Yo, yo, yo, welcome back to the Feather Your Lifestyle Podcast Conversations on Lifestyle, Passions, and Hustles. My name's Chris. I am your host, and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 236 today, and we're talking about a very, very uh important topic. And actually, over the next couple of weeks, there's gonna be a good bunch of short and sharp kind of conversations that we'll be having. A lot of it's been relevant to my own journey, uh, but it's really in lead up to the end of the year. We're getting to the end of 2025, which just blows my mind. And I want to just really make sure that I'm giving you some quick, I guess some really quick prompts to really challenge yourself to start thinking about, well, as we finish up this year, what can we be doing, or what can we be thinking about, or how can we be reflecting to ensure that when we go into 2026, that you're gonna be kicking butt and making it your best year yet. Now, this is a very common theme that we talk about every year, and we've we've spoken about this topic numerous times as well. But if you're new here or maybe you just need a fresh, um, a fresh little perspective, or a nice little kick, or a nudge, or whatever, hopefully this is that episode for you. And we're talking about where you are is not where you're stuck. And the whole theme around all this, and just been thinking about, and I went for a run this morning, and there's a lot of things that I'm being challenged with at the moment, but your current situation is temporary, it's not permanent, and this is going to be a reminder that forward movement is always an option. And we're gonna be doing this a bit off the cuff. I haven't really scripted anything out, it's just talking, you and me hanging out. Obviously, I'm talking, but you're listening. But uh, if you want to continue the conversation, you're more than welcome to. But we're gonna get into this. But if you do have any questions or any comments, or you do want to continue the conversation, jump down into the comments below. Otherwise, if you think you, you know, after hearing this, that you think someone else could resonate with this episode, could leverage this episode, please share it with them. That would mean the absolute world to me. We're gonna roll the intro and let's get into it. So, a couple of things that I want to explore today is um the first thing is is when we are stuck in a challenge. Now, I'm I've been challenged big time right now with with just the state of the consumer market in terms of my business, and we're seeing some big dips, some big challenges, things I've never had to experience before at that scale. Now, that that that's scary. And when we think about that, I was I was reflecting on it while I was running this morning, and when we get stuck in a period of time where we're challenged by something, it could be something at work, it could be a family situation, it could be a health situation, it could be it could be anything, it could be finances, it could be business, who knows? Anything and everything. But with that, we become frustrated, we become annoyed, we become, you know, sometimes things can cause us to, you know, have short tempers, we complain that it's too hard, and sometimes we even can't even figure out what do we do, we're not sure what to do. But I was thinking about this, I was like, well, here we are, we've got a big challenge, you know, because we've never experienced before. And that's what makes it challenging is you know, when you have a challenge, it's something that you've never had to do before. So you're dealing with the unknown, you're dealing with something literally you do not know about. You don't know what you don't know, right? And but then I was thinking about it, it's like, well, and not everyone, but naturally we tend to when it's just the normal, the same old, and you get stuck just doing the same thing, you know, it becomes boring, or if you become a complacent and just you know, usual routine stuff. So when we're not in a challenge, we tend to then go seek that next big thing. That next level, I want to level up, or I want this, or I want to be earning more money, or I want a new job, or I want a new car, or you know, whatever it is, we're chasing that next thing. And there we are already trying to chase that next level, that next big thing. But then when we get to the situation which is going to enable us to get to that end result, which is we go through the challenge in which is going to get us to that outcome that we wanted when we weren't really busy, when we weren't really feeling challenged, when we were just doing the normal, we then complain. And the more I look about this, it's like, yeah, sure, are we just being tested with patience, resilience, uh, persistence, resistance, you know, your consistency, your attitude, your I said patience already, but patience twice. Like sometimes these things test us to new levels that we've never been tested before. But when we get through them and you move on, it's three years from now, you look back and think, hmm. I kind of remember that. And now, look, not to say that we shouldn't think about those things, and there's lots of things that stick to our minds and will always keep us honest because we remember how grateful we are for some of those lessons and those challenging times, because it builds us into a bigger and better version of ourselves. But I guess there's three things I kind of want to just challenge here. Number one is what are you making your current season mean? Right now, if you're feeling down, if you're having struggles, if you're being challenged by something, if things aren't going to plan, if things