How to Evolve: Change Your Life When You Feel Stuck

To live truly is to grow. As we move through our lives, we tend to unfold in chapters, in eras. It is important to understand how this evolutionary process works so you can influence it in a direction you want to go, and also so you do not misinterpret a growth opportunity as a sign that something is wrong.

On today’s episode of Love, Happiness, and Success, we are going to demystify the process of personal evolution, to give you some insight into yourself and some actionable takeaways to guide you into the next chapter.

I’m Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, and this is the Love, Happiness, and Success Podcast. My background: I’m a psychologist, a marriage and family therapist, and a board-certified coach, here every week, a couple times a week, to support you in creating happy, healthy relationships, enjoying yourself and your life, and having a meaningful career.

So today we’re talking about how to evolve. What to actually do when it feels like where you are in your life is no longer comfortable and you cannot stay where you are, and how to recognize that it is time to make a pivot. We are going to bust a couple of myths here, including my favorite: that feeling unhappy means something has gone wrong. Maybe it’s an indication that, if you listen to that feeling, something is about to go right. If you get something out of today’s show, it would mean so much to me if you would follow the show, or more importantly, share this with someone else who needs to listen. So let’s get into it.

One quick thing for my longtime listeners. Speaking of evolution, there have been some changes to the podcast over the last year. I experimented with doing more interviews, which has been fun, but you are going to start hearing more from me again. We are going to have our little heart-to-heart talks.

You also know I have enjoyed featuring different artists and songs that convey the mood of whatever topic we are digging into. Over the last year, that has become less fun. AI listening tools for podcasts have gotten so robust that if I play even three notes of a certain song, the forces will come and take down my podcast. So it’s just not a good time for that. I am still going to be thinking about music that is evocative of whatever we are talking about and sharing it with you so we can have our listening party, but I am going to be doing it on social media, only when I am inspired. I don’t want to force it. When an episode comes out and you hear me reference a song, you can find a link on my Instagram account, Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby. I’ll share it in a story and save it as a highlight so we can enjoy it together.

Our musical muse for today’s episode is the song by Tess Parks called Charlie Potato. Every time I hear that song, I think about this concept, this process of evolution, and how it is one that is so important to all of us. Even thinking about the podcast and the evolution it has experienced over the last year, with moving to sponsorships, and what we are doing with music, and more interviews.

I think I’m actually going to be doing more live streams again, thinking about what I really enjoy and how I want to share these ideas with you. Everything we are talking about here on this show is for you, obviously, but it is also for me. I take my own medicine, you guys.

These ideas are tested. I test them all for you. So let’s crack into this and talk about the process of personal evolution, particularly what it looks like in the time before it is time to molt, time to move on, time to shift again, time to pivot. Here is the important thing I would like you to know, understand, and even embrace: frequently, when there is a cusp, a fork in the road, a time to move into a next chapter, it is very common to spend a period of time, months, sometimes longer, not having a good time at all.

You might feel, maybe not in crisis, but frustrated with certain aspects of your life, or disappointed, or discouraged, or bummed, sometimes exhausted, sometimes just bored. So if you have ever thought, is this it? Is this as good as it can be? I don’t know if I’m having a very good time right now. Lean into that and get curious about it.

Here is something that has become so obvious to me, both as a therapist and a coach and in my own life: there can be a cultural script, a message, that when we are experiencing what I will only call a dark emotion, feelings like anger, frustration, annoyance, boredom, the message from our culture is that something is wrong. We need to make it go away. We need to manage it. What is wrong with me that I feel this way? And in some ways this can be accidentally supported by a kind of mental health culture. I am all for mental health. I am a psychologist.

But the issue with my industry, many times, is that therapists like me tend to view dark emotions as frequently being signs of psychopathology. If you are sad, down, bored, bummed, are you depressed? If you are worried, nervous, apprehensive, are you anxious? Is this an anxiety disorder? And listen, again, I am all for therapy. However, if you get involved with a therapist, especially if you are using your insurance to pay for that therapy, that therapist needs to diagnose you with a disorder and call it medically necessary treatment so your health insurance will pay for it. That is how health insurance works. We have an illness that requires treatment. This is good and important and appropriate when that is the case. Major depressive disorder is not just real, it is very serious. Anxiety disorders can be extremely damaging.

