When You Feel Stuck or Have a Hard Time Being Productive

Life is a lot more complicated right now living through a global trauma, and sometimes that slows down our productivity when stress might take over, or we become too depleted. It’s important to note that HSPs can make a substantial positive difference in the world. We need more HSPs to step into heart-centered leadership roles and makers of positive change. It is often HSPs that take care of others too. Your heart and your gifts are needed. But if we don’t know how to take care of ourselves in the right ways, we are doing a disservice to the world by not showing up thriving.

Most of what we learned about self-care doesn’t work for us. Learning how to practice the right types of self-care to take care of your sensitive nervous system is the key to thriving as an HSP and helping your gifts emerge to help the world. If an HSP healer/leader/educator/parent is wilting and in survival mode, how much can they help another? HSPs need to do things differently. Getting it right means you can have enough energy to take care of you, your family, your community, and even the world. 

In this blog post, I share:

• Ideas that can help us get unstuck

• The HSP Podcast episode: The World Needs You to Thrive: How to Be Healthy, Balanced, & Productive During a Pandemic. Live Podcast with Julie and Willow 

• What thriving looks like

“Taking rest and downtime to practice restorative self-care is NOT selfish.

NOT practicing the right type of self-care eventually hurts everyone. ”

When you are thriving you...

• have more energy

• use your gifts to contribute to the world

• can be your best self

• love life

• follow your ambitions

• understand, love & accept yourself

• feel confident & secure

• know your value 

• live in balance

• have a positive, fulfilling life of joy authentically

• reduce stress, overwhelm, anxiety

• achieve life & career goals

• are healthier

• learn how to support your sensitive nervous system

• feel in control of your life

• learn how to self-regulate

• improve your relationships

• learn how to emotionally regulate

• build greater internal resources & feel joy, happiness, calm and peace

• get more calm

• are kinder & more supportive to yourself

• increase self-compassion

• improve your mindset

• learn how to set & keep healthy boundaries

• get unstuck & remove obstacles

• live a happier life

• find balance

• stop worrying & overthinking

• know how to prepare for life changes

• learn how to support yourself better

• live life with intention

• feel fully alive

• are higher functioning to improve finances & live more comfortably

• feel renewed & live in a tranquil flow of life

• feel better

Ideas that can help us get unstuck

To begin, I would recommend taking a journal into nature and after a little bit of a nature walk or some time connecting to nature allow yourself to reflect a bit through writing on where you are right now, what are the messages around feeling stuck or unproductive? 

• Are you just tired and need rest? 

• Are you stuck because of perfectionism or being hard on yourself? 

• Are you not sleeping well? 

• Are you moving your body and eating well? Drinking enough water?

• Are you spending enough time in nature or can you increase it?

• Are you practicing enough of the right types of self-care to find balance

• Are you watching too much news? 

• Does your positivity tank need a fill-up? In my Sensitive Empowerment Community, we have a whole set of posts and regularly share what fills up the positivity tanks to support what we might be going through.

• Do you forget to prioritize your wellness and take care of everyone else instead?  

• Are you judging yourself?  (this takes away energy points).  You can learn more about how to increase self-acceptance, self-love, and how to protect your energy in my course, Blooming Brilliantly, Understanding and Loving Who You Are as A Sensitive Person.

• Can you practice the self-compassion technique? (this gives energy).

• What feels like a priority to you in your life? 

• Do you need some more time set aside for pleasurable activities and creativity? I love that in our Sensitive Empowerment Community we share our creativity and inspire each other!

• Have you been practicing enough gratitude? Gratitude activates calming centers and makes us feel good.

• To be productive and even to do growth work, we need energy. So if you need to slow your pace to balance your energy, that’s ok too. How can you rest and restore soon?

• There are lessons in all of this. See if you can talk to that inner child and ask what they need. 

• Living during a global trauma takes up energy, and we might need to slow down a bit more and explore what we need right now. We need to explore what we genuinely need without judgment, so we are a kind and loving friend to ourselves. It’s incredible how much energy we get back when we do that. 

• Connect with our loving HSP family in our Sensitive Empowerment Community more if it helps. We have weekly live events together, and it’s wonderful to connect. 

• Focus on Your Little Joy Moments That Fill Your Positivity Tank. Learn more about how to fill up your positivity tank in my course, Brain Training for the Highly Sensitive Person, Techniques to Reduce Anxiety and Overwhelming Emotions.

  Get inspired!

  Listen to The HSP podcast episode The World Needs You to Thrive: How to Be Healthy, Balanced, & Productive During a Pandemic. Live Podcast with Julie and Willow

In this episode, Willow and I share how HSPs have the capability of making a huge difference in the world. In fact, we need more HSPs to step into heart-centered leadership roles and makers of positive change.  Your heart and your gifts are needed. But if we don’t know how to take care of ourselves in the right ways we are doing a disservice to the world by not showing up thriving. Most of what we have been taught about self-care doesn’t work for us. Learning how to practice the right types of self-care and learn to take care of your sensitive nervous system is the key to thriving as an HSP and helping your gifts emerge to help the world. If a healer/leader/educator/parent is wilting and in survival mode, how much can they help another? HSPs need to do things differently. Getting it right, means you can have enough energy to take care of you, your family, your community, and even the world.

HSPs have the capability of making a huge difference in the world. In fact, we need more HSPs to step into heart-centered leadership roles and makers of positive change. Your heart and your gifts are needed. But if we don't know how to take care of ourselves in the right ways we are doing a disservice to the world by not showing up thriving.

Sometimes being stuck or struggling to be productive is about being burned out in our life in general, and slowing down a bit to rest and restore our balance can help spark that part of ourselves again. Try it and let me know in the comments what came up for you. ❤

Want more tips to reduce challenges and increase your resiliency as a sensitive person? I’ll send you ideas and support every week. Sign up for the Sensitive Empowerment newsletter and get a free guide for calming an overwhelmed HSP brain!

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