don't seem to be as simple as you expected them to be, what are you making from this? How are you leveraging that opportunity? Now, Chris, why is it an opportunity? It's an opportunity to test your ability to pivot, to adjust, to flex, to seek help, to try new things, to uh push into, to embrace some of that challenge. And the other thing we tend to do is we we call something a failure that's really just a messy middle. And that's where you are. You're in this, you're stuck between, you know, being easy, things just going as planned, to now things are messy, you don't know what to do, knowing that there's this unknown of where you want to be. And when you get to the other side, you're gonna think, huh, it's all good. Hindsight. But that's why it's interesting. So, how are you handling this now? And for me, I'm struggling with it big time. And I am, I'm trying to put this lens on it that it's like, no, no, no, it's helping me grow, it's helping me grow. And it is helping me grow, but then you start to think, well, when does this change? And with that, we have to think about well, what are we what are the things that we are actually tangibly doing rather than sitting around wait waiting or expecting that where we're stuck or where we feel stuck is just going to become better naturally, because that's not the way it works. You have to be doing things, enabling yourself to get through that growth, to get through that challenge. You problem solve, or you try new things, or you do seek help. Progress hides in the mundane, right? And sometimes when all the messy is happening and all the things don't seem to be working as planned, there's two things we can do. One, you can actually zoom out and actually understand, well, what is the bigger whole perspective of all of this? Is it really that bad? But secondly, you know, think about you can think about, oh, this isn't gonna work, oh, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna make it work? What are you actually doing? What is the small thing that you can do today that actually takes action? Right? Because you can think about these things, you can plan about these things, you can try all these different things in your mind and scenario them out, but unless you're tangibly actually taking action, like go do this, go have that conversation, go, you know, knock on someone's door for a new lead, go try do this, make sure you put in the reps. Are you being consistent? Like, are you doing these things? And that's really the challenge what I'm gonna leave you with. There's gonna be a series of these episodes over the next few weeks, which are short, sharp, and really just keeping you on your toes, as much as it is for myself. I mean, here I am, I'm trying to further my lifestyle and I'm trying to share and document that journey with all everything that I do with my content. But the question I want to be asking you is is like, you know, which one do you want? Do you want to be stuck in a challenge, or do you want to be just sitting and doing the mundane and not really feeling like you're making progress? I want a bit of both, right? You know, I want to be always challenging myself to take things to the next level. And sometimes it's easy to do that because you can control it. But when things come outside of your control, it can be very hard to kind of like get a grip of it. And getting a grip of it is the key component. So you gotta find the small part of it that you can take grip of and own that and run with that, and then you can build it into something beautiful. So, as I said, we're gonna be chatting about a few different things over the next, probably the next six, seven weeks as we lead up to the end of the year. And for me, I'm gonna be taking some time off later in in December, and we'll take a couple of you know, probably four or five weeks off. I'll take some downtime on go into the Philippines. But, you know, that's why I really want to set up these episodes to make sure that you are thinking, you are prompting, you are challenging yourself. Because it's very hard to get stuck in just everything that happens at the end of the year. You know, all the pressures of like, you know, what have you achieved? All the pressures of like what do you want to achieve? But then also there's lots of things happening personally, there's lots of things happening with family, lots of things happening with work. It gets busy. But make sure you do take the five 10 minutes these episodes are. This episode's been gone for 10 minutes. Take 10 minutes for yourself, listen to this, see if there's anything here that you can take from it and help yourself grow. I don't have all your answers for you, I'm sorry, I really don't, but I will do my best to try and prompt things that maybe will help you think differently, to challenge yourself, because these are all things that I'm thinking about. And, you know, hey, it's worked for me. Here we are, five years later since starting, and I'm still documenting that journey. I'm still documenting my journey as I try to figure out, you know, how to further my own lifestyle. And if I can help you do that, that would, you know, that that's obviously gonna make me very, very happy to be able to help others. And that's really the intention of the podcast. So I blabber. We're gonna leave it there. Just remember this where you are right now is not where you're stuck, right? Your current situation is temporary, it's not permanent. This is a reminder that forward movement is always an option. So, what is the forward movement that you're gonna do? Appreciate you being here. I'll see you next week, and you have a wonderful day. Ciao, you know, you can see that.