043: Why You Feel Stuck (Even When You Already Know What to Do)

Last week, we explored the cost of waiting too long to make difficult decisions and the hidden price we often pay when we avoid reality.

This week, we're taking the conversation one step deeper.

What if the reason you're stuck isn't because you need more information?

What if you're not actually waiting for clarity?

What if you're avoiding something?

In this episode of Sustainable Success, Fredricka explores why so many of us delay important decisions...not because we don't know what to do, but because we don't want to experience the emotions attached to doing it.

Whether you're facing a challenging conversation, a career decision, a health issue, a business choice, a relationship crossroads, or simply feeling stuck in your next chapter, this episode offers a practical framework to help you move forward.

You'll learn Fredricka's simple but powerful four-step process:

LISTEN

What truth have you been avoiding?
What do you already know?

NAME

What fear, emotion, or belief is actually keeping you stuck?

NAVIGATE

What is the next right step—not the entire journey?

MOVE

How can you take action before you feel completely ready?

If you've been waiting for certainty, confidence, or the "perfect time," this conversation may be exactly what you need to hear.

In This Episode:

• Why most people are not stuck because of a lack of clarity
• The difference between avoiding a decision and avoiding a feeling
• How fear often disguises itself as procrastination
• Why gathering more information isn't always the answer
• The connection between self-trust and decision-making
• How to stop overthinking and start moving forward
• A practical framework for navigating difficult decisions
• Why action creates confidence—not the other way around

Questions to Reflect On:

• What do I already know that I've been resisting?
• What am I actually afraid of?
• What is the next right step?
• Where am I waiting to feel ready before taking action?
• What would change if I trusted myself more?

Resources & Links

Join the Limitless Living Community for women who are growing, healing, becoming, and creating lives that feel more aligned with who they truly are.

Connect with Fredricka:
www.fredrickadavis.com

Next Episode

How do you rebuild trust in yourself after years of second-guessing your instincts, people-pleasing, and ignoring your inner wisdom?

In the next episode, Fredricka shares practical ways to strengthen self-trust so you can make decisions with greater confidence, clarity, and peace.

Remember:

Be Rooted.
Be Resilient.
Be Limitless.

Grab Your Free Reset Guide and more at www.fredrickadavis.com

Continue the conversation inside the here: Limitless Living community.

If this episode resonated with you, you can also send Fredricka a message through the Fan Mail link in the show notes. Your questions may be featured in a future episode.

And if you know someone who needs to hear this conversation, please share the episode with them.

