Stuck in a groove – how Queer Eye can help you get unstuck

The TV show Queer Eye and an Aussie YouTuber are this week’s inspiration for getting unstuck and taking action. Random? Stick with me…

YouTube ‘reset your life’ videos

There’s an Aussie lady on YouTube who makes videos on productivity. She often publishes videos on resetting your life, her most popular ones. They are always along the lines of: ‘reset for the week ahead’, ‘a reset for this month’, or even ‘reset your life’. When you’re busy or stressed or overwhelmed, the thought of a reset is so appealing…

She’ll list the things she’s going to do: clean and tidy the flat; fix things that need to be repaired and have been bugging her; get into a new routine of healthy eating or going to bed earlier; organising and decluttering all her digital stuff. It’s strangely watchable. There’s something satisfying about watching someone else getting stuff done, ticking off their list.

Quite often when I speak to people in a coaching session who are feeling a bit stuck, it turns out they too want to change their daily routine and how they’re spending their time. They want a reset.

They want to eat more fruit, watch less tv, do more exercise. Sometimes there’s a bigger need as well, such as changing career or setting up a business on their own. Whatever the case, they want to get into some good habits like sleeping earlier and getting up earlier to have a bit more time. They want to look after themselves a bit more. And they want to get unstuck.

Queer Eye

Which brings me to the TV programme Queer Eye. Queer Eye is all about helping someone who is stuck in a groove. Five experts in five different areas – looking after your appearance, decoration, cookery, clothing and relationships – help someone who has been nominated as needing a shake up.

Perhaps they need to change their way of thinking about themselves, build some self-esteem and stop the super negative thoughts.

Often they could do with caring for themselves a little more and perking themselves up – sorting out a skincare routine, getting their hair cut and trying a new outfit.

Their home environment is tackled. Often they are settling for a far from ideal situation because of their low self-esteem or because of general lethargy. 

Frequently the person has a floundering business or could do with getting a jolt of energy into their career. 

The Queer Eye guys are empathetic and caring and gently kick their client’s butt, encouraging and motivating them to do things they’ve never done before. They build their self-belief. There are always tears and there’s always a joyful ending.

Plan a reset

I love the reset videos and Queer Eye because they inspire you to think about your own situation. Is there something nagging at you that you want to get done but you can’t seem to drum up the enthusiasm? Is there some kind of improvement you could make to your home? Do you need a kick up the butt to do that thing you’ve always wanted to do?

Sometimes it can be helpful to sit down and plan a reset. Write down all the different things you want to change and possible solutions. It can be as small as ‘get up 10 minutes earlier every day so I don’t have to rush’ to ‘find a new job in tech so I can quit my boring job’. It’s important to list the solutions too so that you can actually start to take action. 

If you want to wake up 10 minutes earlier and have more time, what can you actually do? You can set your alarm. Maybe you’ll plan what you’ll wear and set out your breakfast things the night before so that you have fewer decisions to make in the morning. You can work out what you’ll do with your extra 10 minutes. Plan to set a timer. Select a book you want to read. Do 10 minutes research on your new career.

If you want to find a new job what can you do? Plan to talk to someone who might have some advice. Start working with a coach to sort out what you really want to do. Read up on what CVs look like these days. Read a book on career change.

Monthly reset

You might want to plan a monthly reset. Take one day a month to sit down and take a broader look at your life and how you spend your time. Are you happy with it all? What would you like to change? What would you like to cut out? Is there anything you’d want to add in?

If you’d like to have some coaching sessions with me, contact me on LinkedIn or at joaopoku@gmail.com

Photo by Jace & Afsoon on Unsplash


At the core

When have I seen the most impact and the best results with clients?

When they’ve worked with me for more than three coaching sessions. One isn’t really enough. We need to go deep. To the core. We need to find out what you really want help with.

Often after two or three sessions we uncover what is really at the core of your feeling of being stuck. On the surface it’s that you’ve been made redundant, or want to change to another industry. But deep down what’s holding you back and making you feel bad is often lack of confidence or self-belief in your abilities. And it takes time to work on these things, taking small steps to build yourself up. 

My coaching isn’t really about helping you with career change. Not really. Deep down, at the core, it always comes down to working on confidence, self-belief, and motivation. 

Confidence

If I look at my past three new clients, their issues have been based around: feeling they are not good enough, sabotaging themselves, lacking confidence, knowing what they want but not going for it. 

It’s interesting isn’t it? It’s as though everyone’s out there putting on a brave face; we all feel insecure inside but put on a front of everything being ok.

If you are struggling with feeling stuck, have a good think about what you’re feeling and why. Try some journaling, get stuff out of your head. Try to see your experience and current situation with a different perspective. What would you say to a friend in your situation? You’d try to get them to see things differently, as you see them.

Look at the obstacles you’ve overcome and what you’ve achieved, really think about this, in all areas of your life. Think about the positives in your current situation, even if you are struggling. Consider your options. Write out as many as you can, even if they seem silly or outrageous. The more you write the more you’ll see you DO have options.

If you’d like to have some coaching sessions with me, contact me via LinkedIn or email at joaopoku@gmail.com.

Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash

You need to value yourself

I had a coaching session with a client the other day. She felt stuck – ready for a big change but lacking in confidence and lacking in direction. As we spoke, I realised she doesn’t place much value on who she is, on her uniqueness, or on her varied experiences. I gave her an exercise to work on to help her see her true value – I’ll explain what it is later.

This client was was toying between starting up her own business and finding any half-decent job that she might quite enjoy and that would pay the bills. As we chatted, she mentioned a conversation with some friends and the feeling that she had to talk differently to them. She felt that they were so much more successful, more knowledgeable than her, that she wasn’t quite on their level. 

It became quite clear to me that she can’t see her own talent or attributes – at all. 

She has a sporadic work history, doing lots of different jobs in lots of different places; she worked in a school, in a cafe, in an office. As she’s never really had a ‘career’ – she feels that her experience is trivial, or of no consequence.

Not only that, but listening to her, and knowing her a little, I know that she has so many personal attributes that make her incredibly special. So many things come to her naturally, that others don’t possess.  She’s just not aware of them.

Her listening and empathising skills are incredible. She makes people feel comfortable, warm and invited. She is an amazing host; setting a beautiful scene, cooking delicious food, being an entertaining and welcoming host.

She’s organised, a planner, and efficient. She notices details. She’s the kind of person that if something needs doing, she’ll get it done. 

Passion

She also worried that she isn’t passionate about anything. She felt that she was lacking some sort of strong feeling towards anything. But as we spoke I realised that she was linking ‘doing’ and ‘not doing’ with what she felt was the right to feel or not feel. She mentioned someone playing a game or creating something and getting really stuck in as evidence of how passionate they are. But she felt that for example, the way live music makes her feel, invigorated, moved, alive; is irrelevant as it’s not her making the music or creating the vibe. I reminded her that passion is all about feeling, whether or not you’re directly creating or doing ‘the thing’.

Doing good work and spending your time well doesn’t have to mean working hard on something you are passionate about. I think this is quite rare and you’re incredibly lucky if you find it. Most of us are replying to emails, making calls, going to meetings. Not necessarily stuff to be passionate about. But – if you are passionate about what this work is aiming to achieve and the effect it will have on the world, that’s something. And if you are passionate about the people you work with, or the environment in which you work, or the lifestyle it lets you lead – that’s important too. 

In fact, I think we have to be careful tying in ‘passion’ and ‘work.’ I think it’s perfectly acceptable and normal to do work that’s fine or pretty good, and to find your passions out of work. And that doesn’t have to mean a having particular hobby that you are obsessed with and passionate about. It can just mean having a pretty nice time, enjoying cooking, chatting to friends, walking in nature.

Write a chronology

Back to my client. She doesn’t realise how important her skills, experiences and attributes are and that not everyone has them. She is totally devaluing herself. 

As a task I told her to write a chronology of all the things she has achieved since leaving uni up until now. Where has she been, what has she learned, what courses has she done? What interesting experiences has she had, what opportunities has she found or created. Which languages has she learned and spoken, what jobs has she completed. Where has she volunteered. What brave choices has she made. 

I want her to go through this process to try and give her an outsider’s view on all that she’s achieved. Writing a cv can seem a little limited and dull, you have to condense things into soundbites. But in writing out a chronology of life events, I wondered if she’ll be able to see a thread running through. Where did she follow her heart? What drew her to volunteer, or move to another country? Is there anything she has been consistently interested in over this time? What did she think she’d enjoy, but found it wasn’t for her? 

I’ll check in with her next week and find out what, if anything, she’s discovered. The aim of the exercise is to change your perspective, to start to view things slightly differently. What if she can see that she’s a brave, adventurous person, an explorer? Someone who’s not willing to settle for ‘normal’, or safe, or do what everyone else does?

Can she change her narrative from seeing herself as a drifter with no direction to someone who’s experimenting, exploring, working to find her way to what really makes her tick?

If you’d like coaching session with me, find me on LinkedIn or email me at joaopoku@gmail.com.

What are you looking for?

You can get quite stuck when going through a career transition. Perhaps you were already feeling stuck in you current role. You knew you wanted to move on, but you didn’t know where you wanted to go. So you stayed. And felt miserable.

So now you’re stuck in this halfway point, you’re SURE you want to leave your current job. You’re halfway out the door. You’re dreaming of a better life, new challenges, a jolt of energy. But – you’re feeling paralysed. What on earth are you going to move on to do?

There are a few different things that appeal, but you’re not 100% about any of them. It’s all a bit daunting and unknown. What if the job’s great on paper but the people are terrible? And if my new boss is toxic? What if it turns out I really don’t enjoy doing x all day?

Something that can be helpful when going through a career transition is to get clear on your values. What are you looking for fundamentally, forget job titles and status. If you can get your core values clear, you use that as a sort of compass to help guide you when looking for your next role.

I listened to a podcast the other day where the host was talking about whether or not a job allowed you to you ‘learn, develop and have a positive impact’. These were her base values. If she’s hitting these three then things are looking good, this is what’s most important to her.

If she were to consider a new role she could check if it meets these three criteria. Will she be learning, will she be developing herself, will her work have a positive impact?

Some of my core values are learning, freedom, sincerity. What are yours?

If you need help with your career transition, you can contact me for some sessions at joaopoku@gmail.com or LinkedIn.

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash