Burnout Free Living for High Achiever, Driven Women : Beyond Burnout

42: How to Figure Out What You Want And Get The Clarity You Need

• Tertia Riegler • Episode 42

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Trying to Figure Out What You Want Without Going Around In Circles

Are you stuck in your head, circling the same questions over and over? Wondering what the “right” move is? Second-guessing yourself into exhaustion? If you’ve ever felt paralyzed by overthinking, this episode is for you.

In this episode, Tertia Riegler dives into the common traps of overanalyzing, waiting for external validation, and talking yourself out of what you already know, deep down. She shares practical insights on how to stop circling the same questions and start taking action, even when you don’t have the full picture yet. If you’re ready to move out of overwhelm and into momentum, this episode is for you.

What we cover in this episode:

  • Why overthinking is keeping you from your purpose
  • The real reason you feel stuck (it’s not because you don’t know)
  • How to tap into your inner knowing and move forward with confidence
  • The fastest way to break the cycle of indecision and start living on purpose

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome. I'm Tertia and you are listening to the Beyond Burnout for Driven Woman Podcast where we end the cycle of burnout so you can feel more balanced, more clear, and more in control of your life. If you are a high achiever ready to move past overwhelm, overthinking and overdrive, and instead drop down into your body so you can start living full out, you are in the right spot. Let's dive in. So here's a funny story. If you've noticed how inconsistent I am in how I pronounce my name, I'm from South Africa originally, I've lived in Europe for over 10 years now. I am Afrikaans and in South Africa, Tasha is a very common name, so everybody knows how to pronounce that and they know what I mean when I introduce myself. But I've noticed that where I live in Austria, it's a difficult pronunciation for people as with some of my clients in other parts of the world.

(01:01):
So I am pronouncing it in English most of the time and sometimes I forget. So if you've noticed this is what's going on, it sort of ties in with what I want to get into today's episode. You know that feeling when you're stuck in your own head, you're like circling the same questions, the same situation, the same scenario over and over and over. What do I want? What is the right move? What if I get it wrong? What should it be? What should I call myself? It's kind of exhausting to go over and over and over these mental loops. We are spending so much time in this mental energy of trying to figure it out and to analyse every option and to weigh up each possibility, but we always end up in the exact same place. We feel stuck, we feel frustrated, and we second guess ourselves, which is a very uncomfortable place to be in this push pull.

(02:01):
And I've been there myself countless of times. I've had moments in the past where my heart was pulling me in one direction, but my mind made it feel impossible. So what happens is I would decide and then I doubt myself, and then I would say yes, and then I'd second guess myself. And definitely underneath all of that is a fear. It's driven by fear of what would people think? What if I make the wrong move? What if I step into something that I can't fully see yet and it's not the right thing to do? Recently I went through it again in my business I was redefining what I'm here to do. I was questioning what is next? I had just turned 50. I spoke about this in a previous episode and I was standing at a point in my life where I wanted to know what is it that I'm here for?

(02:53):
And I realised again how much time I had spent waiting for the right answer to now. What I've learned in that experience, and this is what I want to take you through in our episode today, is that clarity doesn't come from thinking harder. Thinking harder is the trap that we fall into, this overthinking dilemma that we find ourselves in as we try and figure out what it is that we want. When we stuck in this overthinking, we keep on waiting for signs, but it doesn't come from there. The clarity doesn't come from the sign or from thinking hard. It comes from trusting yourself to take the next step and trusting that you know what that next step is, even if you don't have the full picture. So if you are tired of spinning in circles, this episode is going to be so helpful for you.

(03:45):
I want us to cut through this mental noise. I want you to learn and trust that you can tap into what you already know and then finally move forward. So when we tell ourselves, I don't know what I want, I don't know what the next move is, what should I do? That's not really the whole truth. It's not that you don't know what you should do. It's not that you don't know what the next step is or that you don't know what you actually want. You do know, but that feels very complicated. It feels very uncomfortable and it feels risky. And so instead of trusting that you end up talking yourself in circles. So you think about something from every possible angle, you weigh up the pros and cons. I mean, they even teach us in some schools of thought that the best way to make a decision is to write down the pros and cons and looking at it logically.