Your reviews mean the world to Fredricka and help other women discover the show.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Hello and welcome back to the Limitless Living Podcast. I'm Frederica Davis. I'm your host entrepreneur guide for women who are tired of living in survival mode and are ready for possibility and all that life has to offer. And on Sustainable Success Tuesdays, we talk about what success really means and the alignment, balance, and the way to have it without losing yourself in the process. So last week on Tuesday, which is our sustainable success day, I shared a personal story or professional story, if you will, about a difficult leadership decision I had to make in my business and how it was a decision that I quite frankly knew before I actually acted upon it. And I took a little longer to act than perhaps I should have or needed to, uh, or in hindsight, would have wanted to, because I knew things weren't working. Now, before we ended that episode, I left you with some questions designed to help you start looking honestly at your life. Now, these were questions like where might you be avoiding a hard or tough decision? Where might you already know something needs to change? Whether you've acted upon that yet or not. Where might you be waiting for more and more clarity that may have already actually arrived? So this week, what I want to do is I want to continue the conversation because yes, sometimes we genuinely need more information. Sometimes we do need more clarity. But a lot of the times, the problem isn't really the clarity. The problem is the discomfort comes along with it. So deep down, we we usually know what needs to happen, what we need to do, what needs to change, whatever it is. We're just kind of hoping reality changes before we have to deal with it. And we often hope someone else makes the decision before we have to, or that the problem will fix itself. We are often hoping that we wake up one day and suddenly, poof, feel ready to do it. I got this today, right? And today I want to give you a practical framework because here's the thing awareness is really powerful. But when you have awareness without action, things don't change. Nothing changes. So here's why we tend to stay stuck. Over the years, I've coached women through business challenges and health challenges and relationship challenges. Oh my gosh, life, reinvention. I could go on, burnout, grief, kind of everything, and everything in between. And here is something I notice pretty consistently with everybody is that most women are not stuck because they don't know what they need to do. They stay stuck because they don't like what they know. Now that's different. So how do we overcome this, right? Sometimes we know the relationship isn't healthy and something needs to change. Sometimes we know that the job no longer fits us, yet we don't leave. And sometimes we know our finances need desperate attention, but we don't give it. Sometimes we know our health is asking, maybe it's whispering, maybe it's tapping on your shoulder, maybe it's screaming at you now to make make changes, yet we still don't. And sometimes we're tolerating, we know we're tolerating behaviors, situations, or circumstances that are no longer aligning with who we are becoming. Now, if you're listening to this, chances are you're in a stage where you are becoming because you're listening to this. Just that alone tells me that. And the knowing isn't the problem, it's accepting that's the problem. So I have a process to get through this. It's a framework, if you will. It's listen, name, navigate, move. So when I find myself stuck, this is the process that I use. It's pretty simple. First of all, I listen. I listen to what's going on, I name it, I navigate the steps through it, and then I actually take the action and I move. So let's walk through it in step-by-step fashion here. So step one is listen. This is where most people skip ahead too quickly. We spend so much time looking outside ourselves for the answers. We ask everyone else, what should we do? We brainstorm, we talk about it, analyze it, whatever. We gather opinions, we consume more podcasts, we read more books, we search for another expert. Meanwhile, our own innate wisdom is sitting quietly in the corner within us somewhere, waiting for us to pay attention. And one of the things I often say is that, you know, your body and your life, and even your business, they're always communicating with you. The question is whether or not you're listening. It starts out with a little whisper, then it's a tap on your shoulder, then it's an all-out screaming to you. You know, maybe you just have the nagging feeling for months. That might be the whisper. Can't quite quite put your finger on it, but something's whispering to you, right? And maybe you start to feel exhausted. And maybe that's kind of the tap on your shoulder. Your body's telling you something that your life is out of alignment, your health is out of alignment, something, right? Maybe you've been feeling some resentment. That's another sign. Maybe you noticed that you're feeling dread or frustration more than normal. Or maybe you're noticing every time you think about a particular situation, your shoulders tighten, or your stomach knots up, or your energy drops, or you get a headache. Those are all signals. A lot of times the things that manifest in our bodies are because of decisions we're not making, because we're not living in alignment and we're not taking the actions to actually put us there. So all of these signals, they're nothing more than data. They are information for us to listen to. So step one is to listen and ask yourself: what do I already know? What truth have I been arguing with? What reality have I been trying to negotiate? What have I been procrastinating that I already know and can feel? And then be honest about this. Don't be hopeful, be don't be wishful on this one. Just simply be honest. So here's step two. Step two is you're going to put a name to everything. Once you've listened, you need to name what's actually underneath the resistance. Because most people think they're avoiding a decision. They're not really avoiding a decision. They're avoiding a feeling that's a result of making that decision. So maybe you're afraid of disappointing someone. Maybe you're afraid of the conflict, that feeling that we can get when we have conflict. Maybe you're afraid of failure or success. Maybe you're afraid people won't understand, or afraid of being judged. Maybe you're afraid of hurting someone's feelings or being the bad guy. Maybe you're afraid of grieving the future you thought was going to happen. There are many decisions out there. If we make the right decision and we move on, can also can often put us into a moment or a period or a season of grief over what we once thought was going to happen. You need to name it. Write it down. Say it out loud. Because unnamed fears, they grow. They grow in the dark. Named fears start to lose their power. So one of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself: if I already knew what I needed to do, what would I be afraid of? That's usually where the real answer