I Feel Stuck And Lost. How Do I Change Things?

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0:43Plus, to customers, ask how you can get up to$1 ,500 in prepaid cards. Limited time offer, prepaid card offers, and 9-13-26. Restrictions apply. Call for details. Let's face it. Life is hard. Let's stop pretending that it's not. and some seasons are harder than others. Some days feel like a cruel joke, to be honest with you. I've been there. If you're feeling stuck right now, today's episode's for you. And I'm not gonna give you some sort of, you know, motivational poster. I'm gonna give you some clear steps that actually have worked for me in my life. One of the biggest takeaways I wanna share with you today is that my life changed when I stopped living in my head, when I started realizing that I have to start doing things to change things.

1:27They say motion creates emotion, but also if you want to change your emotional state, sometimes you just got to get out and make something happen.

1:40Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow, and scale your business. Hey, if this show has helped you in any way, it would be amazing if you dropped us a quick review on whatever app you're using right now to listen to this podcast. It helps me and my team bring you new episodes every week and more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover the podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. So how do you get out and make something happen?

2:14Well, that's what my three-step approach is all about. And the last step shows you how to build some incredible confidence so that when the dark days revisit you, you have the feeling of I can take on anything. Nicole's here with me today on Q &A Wednesday to help me answer today's question. Nicole, great to have you again. Hey, Omar. Happy to be here. I know this question came from a reply to a newsletter that you sent out where you shared that you regretted not starting your business sooner, that there was a fear of failure that got in the way. And so we got a reply and we're not going to use a person's real name.

2:47So Robin has sent in this question in reply to that email. Their question is, I feel stuck and lost. Nothing seems to be going right, and I don't know how to change things, how I feel or my actual situation. How do I get out of this? I'm sure many of us have felt lost and stuck at many points in our life. So I'm really curious to hear your three-step approach. Let's go. Let's answer this question. Yeah. First of all, I have, and I will continue to have, those dark days and those challenging days. And that's life. Life is going to challenge you. And if you're not being challenged, then you're not really trying hard enough, honestly.

3:22You got to push yourself a little bit and be uncomfortable sometimes. Having said that, Robin, who asked today's question, I got to be honest with you first and foremost before I give you any of my steps or what works with me and all that kind of stuff is the hard part about being stuck isn't just the situation you're in, whether you're strapped financially, whether you're having health problems, whether you're maybe not living the life that you planned out to have. Maybe you're still living with your parents, whatever it might be. It's not just a situation. It's that you're carrying this disappointment of yourself 24-7, right?

3:54You're carrying this burden and feeling like you're not where you should be for every day, for every hour of the day. You just kind of beating yourself up throughout the whole time that you're existing. Yeah, I think the rumination that happens when you're still when you're in your head all the time, I think that's where it's going to be helpful to have some strategies how to get out of there? Because that's where you get stuck, right? You get stuck when it's just you and your conversation in your head or the problem that you keep facing. What is something that you can do? Well, the reason why I want to share this episode is because often when you share these things with your friends and family, they just kind of pat you on the back.

4:33They kind of say like, hey, it's going to be okay. Things are going to turn around. I believe in you, all these things. But this doesn't really tell you what to do. Like, how do I move forward? How do I get out of this situation. And one of the things that really bothers me about, you know, modern motivation and the internet and all these reels you see on Instagram is like, it actually doesn't tell you what are the steps you need to take to change your situation? Because the honest truth is, if you don't do something different, nothing's going to change, right? If you just hope the world's going to cater to your whims and things are going to get better magically, that is delusional, honestly.

5:05And I learned this the hard way. So today's episode is about like, How do you take those first steps, even when you're feeling down, when you're feeling, how do you take that just low effort, low lift ways to change your situation? Now, I also want to mention a book that would be incredibly helpful if anybody's struggling right now. This is a book called The Biggest Bluff by Maria Korakova. It's one of my favorite books. She wrote this book at a time where nothing was going right in her life. She had health problems. She had close family members passing away, relationship problems, you name it.

5:39Everything was going wrong in her life. And she was like, I've had it. What's going on here? I'm doing everything right. I'm trying to be good. I'm trying to do all the right things so that my life is good and it's not. Right. And she wanted to find out how much of life is luck and just, you know, the cards that you're dealt or how much of life is in your control based on the decisions that you make. And she went on this journey to learn this through the analogy of poker. She decided to learn poker and, you know, spoiler alert, she became a poker champion through this experiment. But that's not the point that she became great at poker.