(04:41):
And that's how you'll get your answer. And of course, if you've been in my world for any amount of time, I say BS, you cannot make a decision based only on logic. We need to bring our whole selves to the picture. When we only go with the pros and cons, when we overthink our situation, we end up imagining every worst case scenario. That's how your brain works. By the time that you've analysed it to death, you've talked yourself out of it entirely. So you start over, you go through all the options again. You ask for advice. You take your attention and your awareness and your focus outwards hoping that maybe someone out there will say the magic words or show you the magic bullet that will make it all click. And instead what happens is you just end up feeling more confused, you're feeling more drained, and you're still not moving forward.

(05:36):
And this is a real problem, the inability to move forward, that feeling of stuckness. And in so many of the discovery calls that I do with potential clients, this is a theme that keeps on coming up and up and up. I wish that I just knew what to do. I wish that it was clear. I wish that I could finally just figure out what is next, what it is that I truly, truly want. I'm popping in here to tell you about a new two day free masterclass that I am hosting. It is going to help you break free from burnout to stop overworking and to step into your next level of success by unlocking the genius that is already inside of you. And this two day masterclass is for those of you who are wildly capable and you don't see your own brilliance. So we are going to dive in such juicy topics in this masterclass.

(06:38):
And some of the things that we are going to cover is the real reason that you keep on burning out the three biggest blocks that keep high achieving driven women like you stuck in overworking and overthinking and overperforming, and you will discover how to shift from force into flow. And it doesn't matter whether this is in your business or your career, whether this is in your relationships or even in your parenting, you will be able to apply this into all areas of your life. So this is for you if you know that you are meant for more, but you keep on bumping up against second guessing yourself even though you are capable, even though you know you've got this in hand, even though that you have the push through and the determination, this is for you if you want to discover how to set healthy boundaries, how to stop the self-doubt from taking over your mind and how to finally own your genius so that you can stop burning out and create success with less effort.

(07:48):
The link to sign up is in the show notes, and I can't wait to see you there. Back to the episode. So here's a question for you. If this is a pattern that you find yourself in, are you really confused about what you want to do, about what is next for you? Or are you just afraid to commit? And what would happen if you made that choice and you didn't let yourself back out of it? Because sometimes the real work isn't figuring it out. The real work lies in coming back to yourself and finding those answers within, finding the courage within and not overcomplicating it. When we get stuck in our minds and in overthinking, it is going to get over complicated. When we get stuck in figuring out, it's often just the distraction from actually doing the thing. And when we're stuck in this figuring out mode, your brain treats it like a problem to solve.

(08:51):
So you analyse, you gather more opinions, you run through all of these different possible outcomes in your head, and then before you know it, weeks or months have passed and you are still in the same place. I want you to think about it like this. Your body already knows before your mind even catches up. Go and look in your own life experience, think back to, have you ever had a moment where you felt that answer? You felt that knowing you knew in your gut, you had this knowing, but then immediately you started doubting it. As soon as you brought your mind online to start thinking about the how, then the darts also crept in. And this is the thing, you don't need a plan. You don't need a how as much as you need the momentum. I am the first to tell you that I completely understand why we get stuck in overthinking because it's a way that we can avoid discomfort.

(09:48):
It's a way that we can avoid the risk of getting it wrong. So we tell ourselves that we need more clarity, we need more certainty, we need more research. But what we actually need is to find that courage to take even one next step forward and then adjust as we go. And in order to do this, we need to resource ourselves. We have to create safety within. We have to build that resilience and that self-trust and only comes if you come out of your head and into your body, which is a very obvious answer to getting out of overthinking, is to learn how to be inside your body. But it's not only about being inside your body, it's about becoming present to all of the data that is available there, becoming sensitive to that. That is your intuition that can begin to guide you. That's how you connect with your intuition.

(10:45):
Your intuition is not something that's floating in outer space and that gets put onto you. Your intuition is actually part of your lived experience. It's all of the data that you collect, and it is a direct line to doing what is correct for you. The more we take action, the more information we have to work with, the more our intuition can give us that next little breadcrumb. And this is how we get more clarity. If you're going to wait for the clarity before taking any action, this is where we stay stuck because so often we think that we need to fully understand something before we can start. And this is a reflection of how in this world we are so conditioned to rely on our minds to help us make sense of the world. And when we do this, we only have access to such a small part of our personal power.