They can impact every part of your life. They can make people frozen, unable to move in any direction. The same is true for trauma. All of these things are real, and we need to treat them.

But there is a whole other constellation of human experiences that involve dark emotions and are not even a little bit psychopathology. In fact, they are your emotional guidance system giving you important information you should listen to. So we are not trying to make this go away. We are going to say, come closer, my friend. What is it you want me to understand about my life or my values?

Consider this: when we are living out of alignment with our core values, the things most important to us, the things that have to do with who we fundamentally are and what we care about most, many times when we are experiencing these not-so-great feelings, it is because there is a gap between what is going on in our lives now and what we really want and need our lives to be about.

Even if we are not consciously aware of the gap, our feelings are like the canary in the coal mine. They tell us, there is a gap here, there is something off, there is something about the way you are living right now that is fundamentally out of alignment with who you really are and what you really want.

When we treat these as problems to be fixed, what is wrong with me, why do I feel this way, I need to make it go away, yeah, maybe you feel a little better in the moment, but you have just lost access to all this incredibly important information that I would argue you need to at least consider taking action on, even though that action can be scary to think about. We will talk about that more later. So that is one of the main ideas: what am I feeling right now? What are my emotional guidance signs that maybe it is time to consider making a change or evolving? And if I listened to these feelings with respect, what do they want me to know?

These things can be challenging to crack into. As a companion to this episode, I put together some journaling exercises, and I will be asking you some of these questions as we talk through this. At any point you could pause and think, what is my answer to this question? Or bonus points if you want to write it down, because something powerful happens when you can articulate a nebulous feeling and put it into words through writing, and certainly through saying it out loud to a therapist or coach. When we put these into words, we can make them more real, and it is easier to get our arms around them.

I don’t think I even have an official thing set up on my website yet. Just email me, drlisa@growingself.com. That is my real email address. Say, hey, what was that worksheet with the journaling exercises for the How to Evolve podcast, and I will send it to you. You can also get in touch on social media, DM me or comment on the post, and I will send you the link. I really want you to be able to do something with it, and having some structure around how to lead into this can be really helpful.

So step one of personal evolution is always tapping into how you are really feeling about parts of your life, particularly when you are not enjoying it. For example, when I started to feel like I did not even want to try to incorporate music into my podcasts anymore, like it is not fun, I am on pins and needles every time wondering what is going to happen, it took the enjoyment out of it. I felt myself being resistant to something I had formerly absolutely loved. It was so much fun. Sometimes I would even think of a song and start there.

What is the message here, and what do I want to communicate to my beautiful people on the Love, Happiness and Success podcast about what this really means and how to actualize it? I needed to listen to this. I don’t want to do that anymore. What do I want to do instead? There is a different way. We could do this on social media. It could turn into a conversation. We can still share this. And that felt good for me again. It is what feels dark, what feels hard, but also what feels light, what feels more fun, what feels positive, what feels pleasurable.

That is another thing. The dark emotions have a bad rap in our culture, but there is also this other socialization that it is selfish or ridiculous to focus on what is fun. What feels good? What feels pleasurable? Is it okay for me to make decisions based on something that would just feel nice and light and fun? Because there are so many messages from our culture about who we should be, what we should want, and what the right way is. To disengage from other people’s ideas about who you are and what your life should be about takes some strength on the inside. It requires tuning into yourself: I am going to turn down the volume on all this other stuff and start thinking about what do I feel about this situation?

What do I want? What would I enjoy? Of course, that is not always the only thing we are thinking about when making major life decisions, because all kinds of things can be fun, so we also need to make sure they are values-aligned. But this matters. In all of us, all the time, we have these feelings. Some are dark, some are light, some are hard, some are fun. Through these is how we figure out who am I, what do I care about, what do I want?

And here is the million-dollar question: who am I now? This is another really important thing to take away: over time, we change, whether or not you are aware of it. Simply moving through time creates changes. We have new experiences. We keep absorbing different things from our environment. Sometimes the world around us changes. Years ago, three years ago, five years ago, your life exactly as it is right now might have been just right. Everything might have lined up. It might have been your job, or where you were living, or a relationship. This is perfect. And you do it for years. Then we move through time. The world changes. We change in subtle ways, and all of a sudden the things we used to enjoy are not the same anymore.

Again, it can be easy to interpret that as, what is wrong with me? If you go into a DSM diagnosis of major depressive disorder, one of the criteria is that I no longer take pleasure in the things I used to enjoy, and that absolutely can be a symptom of depression, a very important one. It is called anhedonia, and we need to keep visibility into that. Clinical depression is very serious, and it has a few different ringers: helplessness, hopelessness, oftentimes intense feelings of shame, self-blame, and self-hatred, which is very common with clinical depression. It can feel so hard to feel like you have the ability to create any change in your life. There is often a biological basis for it, and it is episodic. If you have a history of major depressive disorder, it does not even need to be that your circumstances have changed; it can come and go. The work there is knowing how to recognize it, then managing it, and ideally treating it when it is happening.

However, it is also true, and this is what is confusing, that as we evolve through time, it is absolutely possible to say, I used to be really into that, and I think I am not anymore, because something about me has been changing that I was not even aware of, but it is true. And this is not psychopathology. This is healthy and good, and it needs to be listened to. So do not blame or shame yourself if the reality is that there was a shift. Just because something was a good fit in the past does not mean it is going to stay that way forever.

These are all signs that an evolution wants to happen in your life. When we get familiar with these, we can learn to embrace it and understand that this is absolutely normal, and it is going to happen throughout your life, over and over. If you are a little older, in your 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond, you have lived through these chapters, and looking back you can see them like rings of a tree. Sometimes there are external contributors: when you lived in this place, or were with this person, or had this job. But there is so much power when we can have internally derived shifts that come from our own connection to who we are now and what we want.

When we are on the cusp of a personal evolution, it always begins with awareness, awareness of the gap. But then, in order to make use of it and do something with it, as opposed to just sitting there and churning, I don’t like this but I feel stuck in it, I don’t know which way to go, I know I don’t like this anymore but how do I get myself into a better-feeling situation, that, my friend, is exactly what we are going to get into.

Today we are talking about personal evolution, what to do when you are on the cusp of change, and how to recognize these moments and do something with them so that you are a change agent in your own life. We were talking about the importance of tapping into your feelings and getting really curious about them, and that part of the work here is simply to be able to put them into words.

Before we move into what to do with this, I want to give you a couple of specific journaling questions you can ask yourself. If you are not a journaler, I personally enjoy a pen and a notebook and can sit down and do that for hours. Not everybody can. This could also be something you do with a really good friend. Hey, we are both in a similar place, we would both like to make some changes, let’s get together over coffee, ask each other these questions, and be good listeners as we share our responses. Of course, if you are working with a good coach or therapist, you could bring these questions to them. What is really important is that you are bringing it into your conscious awareness, as opposed to letting it just bubble under the surface where you know something is there but you cannot name it.

So one of the questions, the simplest one, is: how am I feeling? What is the name of that emotion? If you struggle with that part, search online for a feelings wheel. You will find many examples. It is simply a tool for figuring out, in a more and more granular way, what word best conveys whatever is happening in you right now. Oh, it is discouragement.

Once we have a name for it, the next question is: what does that feeling want me to know? So I am feeling discouraged. Not what is wrong with me for feeling that way, but why does this make sense? If I were to listen to discouragement, it is saying, you wanted this to be different than it was. How did you want it to be different? Write about that, or talk about that, and then what actually happened, and what is that gap? It gives you visibility not just into how you feel, but into the values you hold, the things most important to you, and what you really want in your life. These questions sound simple, but this is a very powerful exercise, because it gives you a direct connection into yourself.

