141 : 4 Things Keeping You Stuck: Avoiding Decisions and Hidden Payoffs

Stuck can look like a weight-loss plateau, a job you keep complaining about, a relationship you keep “thinking about,” or a health pattern you keep normalizing. We get real about what’s actually happening underneath that frozen feeling and why it so often comes down to one thing: a decision that wants to be made, paired with a nervous system that doesn’t feel safe making it.

We break the problem into four practical buckets we see constantly in coaching: your emotional state and the story driving it, your nervous system capacity, the hidden payoff you’re not admitting, and the environment that keeps cueing the same identity on repeat. Along the way, we share vivid examples, including how changing your setting can unlock new thoughts, why trying to fix everything at once collapses your capacity, and how “payoffs” like certainty, safety, and belonging can quietly run the show even when you swear you want change.

Then we move into how to get unstuck across three planes: physical, mental, and spiritual. We talk about using movement and breath to shift state fast, asking better questions to reopen possibility, and surrendering the outcome to something bigger than your fear-based mind. If you’ve been circling the same intersection for months or years, this is your nudge to stop looping and start choosing.

If this helps, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s been stuck, and leave a review so more people can find the work. What’s one area where you’re ready to choose differently?

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Transcript

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Welcome And Why Stuck Matters

Polly Mertens 0:27

Hey superstars, welcome back. Polly here. And Sam Pruitt. What's up, beautiful humans? Let's go.

Samantha Pruitt 0:33

Yeah, let's talk about being stuck. This isn't okay. And just a little precursor. 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. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 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? Where did this come from? So I don't know. I've never experienced this myself or witnessed it in others. This is just some weird ass topic we came across. No, yeah, and this is literally a daily daily. I mean, not with ourselves anymore on the daily, right? 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. 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. But you and I coach a lot of people, we're around a lot of humans. We love a lot of people, so we're gonna see some shit, all right?

Polly Mertens 1:39

Well, and that's and you know, it's really true. It's like coaches come into play when you're stuck. 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. 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. I'm like, oh, for God's sake, how many stories do we have?

Samantha Pruitt 2:21

How much time do we have to go over all this? Yeah, yeah. So this is like the child is one time at age 12.

Polly Mertens 2:29

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. 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? Right. So stuck is just I find that stuck is another word for an a decision needs to be fucking made.

Samantha Pruitt 3:06

You know, I had a conversation earlier, it was an addiction thing, you know, and some family addiction stuff. I'm like, well, yeah. I mean, that's a painful place to be stuck, right?

Polly Mertens 3:16

Yeah. Yeah. 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. The resistance comes up because it's like there's a something to decide here. 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? So all of those things can lead to stock. But let's talk about like what keeps you there, right? And we talk about a decision, but like what are some of the things? 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. I was like, well, that can make them stuck, and that can make them stuck. And I was like, holy crap, this is like all over the place. And like, help me bring my ideas and my thoughts together. And it helped me coalesce them into four categories. 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. 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. Like I can't, I can't, you know, or I'm confused or I'm frustrated. So your story drives your state, and that determines,

Stuck Means A Decision Is Due

Polly Mertens 4:49

you know, what you have access to. Number two would be this is largely your nervous system, right? 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. 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. So the set point in your nervous system, you're just more that capacity or lack of capacity. Yeah. 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? Yep. So there's these hidden payoffs. 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. And then the fourth one is our environment. Like our environment, really, like the human animal is designed for sameness. 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. So your environment of relationships, your routine, your spaces, your body, things like that is what I would put into the environment. So anything you want to add to those, or we can start with those.

Samantha Pruitt 6:03

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. Yeah. 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. 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. No, I'm not. Second arrow part of it. And the second arrow is the resistance to the offerings, the opportunity, the possibility for change, growth, and happiness, like all of that. That's so human.

Polly Mertens 6:55

Yeah, so human. 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. So you're going down a road and you come to a why, right? And something has created that why, right? There's meant disease has been found, a relationship turmoil, whatever. 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. Like let me come back to that. 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. 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.

Samantha Pruitt 7:45

As if life is not passing them by. True, true, yeah. Just gonna hang out here. Okay, yeah, okay. That's 20 years or something, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, it can be a really long time, which is a shame.