6:13What she learned is like how much is actually in our control? How much do we actually have to put ourselves in a situation where we can get lucky, where we can have things move in our favor? And I love this book so much, not because I'm just a huge poker fan as well, but also because it recognizes the fact that things will go wrong. And one of the biggest themes in the book is like, don't focus on a bad beat, which is like a term in poker. Like you're going to lose and you're going to lose badly at some point in the game of poker, usually in any given time you play poker. So you have to have a short term memory.

6:47You have to be like, okay, I can't focus on the fact that that just happened because I have to be my best self for the next hand so that I can maybe possibly win that next one and the one after and eventually the whole tournament or, you know, be successful at poker or life. There's just an analogy. That's one of the things that has stuck with me from that book, Don't Focus on a Bad Beat, which that idea has come in many ways, like pick yourself up, dust yourself off. You know, there's so many ways that you can get this advice. I think, you know, we're not probably the first people, you're not the first person to share advice on how to get unstuck.

7:19But there's always those moments that where a message might land or resonate with someone in the right time that they finally get it. And for me, when she in that book, when she says, don't focus on a bad beat, even though I'm not in as immersed in the world of poker, it's such an easy way to remember that. OK, there's going to be a setback. Don't focus on it. It really that was super effective. I think a lot of success in business and life is about self-awareness and emotional awareness, like understanding, OK, I'm angry right now. Why? Because I just something bad happened in life or I didn't get that customer that I wanted, that client.

7:58or things are not going my way. Recognize that, all right? You have to understand that this is going to affect your performance. Understand that like, okay, I need to step out of myself right now and realize, okay, that happened. That's okay. How do I make sure that tomorrow is better, that the next hour is better so that I am rebounding from this loss? Do you think some people are better at that detachment, like stepping out of yourself and recognizing the emotion and separating? Because it's hard when you're in that emotional state. Right. I love this question about like, do you think some people are better at it because they worked on it?

8:30Yes. Question of practice. Yeah. No one's born with this. Like, you know, we all start as babies. We all learn something. Maybe our family or our parents taught us something that we didn't. You know, some parents were helpless with that or not. But at some point you have to pick it up. You have to work on it. You have to you have to recognize this. You know, I wasn't given this as a child. You know, I wasn't you know, we didn't talk about our emotions or talk about like feelings. You know, I can't remember last time my mom cried. Like my mom was a tough woman and, you know, and crying was not like seen as a good thing growing up.

9:03Like, you know, wipe your tears, wash your face kind of thing. You know, like there's nothing to be sad about. There's poor kids in Africa, like all that. So you have to learn it. So like anything worth anything is going to take some effort and it's going to take a bit of like, oh, I want to be angry. I want to blame other people. I want to say that this is not fair instead of saying, hey, you know what? This is going to happen. Everybody has bad beats. Everybody's going to have a tough time. Everybody's going to have bad seasons. Okay, so we can unlearn it. I think that's where we want to go.

9:31Yeah, and that kind of leads me to step one of the framework I want to share with everybody. And step one, and I know this is going to sound very cliche and very, I would say, maybe you've heard it a million times. And maybe it's not going to resonate, but I'm going to just go a little deeper to make sure it does. And I want you to just take a moment to stop complaining and reset with gratitude. I know this sounds like, oh, don't complain. Don't be a complainer. You know, kind of hustle culture, blah, blah, blah. No, I want you to hear me out. It's okay to feel bad about something, but it's not okay to feel bad about it for an extended period of time.

10:04You can allow yourself an hour to feel bad about something, but think about how much time and energy you're wasting, not getting to where you want to go, changing your situation by complaining. And complaining is you are basically talking negatively about yourself. Like imagine you start trash talking your colleague or friend of yours or your wife or your husband. Like you're a loser. You're horrible. You think that person's horrible. Well, the only difference is that you're doing that to yourself. Yeah. Tending on yourself. Exactly. So you got to stop that and you got to start instead. I like to do a little bit of a gratitude exercise because we all have something to be grateful for.

10:40And it's very hard to be angry and grateful at the same time. Is it? It is. I do. Like, think about how can you be grateful for what you have, your health, your family, a roof of your head. I always say, like, if you live in a place where bombs are not falling from the sky, like, that's something to be grateful for. I know. But doesn't that kind of invalidate the problem? Like, the problem still hasn't gone away. You could have just been laid off from your job, for example. Right. And there's a lot of things that you can be grateful for. But it still doesn't change the fact that there is this problem that exists in your life, right?