Another question is: what else is important to me? As I create more clarity around why I might be feeling discouraged or frustrated, it is because I want this thing. What is the name of that, and why do I want it? Why is it personally important to me? How is it in alignment with my values or my core beliefs about what life is even about at this point?

And now, with that in mind, you can ask yourself: what is my vision for myself? If this were different, and if I had more of what I really want, what would that actually look like? Imagine going through your ideal day, or your ideal week, your ideal relationship, your ideal work-life balance, your ideal day with your family. Whatever the thing was that was important: taking care of my health, spending time with my kids, being a good friend, having more friends, having more fun. What does that look like? Be specific. Let yourself dream. Write it down. Say it out loud. You are not signing a contract. You do not have to do anything. But sometimes just being more clear about what that would be is incredibly inspiring.

Then one last question. Okay: how I feel, what I want, why it is important, what the vision is. If I were to do something about this and make an actual change, who would my allies be? Who would be in this boat with me? Who would want me to make these changes? Who would be happy for me if I did? And who would help me? Who would support me?

The reason this last one is so important to not just articulate but actually identify is this. Nobody likes it when I say this out loud, but I am going to anyway: making real and lasting change is harder than it looks, and I think it is harder than many of us think it should be. It tends to occur over time, and there are a lot of different things that need to line up. It is also frequently uncomfortable. One of the reasons people can stay stuck in a reality that is not really that great, that is not in alignment anymore, is that it is uncomfortable in that familiar way. However, the act of making a change, particularly a big change, can be a different kind of uncomfortable. It can be scary. It can be anxiety-provoking. A big change can have other things attached to it. There might be people in your life who will be unhappy if you listen to yourself and make a change. You might get some blowback. There are probably people who like you and your life just the way it is and will actually fight to keep it the same. So there are external obstacles to manage, but there are also internal ones. Any change always comes with ambivalence, even when it is something you would think would be very obvious.

So when you are thinking about what you want, notice that there is often more than one part of you. What does part of me really want? What is part of me upset about? What is part of me hopeful for? What does part of me really crave? But also understand there is this other part of me that has been in this place for a while and might have all kinds of reasons for why it is easier to stay, don’t rock the boat, it would take effort to change my outcome. So part of how we manage this ambivalence is by seeking out allies for the part of yourself you want to actualize, the part you want to be stronger and more powerful. If you are making a conscious, values-based decision, this is what I really want, this is what I want to follow, who in your life agrees with that and will actually help you?

This could look like an accountability partner. It could be a friend or family member you say out loud to: I want to do this, and I am afraid I am going to waffle, I am afraid I am going to backslide, will you help me? And then, what does that partnership look like? It could be a check-in meeting every once in a while, or giving them permission to ask, did you do that thing? If what you want to change requires a project plan, put together the steps. Here is the invisible staircase. I am going to imagine it and figure out how to walk up it. Let them in on that plan so they can ask, how is it going, did you do the thing, how are you feeling about this, what is the next step? We are not making them responsible for what you do, but you are sharing it with someone and allowing them to help you move in your desired direction.

That can be the reason people will hire a coach specifically, I think less a therapist. A therapist will follow you into whatever you want to do. But as a coach, I am always actively working with people on how we create values-based personal goals that are very much in alignment with who you are and what you want, and then how I can support you, over time, in moving toward them, understanding that part of that movement is being able to see and then manage the inner obstacles that are always there. If it were easy to just set a goal and, boop, do it, nobody would be listening to podcasts like this one. What is typically the case is that there will be internal obstacles, and one of them is that ambivalence. What is the name of that ambivalence? What does it sound like? How does it show up in your life? And how would you like to thoughtfully and lovingly manage that obstacle so you can keep moving forward in your desired direction?

I’ll share a few other strategies. One of my favorites needs to be said out loud, because it is so obvious in some ways, but if you do not have it, it is very hard to move, and that is hope. Hope that if you did allow yourself to grow and change and evolve, if you put in all this effort, if you took a chance, if you did the work of growing in this direction, that on the other side you would have more of what you wanted, which is at least in part defined by our emotional guidance system. When I am living in a way that is more congruent with who I am and what I care about and what I really want, then I will feel more peaceful. I will feel happier.

