pruitt: And sometimes there doesn't feel like there's energy for that.
• 1:10:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And that's because of all these reasons.
• 1:11:01
  Samantha Pruitt: But there is a source of that energy, it's gonna blow your mind because it's actually gonna ultimately come from you, right?
• 1:11:08
  Samantha Pruitt: But it might feel initially like an external energy source of some some kind.
• 1:11:13
  Samantha Pruitt: And that's fine.
• 1:11:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Tap into that, plug yourself in.
• 1:11:17
  Polly Mertens: This is good.
• 1:11:18
  Polly Mertens: This is good.
• 1:11:19
  Polly Mertens: I hope this has served.
• 1:11:21
  Polly Mertens: You know, if you're listening to this and you're at this point, I hope you've gotten something out of this, whether you've taken some notes or you've gotten some insights or aha's that are like popping for you.
• 1:11:29
  Polly Mertens: And if there's an area of your life that you are feeling stuck, just you know, take a note, like step back after this episode and say, like, okay, from the physical level, what might I do?
• 1:11:39
  Polly Mertens: From the mental level, what might I do?
• 1:11:41
  Polly Mertens: Some of it's just asking yourself questions, like what else could be possible, right?
• 1:11:44
  Polly Mertens: Or what's the hidden payoff, right?
• 1:11:46
  Polly Mertens: Or what if I took one small step?
• 1:11:48
  Polly Mertens: Or what would getting support in this area look like for me?
• 1:11:52
  Polly Mertens: Or what would say no in this area look like?
• 1:11:55
  Polly Mertens: And that might be prioritizing, right?
• 1:11:57
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, but all that work, the mental, the spiritual, sorry, the physical, the mental, and the spiritual, like get in harmony with all of you and all of those bodies, if you will.
• 1:12:08
  Samantha Pruitt: And or just call us.
• 1:12:11
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, just a phone call away.
• 1:12:13
  Polly Mertens: So good.
• 1:12:14
  Polly Mertens: Well, thank you, my dear.
• 1:12:16
  Polly Mertens: Because we'd love to help you unpack it.
• 1:12:18
  Polly Mertens: Yes, yes.
• 1:12:19
  Polly Mertens: All right.
• 1:12:20
  Polly Mertens: What do we want to so good, so good, so good.
• 1:12:22
  Polly Mertens: We want to remind our beautiful humans of oh my gosh, how your life feels is more important than how it looks.
• 1:12:27
  Polly Mertens: Obviously, yes.
• 1:12:29
  Polly Mertens: Every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.
• 1:12:32
  Polly Mertens: So go find it.
• 1:12:33
  Polly Mertens: Yes, see you next time.