Polly Mertens 8:04

So maybe we'll unpack each of these and let's add some color. So state and story. So, you know, in the world of emotional state, right? So you're you have a different state throughout your day, right? You know, I hope so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm just saying, like literally, our thoughts and the environment around us and our interaction with them creates our state, right? We can be deliberate about that or we can be a little less. Some people are more masterful, as we've taught on many podcast episodes about how to become the master of your state. But let's just say your emotional state is largely what you're focusing on, the physiology, you know. 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. 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. 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? So it's usually something about yourself, other people, or the way the world is, right? And so it and it and there's an energy attached to that stuff. Ah, exactly, exactly. And like I said, we can go up and down through emotional states. But largely I find like I think of it like bands of energy, sort of like bands of light, you know. If you had like ultraviolet and, you know, the white light, and then you have like the rainbow colors and stuff like that. So our emotional states can be like bands, right? And we tend to hang out in a band, you know, like a frequency. So depending on what your great analogy. Yeah, and what you're doing. 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. Because guess what? We're we're light beings, you know, hologenetic surprise. Yeah. But enough on that. But your emotional state, right? And so if you have this home and you you see this, right? 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? And it's like so beautiful.

Samantha Pruitt 10:12

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. 100%, 100%.

Polly Mertens 10:42

Yeah, you know, that's your state. And how we correlate this to we talk about that why in the road or making a decision,

Four Drivers Behind Getting Stuck

Polly Mertens 10:49

or there's something you're you've got you're percolating on, right? 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. And so you're kind of in that holding pattern going in circles. 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? And possibility, right? 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. It's like slam, there's like nothing.

Samantha Pruitt 11:35

This is how it is. I've seen nothing. It's always been. I'm going nowhere. These people are all blocking me. Yeah, totally. It's got such a funny vibe to it, just that whole way of being.

Polly Mertens 11:47

Yeah. 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. If you have the same energy vibe going on, thinking about that topic, you're gonna have the same results. 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. 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? 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. That was a moment, and I was a small decision, yeah. Not a small yeah, talk about like sitting at that why. I mean, because that felt like a yes or no, stay in or get out kind of thing. And not that I agonized over it, but I definitely it wasn't. I mean, the stories in my mind about being why you shouldn't, yeah, were very decide or very compelling. And you know, can we work this out? And you know, what am I doing that what how am I taking responsibility for this? And how can I shift that, you know, and all those things. And so for like six months we worked on things and addressed, you know, la la la. And then what shifted? 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. I could only see this will hurt negative outcomes. This will hurt, I'll be judged by my friends, I'll regret it. Like there was just all these like stacking of pain. I'll have to admit I failed. Yes, yeah. Like, what will people think? What will why would I, you know, la la la. 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. It was like I was in enough pain and in enough like just dissatisfaction, and then I only saw more pain, right? But then I went to this event and it was like I saw like my whole life. I saw like who I am, and like I've had good times in the past. I don't have to, you know, and it was like, hold up, wait a minute, you know. Let's say I, you know, fast forward and create a new possibility five years from now. What could my life be like if I did do that decision? Oh, okay, I could do this and I could do this. 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.

Samantha Pruitt 14:33

Like it's only I'm only a couple key things. You changed the physical environment you were in, right? 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. That's all a massive shift. And then you did this really interesting, you know, the sides of the coin. What have I historically, who have I historically been and what have I experienced? So what is me? Right. And then you had this other completely other side of the coin, which is what is possible for me now.

Polly Mertens 15:10

Yeah, yeah. 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. Okay, maybe this will just change, right?

Samantha Pruitt 15:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Polly Mertens 15:29

So that's one example. Anything that that you want to share or any stories that you've seen with your clients or anything.

Samantha Pruitt 15:35

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. 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. I have frequented that box several times, you know. 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. It can be very complex. And I've had, of course, my own share of health problems, right? 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. 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. I totally get it. 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. But at the same time, it's also not difficult because your body will speak louder than anything. Like if something is not working in this, you're gonna find out ASAP. Okay, like you're gonna it, these aren't even minor things like, oh, I just don't feel great today. Sure, lots of people hover in that area on the regular and they just seem to be fine hanging out there. But your body very quickly is gonna tell you pre-disease state, whether that's mental or physical or even spiritual. You're gonna bubble up symptoms that are pre pre-disease states, right? And so it doesn't even have to be you saying, I think maybe X, Y, Z. 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. Pay attention, right?

Polly Mertens 18:31

So that's the key. As you were saying, all this, I'm like, a lot of people aren't noticing, dude. No.

Samantha Pruitt 18:37

I mean, so there's a a couple camps of people, yes, that I have experienced. 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. They're actually not as problematic as this other bucket, which is generally the people we work with, which they're noticing. So something is not right. I don't feel good, whether it's physically, emotionally, spiritually, whatever the dynamic is. But but even though the resources are there, there's knowledge, there's information, there's so many resources now. Like it's mind-blowing. Science is always emerging, there's all experts in all the fields. Your own curiosity has to be there to get, you know, get into that cycle and start learning. 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. That's problematic, right? Because that's really what we're talking about here today is that stuckness. There, to me, in my experiences, there generally is something underlying that. And we're talking, we talked about story, we talked about capacity payoff. We'll get into that related to the physical body. But there's this really deep underlying I don't know what it's like to feel good. Maybe I don't deserve to feel good. Because we're providing resources, the resources are available and they're still resistant.