For me, when I was thinking about what I wanted to do differently with this podcast, the hope is that it is fun again, that I feel a connection with you, my dear listener, that we are listening to music together and enjoying the experience. I can get excited about that, because that is part of my value system. If I am doing anything that does not have at least a component of that, it starts to feel off. So it is an orientation toward joy, and hoping that if I start doing it this way, we are going to feel good again. That is what it is for me. That is different for everyone, and it is determined not just by our values but by our wiring. As individuals, we are all oriented around different things. But you have the right to know what that is and to feel hopeful that if you take the action and start making changes, you are going to get more of that thing you want. That is the definition of hope.

Now, here are the other pieces of this change process that can be the stumbling block. The next two pieces are clarity, what is actually involved if I were going to evolve, what do I do with that, and a how. Having clarity is not even enough. Having insight is not enough. How do I actualize this, understanding that it is activity-based? I am going to give you more ideas and actionable resources to implement those things.

The main ideas so far: we all need to evolve. None of us can stay here. You do not just arrive and then bronze yourself and you are done. If you are alive, you are growing, ideally, and the opposite of growth tends to be stagnation. Whenever any of us needs to grow, when stagnation has been taking hold, it is made apparent to us by our dark emotions. There is a gap. Something feels off, or bad, or boring, or discouraging, and we need to listen to it in order to understand it differently. Not, there is something wrong with me for feeling this way, but, I need to listen to myself. Where does this want to take me? What does it mean? How is this helping me understand who I am, what I care about, my core values? And then, developing a vision, developing allies, and getting really curious.

I say this as a therapist and also as a coach. For years and years a marriage and family therapist, also a psychologist, so I have done my share of therapy. Psychotherapy is a treatment orientation. Behavioral healthcare is what psychotherapy is. And many therapists like me are asked to use therapy off-label, so to speak. Clients frequently ask us to use these principles for something like, I am really unhappy in my relationship, what do I do with this? As a classical counseling practice, what we do is explore, well, why, how does this make sense based on your history, your wounds, the things you learned and inherited from your family of origin, connecting the dots. All of this is valuable. There is not a person in the universe who cannot benefit from some insight and introspection: yeah, that does make sense why I am the way I am. And knowing this does not change one single thing when it comes to what to do differently.

So self-knowledge is not the same thing as self-actualization, and that is honestly one of the things that personally motivated me to go back to school about 10 years ago to become a board-certified coach, and since then to teach coaching psychology to other therapists, who are typically not exposed to real coaching psychology, which is a real thing. Most people who call themselves coaches do not have any exposure to it either. Coaching is totally unregulated, so read the label before you get involved with a coach. However, in the hands of a truly qualified professional, evidence-based coaching psychology is a powerhouse.

This is actually another great example of personal evolution in my own life, so let me tell you this story quickly as a way of illustrating our next pieces: what does clarity look like, and then what does having a how, an actual concrete path forward, look like?

My own career path: I got out of school, started a private practice, and was seeing clients as a therapist for a number of years, honestly as a solopreneur. What I was prepared to do through my education was diagnose and treat clinical mental health conditions, including through family therapy, which is a treatment modality, and through psychotherapy as a psychologist. That is what I was ready to do. And then I had so many people coming in the door saying, I don’t like the way our communication is feeling in this relationship and I don’t know what to do differently. I am single and I have been trying to find my person for a couple of years and I don’t know what I am doing wrong. I need to figure out my career, what am I doing with my life? Those were the actual things people were coming to talk to me about, and I did not feel I had been well equipped in my training as a therapist to make that productive.

We would do lots of productive things, okay, why does that make sense, and how do you feel, connecting it back to the past, but as a therapist I am not going to drive this forward in a particular way. I would just follow you, peel onions, turn over rocks. I am not saying there was not benefit there, but I personally started to feel frustrated with that over time, because I would have clients come in and say, why are we talking about my parents’ divorce again? How is what we are talking about directly related to what I came in asking for help with? I hired you to help me figure out my career, and you keep wanting to talk about my self-esteem. Or, how long is this going to take? Because in therapy, the core belief is that talking to a therapist, articulating the things and getting the insight, is the curative thing. That is what will move you forward.

I began to feel that disconnect in my own practice, and I started thinking, I don’t feel like I am creating enough value for these people. There is a disconnect between what they want from me and what I am prepared to do. And that led me to start doing all the things I have been talking to you about. Noticing that feeling, discouragement, discomfort, honestly some guilt, I don’t think I am doing a good enough job, I feel like I am not holding up my end of the bargain somehow. And then turning that into, well, what if that was true? What if a lot of therapy clients are coming in wanting to talk about or do something that is not actually psychotherapy, not clinical mental health treatment? What does that mean?

Of course, crisis of faith and all the things. But then I needed to start listening to that and creating some vision around, what would it mean if I could have a more helpful way? I did know that it was very important to me, one of my core value orientations. I really want to feel helpful to people, which is why I am here talking to you every week. Part of the mission of the Love, Happiness, and Success Podcast is being of service, putting things out into the world that actually benefit people just like you. That is why I love hearing from my listeners, that was a good one. Not that I need gold stars, but I always love it. Being of service actually made me feel happy. It felt light, to know I was doing something that was creating outcomes for others. That is important to me.

So through a lot of soul searching and a little bit of luck, I stumbled into this moment of clarity, which is also what you will need on this path. Clarity around what specifically would or could it even look like if I were doing this differently? It is not just to create a vision of the outcome we want. It is the clarity around what would I be doing differently if it were different? This can look like so many things. If I had a time machine and went back to that moment, there were many possibilities as I answered that question, and that will be true for you in your own process.

For me, I began reading books, looking into different things, and I stumbled across evidence-based coaching psychology, and I learned something I had no idea was a real thing. Therapists do not get taught anything about this, although it shows up in sports psychology and organizational psychology, not in counseling psychology or clinical psychology, unfortunately. But coaching is a model, it is evidence-based, there are legitimate methodologies, there are core competencies, things coaches do that therapists do not know how to do, and I could learn how to do them. And I got so excited. This makes so much sense to me. I think this is really what people have been wanting from me, but neither of us had the language to describe it. The word in our language for working on yourself is going to therapy. So that was the clarity I needed: oh, coaching.

That was like the lighthouse. Go in this direction. This is the pathway for how to create a different outcome for what this next chapter could involve. We need a roadway. First is that clarity, what is the thing, and then the how. For me, in the example of my own life, how to become a board-certified coach: I needed to take a 30-hour training program. I needed to have a mentor. I needed a certain number of coach and client experience hours. I had to pass an exam. I had to submit an application. I had to do all of these things, and that is the how. The clarity is what is the staircase.

What is the name of the staircase from where you are now to where you want to be? And then the how part is, okay, this week I am going to research a training program, and next week I am going to start taking some of those lessons, and we build that all the way up.

To turn it back to your situation, I would love for you to start developing some of this for yourself, because this is truly a coaching process in a lot of ways. In previous parts of this we talked about getting visibility into discomfort, discouragement, and dark emotions that are your signal that you want something different, and how to listen to these in a curious way without pathologizing them. We talked about creating allies, getting visibility into the complexity of creating change, and having hope that things can be different. Now I would really like you to think about what that difference could be. This is not something you might have in an instant. Do not put pressure on yourself that just listening to me talk on a podcast means you should have it all dialed in. In my experience, and in my own life, it probably took months. It might be easier for you, but it would start with one journal question, or a conversation activity with a friend. We need to define what it is that you want, that is the vision, and then reverse engineer it.

The thing that is most important is, do not get too attached to any one thing. There are so many different ways to create change in your life, so many different pathways to usher in a new era of evolution. Do not get hung up on finding the exact right one. Your job at this juncture, getting clarity, is actually to generate as many ideas as you possibly can.

