When You Feel Stuck in Life, Listen to This

(ethereal whirring) Headspace Studios. (relaxing music) Hey friends, it's Rosie. Welcome to Radio Headspace. The other day I got a text from a dear friend. One of those soulful, wildly talented women working in the entertainment industry. She's been grinding for years. Finally hit her stride and then boom, laid off just like that. She texted me something I hadn't been able to stop thinking about. She said, "I feel like I was just about to become who I was meant to be, and now I'm nothing again." It hit me hard, not just because I love her, but because I've been there. That moment when the ground falls out beneath you and everything you thought you were building feels like it slipped through your hands. I sat with that text for a while, and then I wrote back, "You're not nothing. You're in the cocoon." We talk a lot about transformation like it's this beautiful, empowered, boss level moment, like we're supposed to feel radiant and ready the whole time, but the truth, growth doesn't always feel like growth. Sometimes it feels like loss. Sometimes it feels like stillness. Sometimes it feels like nothing. But nothing is never nothing. There's this quote I love, and it says, "Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly." And the science behind that transformation, it's wild. When a caterpillar enters the chrysalis, it literally dissolves into a liquid. Its old form breaks down entirely. Nothing recognizable remains, but inside that goo, a blueprint for the butterfly is already written. The wings, the patterns, the colors, all of it is this code written in chaos. And that to me is what growth really looks like. Messy, mysterious, and most of the time, slow. Too slow. We live in a world that celebrates speed. We're taught to rush our healing, to force our breakthroughs, to perform progress. But neuroscience tells us a different story. Research and psychology shows that meaningful change, like rewiring thought patterns, healing trauma, or building new habits, it takes time. According to studies from the University College London, it takes an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. Not 21, not overnight, 66. And even then, it's not linear. There are relapses, there's pauses. There's days where the wings, well, they don't work yet, or maybe they're just tired. So if you've ever felt stuck, like you should be further along, like your life's on pause or like you're stuck in the goo of your own becoming, this is for you. You're not behind, you're not broken, you're not lost. You're just in the cocoon. You're cocooning. And yes, I know how uncomfortable it is in there. I get it. I've been in those seasons where nothing makes sense. When you feel like your sparkle is gone, your purpose is blurry, and all you can do is wait and wonder. But here's what I know to be true. You don't have...