Polly Mertens 20:14

So that's that's the answers and the how to be healthy is not a mystery anymore. It's not a mystery, right? 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. 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. I know, like, okay, or so-and-so does the grocery shopping. That's who you're gonna have, like, and that's how like snap out of it. Okay, so let's go, okay. So let's so yeah, yeah, you're right.

Samantha Pruitt 20:56

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. They met you for five minutes. Yeah, they're looking at one little piece of paper, they're not even actually looking at you and listening half the time, right? 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? So there's so many states and stories around our physical body. Everyone in my family is obese, everyone in my family has diabetes, everyone in my family is an alcoholic. Every whatever we all smoke, yeah. Like there's all of these storylines that are underneath that place. And to me, the stories are the stickiest place because that's more psychological than it is like external environmental. That's the story I'm circulating up in here.

Polly Mertens 21:55

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. Like you made that up at one point and you just started believing it, you know, whether you you know a good visual.

Samantha Pruitt 22:10

I basically just got a visual because I've been doing reading all these scientific studies. Forgive me, they're on mice. Okay, so this is just what it is. But They're medicine energy stories. They're really fascinating. But I immediately got this idea of a mice in the little hamster thing. Yeah, or the hamster in the little wheel going on. And it's like there's ticker tapes. You know, and each of the little things is a thought and a thought and thought. And you're basically like this.

Polly Mertens 22:35

Oh, right.

Samantha Pruitt 22:35

I am this. I look like this. My body is this, right? 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. You're just stuck on that all day long. And that's programming you.

Polly Mertens 22:50

Change the channel. Turn the TV off. Turn the TV off, change the channel. The other one is it's a wheel. Guess what? Exit to the right, step up on the wheel and get on the treadmill. Get on the, you know, get on the road ahead, right? Not the sameness. Yeah. Totally. Totally. Yeah. But yeah. And so a lot of, you know, when beliefs, when thoughts are thought long enough and they start to pick up evidence, right? So like you you have a thought and you're like, oh, maybe that's true. And then you see that person does that twice, and then other people do it. And then, like, oh, you start to get all this evidence, right? Because it's it's law of attraction.

Samantha Pruitt 23:27

Like, oh, that thought is a family reunion in your life.

Polly Mertens 23:30

It's energy, like more of this. And then you have get on a forum online. And oh yeah, people are like this, you know, right? Like, of course, you're justified. Like, but is it serving you? Like, is it serving you to have that belief? 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. I go, So what? Like, that's not your body, like that's a percentage of your DNA. It's not the whole you, right? Like, that's just okay, that's them, and that's their lifestyle choices and whatnot.

Samantha Pruitt 23:59

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? So, like again, you can choose to submerge yourself back into that same energy every day, or you can decide to recalibrate that energy. Yes, that does require work. 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.

Polly Mertens 24:33

Well, you know, and from the neuroscience perspective, uh, you know, I'll give you two things. 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? 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. And then it was like, we right. 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. You know, that's the thing.

Samantha Pruitt 25:13

Pick the pain, the pain that lasts forever, right? Okay, or the pain that is through the catalyst of change, a temporary, like ripping a band-aid off, right? 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.

Polly Mertens 25:30

Yep. Moving on now. Moving on. Yeah, you know, it's like the pain of regret, you know, weighs tons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So okay, velocity, nervous loss of the other thought. Yeah. 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? And nothing

State And Story Shape Your Options

Polly Mertens 25:49

is stronger in the human psyche than the need to stay consistent with our identity, right? 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. And what we don't know how that's gonna be. 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. It could for me, it was like hiding out in a relationship that I didn't want to be in, right? So yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So let's so anything else on that one? I want to no.

Samantha Pruitt 26:21

Well, we could go on for days, but let's move on to capacity and nervous system.

Polly Mertens 26:24

Yeah. So, like our nervous system and capacity, you're really good about describing capacity. So, how would you see, you know, this this I look at everybody from this perspective? No, when you when we started talking about this, I can't not see it. I know.

Samantha Pruitt 26:38

I know, I just I just can't because super helpful. I don't know. Well, this is just maybe what I attract. So I whatever, this is my personal experience, but like I don't know anybody who doesn't want something better for themselves. That isn't always physical, it can be lots of things, you know, opportunities, relationships, finances, whatever. And so, in that wanting something better, whatever that piece is, right? 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. It's an actual verb doing and the action might be the stopping.

Polly Mertens 27:31

It might be resisting, like the stopping of old behavior. So the action can yeah, the stopping.