lives. Okay, step three, navigate. Now let's get practical here. Most people overwhelm themselves because they're trying to solve the entire problem all at once. You don't need to solve the problem all at once, entirely. You only need the next step. It could be one conversation, one appointment, one application, one boundary. Maybe it's one email or one decision, one plan, one action, and that's it. Stop asking, how will this all work out? Start asking yourself, what is my next right step? Clarity often comes through our movement. Those are the actionable steps, not before movement. So step four, your final step is move. This is where transformation usually happens. It's often the scariest part for so many of us, but it is where the magic happens and things actually change. Because eventually you have to move, you have to take an actionable step, you have to act, you have to take the step. Here's the truth. Nobody likes hearing. You may never feel fully ready. That is a fact, especially when it's something big or it feels big. Maybe it's not even big, but it feels big. You may never feel fully ready. You may never feel confident about it. You may not feel certain. You may not even feel brave or prepared, but do it anyway. Because confidence is not what creates action, action creates confidence. So every difficult thing I have ever done in my life felt uncomfortable at first. In fact, often incredibly uncomfortable first. Starting businesses, huh? Super scary. Yes, exciting, but super scary. Super like, well, what if this doesn't work out? What is going to happen here? Oh, what if I fail at this? What if I succeed? What will they think about me? I mean, we could go on and on and on. You get the picture, right? It was uncomfortable. Starting businesses, leaving jobs. You could go through the long list of things that feel uncomfortable and things you'll tell yourself or ask yourself when you leave a job. Having difficult conversations with people, whether it's letting somebody go in your business or whether it is a difficult conversation in a relationship or with a child or a friend, a family member, whoever, having difficult conversations can feel uncomfortable at first. Setting boundaries feels very uncomfortable, and much more so for women often, for sure. Launching programs. Oh my goodness. You know, I've mentioned this before. It took me two years to launch this podcast because I kept getting caught in the perfectionism and the fear of it, the uncomfortable of it. And finally I said, okay, whether it's right or not, whether it's perfect or not, I've got things that people want me to share. And there's only one of me, and this is the way I can get it out to more people and into the world. I'm going to do it to the best of my ability, and I'm just going to keep getting better and better at it. But I had to take the step, the actionable, uncomfortable steps first to do it before it started to get comfortable. Now it's pretty comfortable, and I'm just trying to fine-tune all of it. And confidence comes after the uncomfortable. So hosting retreats. The first time I hosted a retreat was before my daughter was born. 25 years ago, I hosted them. And I was petrified, probably for the first few of them, and they all turned out great, and it was wonderful. Same thing with public speaking. First time I spoke in front of six people, I was petrified. Next, I remember speaking in front of a group of about 350 people, and I was petrified. And then I remember speaking on the stage in the Philadelphia Convention Center in front of a couple of thousand people. And wow, was that petrifying? And then each corporation in between, I still don't get nervous like that anymore when I do speaking, public speaking of any kind, typically until right before. And I still have those butterflies that I get nervous right before I go on. Now, most people would say, Oh, Freddie, you make it look so easy, but I still get scared. I just do it anyway, and I get scared less. It just does not affect the same way. So the confidence grows after you face things and you go into the action stage. One of the reasons people get stuck here is because they just don't trust themselves. And they often think they're waiting for certainty. So if you're sitting there and you feel like, I don't know if I trust this decision, and I'm not quite sure, sure I'm not quite certain, and you've agonized over it, and you've weighed the pros and you've weighed the cons and you've done all your due diligence, but you're stuck there. What you might really be waiting for is a guarantee. And here's the thing: there are no guarantees. Life does not offer guarantees. I know there's a few guarantees in business and this and that and the other thing, but generally speaking, life does not offer guarantees. So what it does offer is self-trust. The ability to say, I don't know exactly how this is all going to unfold, but I trust myself enough to handle what comes next. Whether it's successful or not, whether it's perfect or not, whether it was the right decision or turns out to be the not-so-right decision, and I have to make another decision. This is where real confidence comes in. So here's what I want you to do this week. Take one area of your life where you have been stuck. Just been feeling a little stuck. Maybe just one area. I know some of you are going, oh my god, which area do I start with? But just pick one. Run it through this framework. Listen. Number one, what do you already know? Number two, name it. What are you actually afraid of? Then navigate it. What's the next right step? You don't have to have all of them, just the next one. And then move. Take the step, the action, not next month, not next year, but this week, because your future isn't built through knowing, it's built through doing. So I want to thank you so much for spending this time with me today on this episode. And if it's resonated with you, please share it with someone who may be feeling stuck right now. And if you'd like to continue the conversation, join us inside the Limitless Living Facebook community for women who are becoming. It's a place where we are growing, healing, reinventing, creating lives if you're more aligned and connecting with amazing, like-minded women. So you can also uh find more resources with me directly at fredericadavis.com. It'll be in the show notes. And next week, we're going to continue this conversation one more week, and we're going to talk about self-trust, how you build trust in yourself after years of second guessing your decisions, maybe years of people pleasing, or ignoring your own inner knowing. And how does this evolve into sustainable success? Oh, when you learn how to listen to yourself, trust yourself better, and have these frameworks to work from, your decisions get better. So your success levels, they change your capacity to grow, to receive, to expand, all increases. And that brings more success. And it keeps you living in alignment. So until then, we've got Thursday is our wellness reset Thursday. Tune in for Thursday for that. Of course, Saturday. It's all about passion, purpose, and reinvention. But until our next episode, be rooted, be resilient, be good.