For example, let’s go with a big one. I am really unhappy in my relationship. I am not having a good time. I would like joy and pleasure and fun and meaning and friendship in my partnership, whatever is in alignment with your definition of a great relationship. You get to decide. But then, what is the pathway to creating that? As a marriage and family therapist, I will tell you, you have so many different options. Door number one, yes, you could push the eject button: I don’t want to do this with you anymore, I’m done, godspeed. Which is also a challenging decision to make. Most people even thinking about that, it is a couple of years in the making, because there is always fallout. Every relationship is a mixed bag. Even if you are not having the time of your life, you still care about this person deeply. You don’t want to hurt them. You don’t want to blow up your family. There is a lot to balance. But some people can and do leave to see if there is something better for them. It is an option.

There could also be other options. How could we as a couple create change? How could I get more curious about what my partner is thinking and feeling? What do they want? I know I am not having a good time, are they? How do we start having some of those conversations? Maybe they are not happy either. Maybe they would also like change that is even in alignment with the change I want. Who is this person now? How have their dreams and goals and values and priorities changed over time? Is it time to explore that with each other again?

It is also true that zero people ever get taught core relationship skills, things like emotional intelligence competencies. How do I know what I feel and how do I manage what I feel? How do I know what other people feel and how do I manage relationships effectively? How do I communicate constructively and in an emotionally safe way when I am feeling escalated or frustrated? These are all skill-based things that all of us need to learn and that can absolutely be taught. So that could be an avenue to a more satisfying partnership. There could also be, how do we rekindle a friendship? We used to talk all the time, we don’t anymore. We used to do fun things together, we don’t anymore. How can we bring this back? Again, we are creating some separation from the vision of what we want. I want to be happy and satisfied, and, more often than not, I would like this to be a positive-feeling thing, and the other stuff we are going to work through.

There is a ton of research into healthy relationships, and the vast majority of issues in relationships are what the Gottmans call non-solvable problems: differences in wiring, priority, ways of being, values. Just because those differences are there does not mean there is no hope for the relationship or that it cannot be a very positive one. Every single relationship in the history of the world has a little assortment, sometimes a big assortment, of those things. So it is not about trying to make those go away. What we need to do is focus on the positive elements of the relationship that we can grow and amplify and cultivate, so they become bigger and more important than the other things that are maybe not ideal. That is the goal. And there are so many ways of doing that. You can do it with your partner if they are open to it. You can do it on your own and create positive change in your relationship. And you can also say, I am done, I don’t want to try that anymore, and I see I may have more opportunities to have a better life experience that is more congruent with my values if we hopefully part peacefully and release each other to other things. There is no judgment. There is nothing wrong. But the very important thing is that you create clarity about what those options are.

And recognize that many times, and this was true for me when I was not having fun with how far I could get as a psychotherapist, you need to educate yourself about what those other possibilities are. Before that, I felt like I could and should be doing more with my clients, but I did not yet know how, until I started researching and learning: oh, there is this thing called coaching psychology, nobody ever told me about that, I am going to go learn more. So whatever it is in your life, whether it is changing a career or something in your relationship or what feels meaningful and more in alignment with who you are, just get curious and allow yourself to go through this exploratory process where you learn about options, and do not say no to any options. All options are possible. Your job is to gather options, and then, without judgment, because it is easy to close yourself off to possibilities if you have preconceived ideas about the way it should be, allow yourself to consider different pathways to getting what you want that might be really great.

So gather all your options, research them, and then see how you feel. Listen to your emotional guidance system. Of all the different options, these are the ones that feel better for me. Let me learn more. Oh yeah, that actually sounds really great, I wonder if that would work. For me, if I feel excited about something, that is the one to listen to. You might have other tells. How do you know when you are on the right track? And then, when we have clarity about the pathway, the name of the pathway, I want to practice coaching psychology instead of psychotherapy for clients for whom that would be better, then we can get into the granular how. That turns into an action plan, and honestly, that is the easy part.

Here is another thing from my own life I have had to do this with. I feel tired, low energy, brain fog. I am not happy with this. What could I do? What do I want? I want to feel vibrant, energized, physically strong, clear. I know what I want, but then the clarity around how do I get there? There are so many different pathways.