Samantha Pruitt 27:37

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? So depending on what the thing is, the capacity needs to be massive or maybe minor. It could be very subtle. 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. Okay. But sometimes it's an incredible lift to make the change, the habit change, the lifestyle change, the psychological mindset change, right? So, and if the person doesn't have capacity, because also currently at this time they have 10 other things going on. 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. That is completely insane. I would say I have no capacity for that. 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? So it's me recognizing I don't have the capacity. But many people don't. They'll come or I'll hear, I want to make a career change, but I'm also having health problems. And by the way, I want a divorce. Okay, so we got to pick one. Okay. 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? So you have to really analyze capacity. 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.

Polly Mertens 29:29

Right.

Samantha Pruitt 29:30

It's okay to take a step back, take a deep breath, maybe find some other relief in other ways. There's lots of ways to recalibrate the nervous system and to build capacity, but that's what you need to be doing first.

Polly Mertens 29:47

I was thinking three things. Let me see if I can. So one is I would waver that too with the criticalness or the critical need or the pain that you're in. Yeah, yeah. Like, what is that? 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. It's like hold up, you know, like, oh yeah, I'll just keep doing all that capacity because I'm avoiding this thing. So you've got to, you know, weigh that. But aside from that, if this is not optional, but it's not a level 10, like, you know, do something now. One of the ways that I've described it, so a new analogy started coming to me as you were talking about that. 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. 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? Whatever that is, six units, four units, whatever. And you go, Yeah, you couldn't go, oh hey, guess what? You know, I'm gonna add like six more, three more classes on here. Like they just don't have the capacity to and take on like time sitting in school, doing homework and stuff like that. Right. So that's a bit of the capacity. The other thing I was thinking about, I've described capacity in terms of emotional capacity, and this helps me visualize it too. 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. 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? That's the capacity of the glass. It's like, oh, okay, no problem. 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? And so that capacity, so it's like, how thick are those walls? How stable are you in terms of you know, your sleep regimen and your nutrition? Are you feeling emotionally, physically, spiritually well balanced that something could shift and it won't just crack the walls? So that's a little what I think about capacity, right?

Samantha Pruitt 32:04

Yeah, and having the resources for change, and that might mean the support of others. It might not just mean time and space and you know, patience and emotional stability and physical health and stuff like that. It could also be you'd actually need some support from others in this path. And we need to align that as well, right? Like that's a capacity point.

Polly Mertens 32:29

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. 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? And if there's three redlining areas, you know, that are just like which is very common, right? You gotta pick one, right? And so you like stack you stack, you know, and then same in business. It's like, well, you can't remodel the whole business. 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? 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.

Samantha Pruitt 33:14

So exactly, exactly. Well, and so what we have said is you know, that keeps a lot of people stuck or resistant to the process. Things you gotta do it all at the same time, like I'm gonna change all this. Yeah, exactly. They have this idea that everything needs to be fixed together and that all the things are broken.

Polly Mertens 33:35

And now we've got to do it.

Samantha Pruitt 33:36

And I want it tomorrow.

Polly Mertens 33:39

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. 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? 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.

Samantha Pruitt 34:01

Yeah, yeah. These days, it's a week. Yeah, people say it's a whole other timeline. Totally, totally.

Polly Mertens 34:09

So, okay, so that's like your nervous system, your capacity is like how resourced are you? And do you need to just like sh shore up? 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. 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? 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.

Samantha Pruitt 34:41

So exactly.

Polly Mertens 34:43

Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 34:43

Payoff.

Polly Mertens 34:44

Yeah, and some of that might be emotional mastery, you know, like we've taught in other videos

Capacity And Nervous System Overload

Polly Mertens 34:49

or you know, other episodes, have a listen to those, but emotional mastery is where you get some of that capacity back, right? 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? And talking about, and it just reminds me, I mean, I have been doing a gratitude practice and meditation in the morning. I don't know how many years, but it's been close to 10 or pushing more than that, something like that. And I hadn't realized how pivotal that is and why my life works in all the other areas. Like, yes, I have emotional mastery, I understand it. Yes, I have good fitness and all this stuff. And I have a morning gratitude practice and I have emotional regulation. I come back to my my seat of my soul each day. Like, ah, like that's where I'm coming from in this morning. Like before all the people get up in the morning, you know, before 5 a.m. in the morning, I am like grounded in who I am on the bigger scale and stuff. 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. I'm like, oh yeah, I've been doing this and I lose sight that I have that, you know, that Mr. Miyagi, like it's part of my my woo-way, whatever now. You know, it's like, okay, I got that. You too.

Samantha Pruitt 36:09

Mine is moving my body, but see, we all have our different thing, and it's gonna be different and look different for everybody. But the point is we have a thing.