(11:47):
You can sit around and analyse a decision forever, but you don't actually know how it feels until you do it. I was in a call recently where we spoke about our different business offers and one of the ladies on the call mentioned that she has all of these ideas, but they are all in her head. And as long as they are in her head, she's not able to sell these offers. She's not able to make a living off them. And it's the same as long as it's stuck in our heads, we don't actually, we can't do anything with it, right? You might think that you'd love a certain career path. You might think that you'd love to do a certain creative activity, but until you actually step into it, you won't know if it truly fits you. Our confidence comes from being in the experience of things, from responding in the present moment and building our muscle, building our skill.

(12:43):
We do overthink because we are afraid of failing because we are afraid of making the wrong choice. We're afraid of what might happen, what people might think. But the more we do it, the more we practise, the more we take that next step, the more we lean into our intuition and follow those nudges, the more trust we build in ourselves. And it's always helpful to remember that nothing is ever permanent. I see sometimes how my clients fall into the thinking, which we all do, by the way, to say that this is it. This is like a life death decision. And the truth is it isn't really. You always have the ability and the power to adjust. And as long as you wait for the perfect decision or the perfect answer or the perfect direction, the longer you are going to stay in limbo. Most people think of intuition as you see a sign, you feel certain you take action.

(13:44):
It's that thing outside of you that tells you, yes, correct, go ahead. But that's backward. My experience of how our insertion actually works is that we feel this internal call and we honour that call. We listen to that call. We trust that call. We commit to following that call, and then we start seeing the signs reflected in our outer world. You don't get that confirmation before the leap. You get it after. Just think about it. How many times have you finally made a decision or committed to a direction, taken a step, and then suddenly all of these moments of synchronicity pop up? Like the classical example of opening a book in exactly the right page and finding exactly the right passage that you needed to read in that exact moment. And it could be anything really. I literally just this morning opened up my email and I found an email that a hundred percent confirmed the decision that I took not so long ago, a decision that I was stuck with and that I was overthinking, and that I finally said, okay, I'm trusting myself.

(15:02):
I'm trusting this and I'm taking this next step. And I got an email this morning that a hundred percent confirmed that the step was the correct step. If we are waiting for signs before we move, we are going to be stuck forever. You don't need to make huge life decisions to experience this. By the way. You can start figuring out what it is that you want and get clear on what it is that you want in your daily choices too, in the smaller choices. For example, you can start saying no to things that drain your energy. You already know when someone asks you of something and you instantly feel that resistance. That's something that you can begin to honour. Your body knows when it's time to slow down. If you keep on ignoring this urge to take space for yourself to retreat, to pause, to move at your own pace, this is an opportunity for you to explore what is underneath it, what is in the way of you honouring your own rhythm?

(16:09):
How are you standing in your own way? And I'm saying this with love, not judgement . How are you standing in your own way of being clear on what it is that you want and giving yourself what it is that you need? Maybe there's something that you keep on thinking about doing like a creative project or a shift in your career or a new dynamic in your relationship that you want to bring in, but you keep on dismissing it because it doesn't seem logical, it doesn't make sense. It might upset the apple cart, but what if instead of questioning it, instead of being constantly in this mental tug and rolling it around in your head, you decided to take one small step towards that to letting it happen, to allowing it to grow or evolve or take up some space in your life. The mental load of trying to figure things out is exhausting.

(17:11):
It keeps you stuck in your head. It keeps you running around in circles. You keep on second guessing yourself and overanalyzing. This is what burns you out. This is what overwhelms you. You can only begin to figure out what you truly want when you learn to trust yourself, when you learn to trust those intuitive nudges, and you begin to follow the breadcrumbs so that you're living your life from the inside out instead of from the outside in. And yes, that is a journey, that is a practise, and it's a dedicated way of living your life on purpose in that way. So here is my invitation to you. Drop into your body. Notice where you are not trusting that nudge. And then take one small little step to get closer to trusting the nudge, to trusting your knowing. And then when you do, tell me about it.

(18:18):
So screenshot this episode. You can tag me on Instagram and let me know what is the first little step that you are taking to learn how to trust yourself instead of getting stuck in overthinking. If this episode hit home for you, please make sure to subscribe and you can share it with a friend who needs to hear this. I'd also love it if you could leave me a review every time that you do. It helps more women break free from this mental weight of overthinking and start trusting themselves again. And that's it for today. Go on, take that step in, honouring something that you already know. That's a wrap. I'll catch you in the next one.