Unstuck Yourself

(ethereal music) Headspace Studios. Hi, welcome to the "Sunday Scaries." I'm Dora, and today I wanna talk about a familiar feeling: being stuck. Now, I've mentioned this before, but if you're new to the show, then this is some useful information about me. Before I became a meditation and mindfulness teacher, I was a psychiatric nurse and I wasn't too thrilled with my job. I had spent so much time working to become a nurse and fantasizing all about the change I would make to revolutionize the mental health care system that once reality hit and I realized it wasn't what I was expecting, I felt completely stuck. And at the time, I didn't know that there were other options available for me. I had bills to pay, loans to pay, and I didn't see an alternative kind of work that would be lucrative enough to take care of all of my financial responsibilities. Eventually, I found the light at the end of the tunnel and was able to do what I do now. But that feeling of being stuck lasted a while, months, years. Sunday would arrive and I'd suddenly feel so helpless, thinking about walking into work the next day, like I was trapped in the tiniest cage and couldn't see a way out. I found myself complaining about work all the time and feeling resentful towards it, especially on Sundays. If these feelings sound familiar to you, I want you to know that it's okay to feel resentful. Our feelings are valid. They're a sign that we need something. We just need to figure out what that something is. I also wanna mention that not every nurse or caregiver feels this way, but anything involving keeping other people healthy and alive is a huge responsibility. And if you aren't completely passionate about it, it can leave you feeling really drained and emotionally spent. Other situations can do this, too. Maybe you're the only source of income for your family. Maybe you're caring for an elderly parent with medical bills. There are all sorts of reasons people stay in jobs or situations that they don't like, but there is a way to define life on your own terms even if you have to take one small step at a time. So how do you find the path? How do you separate yourself from the thing that's making you feel stuck? The biggest thing that helped me was changing my perspective about certain things. Asking myself, "How can I make this better, even marginally better, like 0.1% better? How can I choose to see the good in this situation?" Before answering this question, though, I wanna clarify one thing. There's changing your perspective and then there's toxic positivity. Toxic positivity often entails seeing the bright side of things, even in a really terrible situation. And the pressure to maintain this positive mindset can have detrimental effects on a person, like minimizing any emotion other than happiness and making you...