Polly Mertens 36:19

And we can fall back on that thing. So that helps you build that it's like building that foundation or that floor. It's like whatever those things are that for you, you know, it's your fitness and wellness and you know, sunshine and stuff. So just knowing what your capacity and the walls of your glass, what makes that crack, right? And storing that up. Okay, number three, let's go into these are fun ones, those hidden payoffs.

Samantha Pruitt 36:44

Yeah, and people think, what do you mean if I'm suffering and miserable and uh broken? 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?

Polly Mertens 37:01

Surprise! Yeah, yeah, there's a freaking payoff, hidden, hidden from your mostly conscious or default perspective of things. So things like safety, avoiding risk, loyalty to a current version of yourself. It's like, well, just because that's who I know myself to be, right? 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. 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.

Samantha Pruitt 37:36

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? What would be our role at work if I didn't operate like this kind of person? What if I all of a sudden came into work, you know, the next day and was a different person? You know, so there's all these layers to that. What if I didn't continue to be the way I was yesterday? What would I quote unquote lose, which I feel is some sort of security and safety element to me?

Polly Mertens 38:14

I would say two questions to help you start to discover for yourself. 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? And be honest. Like, like how is this actually like doing it this way? Like, how how is it what am I getting out of this? Yeah, the other one was like, Yeah, what what's the payoff? Like what what what's what am I getting out of this by being this way? If I was really honest with myself, right? And it might surprise you, you're like, Well, that's stupid. And you're like, Yeah, that's probably it's but yeah, that's but you know what?

Samantha Pruitt 38:54

Maybe we developed and learned that behavior. 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. Yeah, but now I'm a 57-year-old woman and it doesn't work for me anymore. Like, you gotta really look at that stuff. Sometimes it's hard to look at.

Polly Mertens 39:24

You know, and I'll just say, like, laced in this, and there's work on this from Tony Robbins. So if you want to go research that, feel free. But I'll just briefly touch upon it because it's a beautiful body of work. 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? 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? 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. 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. So if you meet three of those, addiction, right? 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? Like I would, I'm a smart person. I would wake up each morning and just be like, how like last night I said, that was the last time, right? 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. 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. It's like a lot of people just stay up at that, but there's multiple layers here. 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? Because there's these payoffs, right?

Samantha Pruitt 41:29

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. There's all these other pathways to addiction, it's not the you know, big terror ones that everybody sort of thinks of. So everybody goes, Well, that's not me. You know, I'm not uh how can I be in an addictive relationship? Oh, very easily.

Polly Mertens 41:54

It doesn't have to be a substance, yeah. 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? And so having that, you know, why do people, you know, why do people addicted to social media, right? 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. Same thing, and you can call that emotional from a relationship, right? As you talked about.

Samantha Pruitt 42:34

Yeah, yeah. You can get addicted to that rage pattern.

Polly Mertens 42:38

Totally, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 42:41

So that's one's environment.

Polly Mertens 42:43

Yeah, yeah. So and there's a lot of this. Is this pretty surprising? You know, I remember one time I was

Hidden Payoffs And Unmet Needs

Polly Mertens 42:49

talking with another eating disorder coach, and she didn't believe me when I said how important the environment was. Like she thought it was all mental. It was like mental game, mental game. Like you just gotta like resist and I was like, Hold up. I'm like, if you don't shift stuff in your environment, like it reminds our environment reminds us. People don't have that kind of willpower.

Samantha Pruitt 43:10

That's just not how the human brain and body is made. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you can't just muscle this shit.

Polly Mertens 43:17

Let's just kind of define a little bit like environment. So people can get like your physical space, right? Your environment can also be the relationships. 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? So relationships can be part of your environment, your routines, your own things that you've put yourself in. 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? And I was like, Holy shit, what do I always keep right near me, like within a arm's reach? And I was like, my phone and a cup of water, and like my daytime. I was like a cat. It's interesting. Yeah, they come and go. If I could, you know, totally. So your spaces and then also your environment is your your inputs.

Samantha Pruitt 44:12

Yeah, right.

Polly Mertens 44:13

Like, like what are you considering?

Samantha Pruitt 44:15

I'm obsessed about that part. Yeah because people don't think about that as their. 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.

Polly Mertens 44:32

You know, it's amazing how many. 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. I was in a physical different space with people that were all having breakthroughs and you know, all this stuff. And I was like, wow, right? The environment reminds you of who to be, like who you've been in the past, right? So, like we have, I have a couple of friends that have done say that again.

Samantha Pruitt 45:00

The environment reminds you of who to be. Okay, that can be positive or negative.

Polly Mertens 45:07

Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 45:08

Speaking from someone who just backpacked for 20 days about reminding who I was. I'm like, oh, I'm a tree. No, I'm a bird, no, I'm a rock. I'm now part of the water.