11:13Yeah. But the point I'm trying to make here is what's going to get you out of that situation? Complaining? No. What's going to make you get out of the situation is taking action. You're only going to take action if you feel better about the situation. If you feel like, OK, actually, I have a lot of resources. I can get out of this situation. You know, I'm not alone. I have friends. I have a community. Maybe I'm staying with my parents because I can't afford my rent anymore. But at least I have my parents. You're not like there's a it can get a lot worse. And that's the point I'm trying to make is that like you still have a lifeline.

11:44You still can make this happen. Yeah. I mean, as children of immigrants, we've been fed the there's always someone that's got it worse off than you. And that's how we would. And I'm glad for that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's been helpful. But there were times I've grown up like that. But there were times in my life where it's just like, OK, there's a whole list of things that I'm unhappy with right now. My career, current relationship, where I'm living in the world. Great. I've got friends. I've still got family. but there's all these other big areas in my life that I'm still unhappy with. And I can't remember, I don't know if this would be helpful, but it's just come to mind.

12:17Someone told me, write down your worry list. And I remember doing that. I literally remember writing down all the things that were a problem for me in that moment. I guess, do you think that's something that you could do? Because you're saying like, okay, recognize the problem, be self-aware. Is there maybe something tangible that can kind of separate, help that process of detaching yourself from? Well, you are detaching yourself by writing a wording list. You're taking yourself out of the situation. You're being objective. You're writing things. You're doing something. You're not complaining.

12:46That's not complaining. That's you just being a little bit more strategic about, these are the things I want to get better at. These are the things I want to improve in my life. These are the things that are bothering me. Why are you doing that? Because you want to change it. You're not doing it just like, oh, I want to write this list so I can dwell at it and feel bad about myself. Your intention is not just to complain. Every entrepreneur has a graveyard of ideas that never saw the light of day. They're not bad ideas. They're just ideas that you just didn't have the time to validate. You didn't have three weeks to put up a live page and get it designed and developed.

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14:44Set up in minutes on any device, keep your existing number, and add teammates as you grow. No IT, no hassle. And Quo's built-in AI agent handles after-hours calls, answers questions, and even books appointments so you never miss a lead, even when your team is offline. One of the reasons I attribute any success I've had in business is great customer support and service. And Quo makes that easy. Money's on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free, plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash MBA. That's Quo.com slash MBA. Listen, Nicole, you've been with me for long enough to know We've had some dark days.

15:29We've had some challenging times in our business where we're not really sure how we're going to get out of it. And we saw the other side. But in those moments, in those mornings, I would wake up and I had to put out some fires at Webinar Ninja or, you know, my lead designer got poached from an old company. Now I have no designer. How am I going to create new features? I'm worried about the morale of the team. I just sat down and I just talked to myself about the basics that I have. I have my health. I have a roof over my head. I have a partner in life that cares about me and is with me on this journey.

15:58I'm not alone. Like I said, I live in a safe place. No bombs falling in my head. This is a reality that people don't like talk about. Oh, yeah, I know. That's far away. That's a reality of a lot of people in the world. Like, like, that's not something to belittle. A lot of people are living in war-torn areas where their own personal safety, they don't know what's happening. Right. I can read. I can write. I can speak English. I have access to all this knowledge. Right. I have the opportunity to get out of this situation. And by the way, I did a little research. I wrote down all those things. And I found out that only 18 % of the world have all those things, those basic things I talked about health, sound mind, a roof of your head, not living in a war-torn country can speak English.

16:36You have another chance to turn things around, a much bigger chance than most people in the world, like the vast majority of the world. 82 % of the world don't have what you have. So like that is something to really think about. For me, this works because it makes me feel like, all right, stop feeling sorry for yourself, Omar. This is not the end of the world. You have a lot going for you. You can figure this out, just like you figured out things before in the past. And it just gets me feeling like I need to do something instead of just sit here and have a pity party. I know those gratitude lists work.

17:06And it's one of those things where it's the hardest thing to do in the moment that you need it the most. But I know we've done those lists and they have worked. I think the flip side of the gratitude list is that if you don't recognize all the positives that exist, it's that you're still in this like hyper focus of the negative. I think that's what the gratitude list helps you get out of. Yes. I also want to add that this really works if you make the time and spend the money and the effort to see the world. Like most people that see the world, this is tangible. Like what I'm saying to you is like you go to other countries where like the standard of what you think is normal is not normal everywhere in the world.

