Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant

Erica: to do this alone.

Erica: Hey. Hey. Hey, y'all. Welcome to the Stepping Stone podcast. Now y'all know I love talking about sticky floors and glass ceilings.

Erica: But what I want to talk about today is the hardest part about being stuck. Now I think that the hardest part about being stuck is that sometimes we don't even know we are stuck until we are deep into the stick. Even if you recognize that some of the behaviors or the thoughts that you have or you're doing are not productive or positive, you keep doing them. Sometimes it can be hard to realize we're even engaging in these toxic behaviors or thoughts that keep us stuck in our own sticky floors. In fact, sometimes we don't recognize these behaviors and thought patterns until someone we love points them out to us or until they become problematic.

Erica: So how do you know if you're stuck? The question seems obvious, but it's not always. Now one example that I can give you that I have personally worked through myself is using wine to numb the noise and the stress after a hard day. Now after a few glasses after a hard day didn't seem like a bad thing, right, until it turned into a more frequent habit, until it turned into a few glasses every night, until I was drinking more than I was comfortable drinking, until it was me tired, sluggish, dragging my bed my body out of bed every morning at the crack of dawn and using something that I love, fitness, as a punishment, not for pleasure, to prove to myself that it wasn't the wine that was holding me back. So how do you come to the realization before you get to that point?

Erica: Well, let me ask you a few questions. The first question that I wanna ask is, do you focus more on what you don't want over what you do want? Do you focus more on what annoys you, what irks you over what is bringing you joy and happiness and lighting you up? Do you sit there at your desk in the morning and say, I don't wanna go to this meeting. I don't wanna talk to this person.

Erica: I don't wanna start this project. If you find yourself going down that rabbit hole, and you aren't thinking about the pieces of your job that you love, what are you doing? You're not gonna enjoy every aspect of your job. That's for sure. And if you did if you do, well, dang.

Erica: Good for you. But I have found there will always be a piece of work that can be frustrating. But if you're focusing only on the things that irk you and not the things that you love, I'm telling you that you are stuck. The next question I wanna ask you is, do you spend more time worrying about what others will think of you than doing what makes you happy? Now for me, I spent months, y'all, sitting on the idea of this podcast, knowing that I would love networking with other women, that I would love the challenge, and how much fun I have talking with people about their sticky floors and how that would light me up.

Erica: But I didn't do anything about it. I sat on that idea because I was so worried that others would judge me, thinking that I was crazy for starting a podcast, thinking that they will you know, that they're gonna think I don't know what the hell I'm doing, which, news flash, they're right, but I'm figuring it out as I go. You know, I was just sitting there thinking that other people were making assumptions about how I was spending my time. And you know what? Maybe that is happening.

Erica: Maybe they do that. Maybe they don't. But guess what? It's none of my business what others think of me. So if you find yourself spending more time worrying about what other people will think of you than taking action and doing what makes you happy, you might be stuck.

Erica: Third question, do you spend more time trying to be liked than trying to be happy? Now as women, we are naturally people pleasers. We have been taught from a young age to comfort others at the expense of ourselves, to put others first, to air quote, make it nice. But that can keep your ass stuck. You are not going to be everyone's cup of tea.

Erica: You are not meant to be in everyone's tribe. But follow your gut. Follow your passion. Do what makes you happy. And your tribe that you're supposed to be with, they will find you, and they will celebrate you.

Erica: Question number four. Do you find yourself always chasing the next thing without asking yourself why? Now I find myself in this predicament when I was trying to have a career change and exit the fitness industry, but I wasn't sure where I wanted to go. I was taking project management courses. I was getting different certifications.

Erica: I was always reading another growth book and watching webinars, and I had what my business partner likes to call the ping pong brain to the max. I was not centered or focused. And I'm not saying that doing any of that was a bad thing, but I could have saved a lot of time and energy if I had sat down and worked through what my core values are, what my why is, and how I could harness those to serve others. Now this is a sticky floor with a lot of stick because you can be all over the place. I remember thinking the next thing that would take me to success was this webinar or that course or this training would be it.

Erica: And it wasn't until I sat down and I did the work and I talked with my tribe, I talked with my mentor, and I worked through some of my blind spots. And when I really focused in on my why, which if you don't know be know me by now, my why is helping people. I found a path that worked for me. It moved me forward in a productive way, and it provided me with purpose while fulfilling my passion. So if you find yourself always chasing that next thing without really knowing why, you might be stuck.

Erica: And then my last question for you is, are you celebrating your wins? What? Yes. I said it. If you aren't celebrating your wins, you might be stuck.

Erica: Take a moment and look at how far you've come. You were not the person you were six months ago. Heck, maybe not even a week ago. And as women, we often downplay our successes and our accomplishments, and we don't see them as something big. And I'll revert back to fitness because it's such a great example, and it's so just ingrained in my life.

Erica: But when I think about when I first started lifting weights, I was curling five pound weights, bicep curls, y'all. Five pounds. Now I wouldn't even think to pick up a five pound weight for a bicep curl. That wouldn't do anything for me. I now curl with fifteens and shoot, one day I'll move up to the twenties.

Erica: But I should have stopped and celebrated the day and the moment that I could move from the fives to the eights. And then again, when I move from the eights to the tens and the tens to the twelves and the twelves to the fifteens, each progression should be a celebration. Each extra mile that you walk, each extra push up is growth. When you are stuck, you you're not seeing how far you've come and you're only looking at where you are, chances are you're not happy. You need to give yourself credit for everything that you have accomplished, every project you have completed, every small stepping stone that you have climbed because they all add up.

Erica: So what do you think? Do any of those things sound like you? Do you find yourself saying, dang. That resonates. And I'm gonna touch on those again.

Erica: I'm just gonna put them all in one nice little list for you. But you might be stuck if you're focusing more on what you don't want over what you do. You're spending more time worrying about what others think of you than doing what makes you happy. You're spending more time trying to be liked than being happy. You find yourself always chasing the next thing without asking yourself why, and you aren't celebrating your win.

Erica: If those things resonate with you, chances are you're probably stuck. Now I do wanna take a moment and say that we probably have a little bit of one or two of those no matter what because sticky floors are always around us. No one has their shit all the way together. It's impossible. But the more self aware that we are and the more intentional that we can be, the more in tune we are with our thoughts, the faster we can get unstuck and move forward.

Erica: Now the moment I realized that the wine that I was drinking every night had creeped in and it was making me uncomfortable and it wasn't serving me anymore was the moment I knew I needed to change. And once I finally launched my podcast and I started just feeling lit up after having recorded sessions with amazing women, did I register that I wasted so much time sitting around worrying about what others would think of me over doing something that is adding so much value to my life. Now I don't claim to have all the answers, and I don't know that I will ever truly be unstuck. But I am working to make myself aware, and the growth is there. And it can be for you too.

Erica: This thing called life isn't something that we are going to have figured out. And we're learning as we go. It's the journey. Right? Now when you take a moment when you're feeling stuck, I beg of you to take that stuck feeling as a signal to stop what you're doing.

Erica: Look at your life and ask yourself, what am I doing? What am I not doing? But most importantly, what do I need to change? So take that signal and start. It's time to get unstuck.