Polly Mertens 45:19

Oh, yeah, that's me. Talk about how your environment shifted. I mean, you had some amazing. There's another episode, guys. We're gonna launch that's gonna go live here very soon. Sam's you know, backpacking trip. So stay tuned for that. But we're it's already live as we record this, so we'll listen to that. But tell us a little bit about what that was like, right?

Samantha Pruitt 45:37

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. Oh, I'm just a human in the cog of civilization. Yeah. Yeah, you know, earning the paycheck, doing the thing, right? 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. 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. And if you're not carrying it on your back, you don't have it. So you will have to be getting it from nature, and that's it. And everything that you need to be capable to do the thing is inside of you because it's there. Now you tap into that shit. Yeah, like right. So you learn very quickly. I think I have the capabilities and skills because I'm willing to take the risk to find out, right? But you don't really know. This will be the same with you doing Trail Mont Blanc, right? You don't really know till you show up and start climbing mountains.

Polly Mertens 47:03

And then you find out. 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. 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.

Samantha Pruitt 47:18

My computer screen screen. Yeah. Like, uh no, my phone was turned off. 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. Like those were my visual inputs. 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. You know, that was a thing. And then the smells and the tastes and the textures and like all of it is so rich. And with all of that comes an incredible energy back to state, that vibrational energy that you can receive as inputs, right? 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? You're being very narrowed and specific to what you're gonna experience. And of course, that's gonna affect everything. Everything, 100% on a cellular level. Uh, it's just, yeah. Yeah, don't even get me started on the cells.

Polly Mertens 48:28

What that does. 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. 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? 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. But I'm opportunistic, you know. So, like, oh, there's the thing, right? 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. Like, wow, okay, you guys are cool. This is great, right? Then I went to a tarot card reading club and I was like, oh, look at you guys are fascinating, right? And and I create my own little group around my landmark work, like I'm meeting them tonight, right? Like we're getting together. And it's like putting yourself in with new people and new food and new spaces. 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? 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. You know, it's like that's what it is. It's a freaking chisel on the matrix, you know. Take a chisel to that shit. Yeah, break it all. 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. I mean, we could probably do episodes each one of those. But I hope that's given people an idea of what keeps us in a pattern, right? 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. So, but let's talk about ways to get out, like how to get unstuck. What hire a coach, like you want to like bam bam, you know, like it's kind of the obvious, right? Right, but you know, what the coach is uh gonna just gonna help you do are these things, right? So let's take a look at what's what can shift. 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? So let's start with the physical plane, like this is your absolute your domain, right?

Samantha Pruitt 50:45

So address it's kind of the easiest place to start because people live so much in the physical body. Well, not everybody, some people are very disconnected from their physical body, so I shouldn't generalize here. But you have a body and walk around in it every day, it belongs to you, nobody else. You own it, like that's a real thing, by the way. And that relationship should be cherished. 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. So that is a change to the energy state of the physical body. So that would be through movement, through breath, through doing things differently with the physical vessel that you're living inside of. 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? 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. Whatever the hell, there's no one way. 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? But last time I checked your breathing, at least I hope you are, otherwise, we have a whole other problem here. But people don't even have awareness of the most basic human command of the body, which is the breath, right? So you can start with something that simple.

Polly Mertens 52:23

Yeah, and I would say I'll go a little bit on the opposite of that and say a radical change. So depend, yeah. So like depending you're like severity. Yeah, I mean, if you want to instigate something to be different in your life, like take on a radical physiological shift. And it doesn't have to be ongoing, it could just be in that moment. So, what that could look like, for example, when I say that, is

Environment Inputs That Keep You Same

Polly Mertens 52:49

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. Like I have a friend who she and her husband did this, what do they call it? The no couch month or something like that. I forget, whatever. But like they're not, they can't sit on the couch for like a month, right?

Samantha Pruitt 53:08

And it's like I love this, right? No that's so good.

Polly Mertens 53:11

No couch month.

Samantha Pruitt 53:12

And I don't know. And now they're laying on the floor.

Polly Mertens 53:14

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? You know, like you know, it just puts you in a place of get creative. So now what? Go for a walk or whatever, do yoga poses, or go hang out with a friend, go sit on their couch. I don't know. I don't know. Or nice closets, whatever. So they did one of the things was uh let's grab because they live near the beach. It was like, let's grab some chairs and go sit by the beach.

Samantha Pruitt 53:41

Oh, that's so lovely, you know.