17:48When you travel to other countries and they have things that they do better than us and all that kind of stuff and their culture is unique but it becomes closer to home when you actually have met the person you've you know had a taxi driver that told you about their family where and you realize oh my gosh it's so normal for somebody who has a family of 10 living in one house you know you start to realize oh this is something that is real and not just like something i see on the news okay i mean you're talking about perspective there yeah but someone who's probably in a moment where they can't yeah i think i'm just saying investing in that yeah throughout your life is when you have the tough times you'll have a real understanding like yeah i remember when i was i went to india and saw those kids on the street begging with one leg that's a reality yeah but i do think there could be you know we've had this drilled in that someone always has it worse but i think I don't want to feel like those problems that I am experiencing are invalidated.

18:44No one says invalid. No one says invalid. But you have to put things in perspective. That's the point of this exercise. Or you don't want to add the guilt. There's no guilt. There's no guilt. What I'm saying is that my latest product launch failed and it didn't do as well as I wanted it to. It feels like the worst thing in the world. It feels like I'm a loser. It feels like nothing's going right. You need to put that in perspective to help you move forward, which is the next step. and the way to move forward is to put in perspective with all the problems that could possibly happen to you right and you realize oh actually it's not that bad what i need to you know just like don't focus on a bad beat and move forward well i'm gonna agree with you because because i'm the product of that i know that people feel like this is like oh yeah that's true it is true these are real people in the real world yeah right that like the only difference is that they were born there and you were not.

19:36We have to recognize the fact that you are blessed. We are blessed to have the things that we have, the opportunities that we have. So you have to put it in context. Sure. If you're listening to this podcast, you've got access to the internet, if you're able to write... This is so easy for us to do this when we want to punch up. So easy for like, oh, woe to me, Jeff Bezos' jet didn't work. He couldn't go anywhere. We could do this for the people above us, but when people are below us are like, oh, there's somebody else. We don't know them. We have to think about that. It's a reality. Let's move on to step two.

20:07Step two is to do something, anything, any small step. And this is probably the most important step because this is what's actually going to change things for you. This is actually going to make things start to feel better. And you're going to start getting some momentum and you're going to get some wins and you're going to start to realize, oh, I'm actually almost where I need to go. So this only happens if you just start. The thing is that that's the hardest part. So you need to figure out what is the smallest micro step I need to do. Say, for example, you're overwhelmed with your finances. You're not sure if you're in debt.

20:39You don't know how much in debt you are, blah, blah, blah. One small step you could do is literally create a Google sheet, name the Google sheet. That's it. That's one step. The sheet exists, right? You're taking a step. For example, when I was 20 years old, I was really financially strapped. I was just making enough to pay my bills. I couldn't get ahead. I didn't have any discretionary money. I was still kind of in university and trying to make things happen. And I wanted to start building money on the side. I wanted to learn how to build a side hustle, how to start a business, all that kind of stuff.

21:10And I couldn't afford taking a course or anything like that. But there was a bookstore across the road from my job. It was a Barnes and Nobles. and I walked into the store and I went into the business section and there was this book that was in bright yellow called Online Business for Dummies. I picked up that book and when I say picked up, I mean, I picked it up from the shelf and started reading it in the bookstore because I didn't have the money to buy the book, right? At the time, this is like, you know, 10 bucks or something like that. But like, I just didn't have that kind of money to spend.

21:42And I would read it for like 30 minutes, put it down, go back to work. This is during my lunch break. And then the next day during lunch, I'd eat my lunch really quickly, go to the Barnes and Nobles cross street, read another 30 minutes. And I did that until I finished that book. And the funny thing is, is that like that book gave me some insights and gave me enough to take the next step, which taught me about eBay. And that's when I had an eBay store where I started to sell rare Air Jordans. And about a few months later, I made my first, I think, 30 or$40 where I just basically bought a pair of Jordans, sold it to somebody else who wants it, made the difference.

22:18It's called arbitrage. And I did it with no money. I did it with very limited information. I remember I used my mom's computer in the house to build my eBay store and using my computer. But the point I'm trying to make here is that as little action as possible to get the ball rolling, you have to get something going. The book gives you ideas. The ideas get you to take some thoughts. Oh, maybe I should do this. Let me try that out. Next time I go to my mom's house, I'm going to open up and see what this ebay.com is. You have to do something. A small step is a step. And as you take each step, take another step.

22:55You take another step, take another step. And this applies to everything. It applies to getting healthy. This applies to getting better with finances, deals with relationship problems. Any little step moving forward is going to help you. Do you think though, you found your first step in a book. Do you think there's other ways? Like, it almost sounds like you picked up a book and you were looking for a business book because you kind of knew that you were going to go into business. I mean, it just seems a little bit not easy. What if I don't know where to turn for that first step? I mean, such an overwhelmed situation.