So a pathway for me, having more energy, feeling clearer, stronger, more present in my life, is maybe getting more exercise. How do I do that? My little local rec center has some really amazing fitness classes, or there is a Pilates studio in my town. It does not matter what the how is, but it needs to be something you feel is attainable. You are putting the stairs into the staircase, and then you can start walking up them one at a time.

Now, this is also when we have to come back and stay connected to our allies in that process. Because we have all had this experience: when you start doing the thing, when it is 5 a.m. and your alarm goes off, because the goal is to get to a fitness class before your workday starts, it is so easy to say, not today. So who are the allies? Can you make relationships with the people who go to the 6 a.m. fitness class? Who is going to support you? Who is going to encourage you? Who is going to help you grow into the person you want to be as you evolve in this new chapter? It could be a friend, a family member, maybe someone else in your world who needs an accountability partner in this direction. And certainly there are opportunities for a paid coach, a professional relationship, somebody like me whose job it is to be that coach in your corner, get back up and do the thing. So think about getting some support for that, because there is always going to be the ambivalence.

Bonus points if you can also create clarity about who perhaps is supporting the old way. Are there people in your life who would be colluding with the thing you don’t feel great about anymore and would like to change? So you have those different forces, a little bit of a tug of war, somebody pulling you in this direction and somebody who might be an anchor wanting to keep you here. We do not need to be mad at these people. We do not need to be mean to them. If anything, there is a lot of wisdom in getting curious about how that makes sense for them, and what it is about this previous way of being that might feel better for them. Maybe even figuring out how to have some courageous conversations where they could understand you and who you are now, and how what you want is attached to your highest values and hopes and dreams. Having that conversation as an entry point to talk about their values and hopes and dreams too, and even mobilizing them, talking about how creating positive change together as allies could benefit you both. Would that not be incredible?

Those kinds of conversations can frequently be delicate. There are a lot of feelings there, so it may be worth getting some support for them. But any time we can come into this with emotional sincerity, being authentic in saying our truth, and doing so with sensitivity, in an emotionally safe way that is very respectful of the other person’s needs and rights and feelings, with a lot of empathy, people might surprise you. Most people are very reasonable, and at the end of the day, more times than not, most of us want the same thing.

I will also refer you back to some recent podcasts you will find in my feed. Kwame Christian, if you have not heard that one yet, check it out, about how we create win-wins. Similarly, Atiya Qureshi was another really good one, around communication strategies. There was another one, so good, about healthy communication in relationships, and I am blanking on her name, but it is in my feed, so check that out.

Thanks for being here with me. I am feeling energized and excited about my podcast again, about doing this with you again. Check social media and stories for today’s mood music. We are going to be listening to Tess Parks, Charlie Potato. And take me up on my offer. I will send you all the journaling prompts, everything I have. You do not have to sign up for anything. Just send me an email, drlisa@growingself.com, or get in touch on Instagram, and I will send you the link. I will be back in touch next week. We are going to be mixing it up, with different interviews from outside guests, and more in-depth conversations with the coaching therapists I work with and really respect, a deeper look at some of these things, not just talking about a book release, but therapists who coach in the trenches, working day to day with the things you care about. I will be doing more fireside chats like this, talking about different topics and teachable moments. And pretty soon I am going to start doing live-stream events again. I think I stopped doing those because they stopped being fun and started feeling hard, so I paused for a while, but we are going to do that again. The exact day and time is to be determined, maybe once a month. I will put out communication in advance. We will pick a topic and get together, and if you can visit with me live, it will be an opportunity to talk about your experiences to the degree you feel comfortable, or to send me messages privately if you would like me to talk about a hypothetical situation in a de-identified way to protect your confidentiality, while still giving you real feedback in a more conversational way. You can follow me, @drlisamariebobby, on Instagram, and I will put out more information as it comes up. That is all for today, my friends. I hope you have a great week, and I will be back in touch soon with another episode of Love, Happiness, and Success.