Polly Mertens 53:43

So it was like, okay, so so radical shift can be something along those lines, or for yourself. 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. It would, you know, put the food and the, you know, it was just this like auto other thing took over type of thing. So radical shifts are like like okay, you know, like you're sitting, you're used to. 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. It was like radical shift was you only eat sitting down at the dining table, you know. So I mean, I'm not saying that. So radical shift can be, especially if you have addictive or if you're in slumps. Like I find that radical really helps when energy and movement is just stuck. 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. I'm like, you know, into my day, right? Like, so that's so good. Yeah. So good. So like your workout is you know at a level two, take it up to a level three or a four for a while. 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. Like, like Jen, like, dude, she like totally redid her kitchen, you know. 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?

Samantha Pruitt 55:33

Work somewhere different, work with different people. You know, maybe you've been doing this thing and you're like, la la la, this is what I do. Go find a different work team or find a different project or work in a different physical place. Like, there's so much you can do related to your work, and people do not think about that at all. 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. I don't know. Do they though? Do they though?

Polly Mertens 56:02

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. It's like that meeting on a freaking phone with a earbud, like, hello, there's technology.

Samantha Pruitt 56:13

Like you can be walking and taking all kinds of calls. People have no idea.

Polly Mertens 56:17

So let your brain run wild with the like, I'll just insert radical, you know, shift, if you will. 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. Then, you know, and radical maybe going to bed an hour earlier than you used to. Who knows? You know, so all right. So mental, the whole mental game. Yeah, looking at the story, yeah. So naming the payoff, right? Like, so like getting clear, we were talking about those underlying human needs. So, like, you know, what is the this is where coaches are really handy.

Samantha Pruitt 56:56

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. So, unless you have friends like we have each other and we have a circle of people like us, that's amazing. But if you don't, like there are people like us that this is just what we do. We literally, this is what we unpack to get to all the other things. 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.

Polly Mertens 57:30

Yeah, I think sometimes it can be hard for us to see our own way out of our own thoughts. 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. Like I'm always like, why am I keep doing this? Or what's what's going on here? Why do I why does this scenario keep showing up, right? Like you need some reflection, right? I love that. I love that. So, you know, just looking at what thoughts you're thinking, you know. 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. So really examining that, and you know, where I think too people can get lost is not catching it. So it starts with self-awareness, right? So if you're not even aware of the thoughts that you're thinking, start with your emotional body, right? So your body's giving you all kinds of signals. 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? Because your natural state is free and peace and you know, doing good. High vibes. 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. Like, what, what, what do I have to be thinking and believe to be true in order for me to feel this way? And then it's like, well, is that true? Love work of Byron Katie. You know, that's one way you can kind of self-perpetuate kind of uh inquiry with yourself. You know, the work of Byron Katie is a whole thing, you can find that online. But it's like uh finding what the thoughts are that are keeping you in that emotional state. Yeah. Cool. Anything else on that?

Samantha Pruitt 59:21

No, but that's that's a lot of work. It's big, yeah. It's a big it can be a big I'm not saying that to be discouraging. No, what I'm saying is like be patient with yourself because it's so layered and so deep. OMG. 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. Because that's also where the unlock comes to pure potential. So, like there's one thing to just like get unstuck and make a change, right? But I'm talking about like, oh no, that's a scratch of the surface of getting out of suffering and discomfort. 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.

Polly Mertens 1:00:22

So I, you know, I want to just double-click on one thing before we leave this because that's just coming to me. And this unlocked so many things for me in so many ways through my beginning of my eating disorder recovery journey. And that is, and now I see it as I told you that story earlier around my divorce. I just want to put in to the to your ears, my beautiful listeners, is the word possibility. Right. 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. 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. It was just like that's the end of relationship, right? And it was like, oh, geez, you know. 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. Like, what else could be possible? Just asking yourself questions that open up possibility. Like, what if I didn't believe that that was true? What if? What else could I believe? What else could be possible, right? 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? What if something else were possible? What if another belief could there could be something else out there? And then you could just allow it to be like that's the opening that sort of unlocks that mental constriction, if you will. Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 1:02:09

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? 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. Like it's insane, right? But that's literally, it makes no sense. But that's where many people do stay stuck, right? 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. And I say, Oh, well, my friend Polly lives this other kind of life. 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. 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.

Polly Mertens 1:03:11

That's a self-fulfilling prophecy, just like the other one is just believing something else could be possible.

Samantha Pruitt 1:03:20

Because it is, and it can be. And well, and by the way, that's just the nature of everything, everything is constantly changing. There is uh only a hundred percent truth to truth to that. That's just called science. Okay, nothing stays the same, including you, human. Impossible.

Polly Mertens 1:03:37

And surprisingly changing right now, just sitting here. Surprisingly, we're actually keeping it in place, you know. Like if we really are honest with ourselves, we're the one that's keeping it in place in some form or another, right? Like we're keeping the bad habits, the relationship, like we're actually doing it, and it's uh us to unlock it, right? To believe in something different. So awesome. Okay. Well, then let's talk also about the spirit. So we talk about the physical plane, the mental plane. Now let's talk a bit about the spiritual plane, right? And I would call this one like surrender to a new outcome, right? Like surrendering.

Samantha Pruitt 1:04:12

So let's depends what your beliefs are, right? It's gonna be totally unique to the individual, and you do you. 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? Is that within me? Is that the universe? Like, what is that? Okay, and creating some connection to that for yourself, whatever that needs to be for you, right? Whoa, give your shit up to that. That's an easy way to do it. Hey, this isn't working anymore. I'm gonna drop this on your doorstep.

Polly Mertens 1:04:51

And I look at it like it's surrendering to our soul. 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. It's like, you're not supposed to be in this corner, silly. 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. It's

Physical Mental Spiritual Ways Out

Polly Mertens 1:05:19

like that's a sign from your soul. Like, like get in tune with what you most want, right? Like, get in, like find the possibility in you and in the universe or who whatever your belief is, right? 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. So you gotta go deep, right?

Samantha Pruitt 1:05:42

Yeah, yeah. 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. You need to you need to get on board with this because you you want to get punched in the face. We can do that for a long time. You're just gonna end up really boot bruised and battered. It's not gonna be good, right? 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. You know, it's not scary at all. It's like, yeah, okay, well, you're obviously telling me what I'm doing isn't working, so let's try some new. New things. What do you want to bring my way? Bring it.

Polly Mertens 1:06:23

Yeah, you know, we've talked about our favorite analogy of why humans come to planet Earth, you know, is the earth school. It's like we're in this damn earth school, right? 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. Okay. It's a class, fool. Yeah. Pay attention. 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. Like, oh, let me get this lesson.

Samantha Pruitt 1:07:04

Oh, if you keep getting enough, you know you stay behind, right? They hold you back. I mean, this is kind of what happens, right? In public school, this is no different. Earth school is no different.

Polly Mertens 1:07:13

You're getting held back for a reason, fool. We came here to graduate. We did not come here to just ride out first grade for you know 80 years or virtuity. Yeah. So find out what your soul most wants, not just your egoic thought, you know, looking good self on the outside, right? Like what's really going on? So, like, do that, you know. 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. That's where you're gonna find your answers to the way out of this. And like, hey, why why are you in this? You know, like why did I put myself in this situation? Okay, well, let me take a some honest look here. What is my soul most wanting to grow from this, not to stay in this? 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? Your soul big capital S self, I mean, right?

Samantha Pruitt 1:08:23

And no higher power source wants you to suffer. That is an old story, dude. No, no, suffering's optional, yeah. Totally. 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. You know, let me no, no, no, whatever. The learnings, all the lessons and learnings. 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. That's just not a thing.

Polly Mertens 1:09:06

Not a thing, not a thing. That's not why we're here. 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. 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. What you really want, you know, is like some spiritual growth out of all this stuff. So do do a little inventory of each one of those. 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. It might be toxic. Yeah, yep. Some physical you might need to get that move body moving in new ways and get yourself to bed earlier, mental plane, you know. You got some sloppy thoughts, you know, you got some sloppy thinking going on that's just not serving you, right? Some unhealthy behaviors and patterns that it's time to get in and unroot those things, right? And spiritually, it's like get honest and get clean with yourself. Like, what do you most want? 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. I don't want to do this work for the next 40 years. This this isn't it, this isn't the one, right? And I realized I had chosen, you know, poorly, and that was that's on me, right? And I had to take the repercussions of the mess I had to clean up for, you know, a couple years after that. So be it. Get to that work, man. And my spirit got free, you know?

Samantha Pruitt 1:10:37

Yeah. And you can plug yourself into this energy source to be the change catalyst. 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. You know, there's action and work required. And sometimes there doesn't feel like there's energy for that. And that's because of all these reasons. But there is a source of that energy, it's gonna blow your mind because it's actually gonna ultimately come from you, right? But it might feel initially like an external energy source of some some kind. And that's fine. Tap into that, plug yourself in.

Polly Mertens 1:11:17

This is good. This is good. I hope this has served. 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. 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? From the mental level, what might I do? Some of it's just asking yourself questions, like what else could be possible, right? Or what's the hidden payoff, right? Or what if I took one small step? Or what would getting support in this area look like for me? Or what would say no in this area look like? And that might be prioritizing, right? 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.

Samantha Pruitt 1:12:08

And or just call us.

Polly Mertens 1:12:11

Yeah, just a phone call away. So good. Well, thank you, my dear. Because we'd love to help you unpack it. Yes, yes. All right. What do we want to so good, so good, so good. We want to remind our beautiful humans of oh my gosh, how your life feels is more important than how it looks. Obviously, yes. Every day is your opportunity to find your awesome. So go find it. Yes, see you next time.