What If Confusion Is A Signal

Life gets confusing in a very specific way when the old version of your life no longer fits but the new one hasn’t fully formed yet. That “cloudy” feeling can hit after divorce, during co-parenting stress, in burnout, after a career change, or in any season where your identity is shifting and you’re still expected to function like nothing happened.

I’m Danny DeJesus, and I walk you through a simple map for life resets: the C2R2E framework (collapse, confrontation, realignment, reclamation, elevation). We talk about why transformation takes longer than the event that triggered it, and why stability doesn’t magically return when the paperwork is done, the job changes, or the big decision gets made. Collapse is the moment you face that something changed. Confrontation is where you get ruthlessly honest about what the disruption revealed without blaming yourself or anyone else. Realignment is the quiet work of rebuilding routines, boundaries, communication, priorities, and standards. Reclamation is when you feel agency again in small, observable ways. Elevation is living from a new baseline, not trying to go back to who you were.

To make it practical, I share a guided “Next Baseline Transition Audit” you can write out in 10 minutes: name the transition, name what collapsed, name what you must confront, choose one realignment action for the next seven days, and define one clear sign you’re reclaiming your life. If you’re ready to trade overwhelm for a next step, press play, subscribe, share this with someone in a reset season, and leave a review with the phase you’re in right now.

Transcript

Welcome To The Next Baseline

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Next Baseline. I am your podcast host, Danny DeJesus, and this podcast is about life resets and what it takes to reach your next baseline. So whether life disruption comes through divorce, co-parenting stress, burnout, a professional pressure, career change, health struggles, or even a personal wake-up call, the question is no longer about how to get the old version of your life back, but rather the question now becomes what do you build now moving forward? So for today's episode, what I specifically want to touch on and talk about is actually what happens when life tends to feel confusing, cloudy, and uncertain. And not because you may be doing something wrong per se, but because you're probably in the middle of a transition. And the truth is life is full of transitions. Some are planned and some are forced on us. And even some, they come slowly over time. Others happen in one conversation, one decision,

Why Transitions Feel So Cloudy

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one email. For those single parents out there, one court order, one health diagnosis, one job change. Or the moment you realize that the life you were living no longer works the way you envisioned it, or in the same way that you were living it. And here's the thing divorce is one of those transitions. Career change is another, a major shift in your identity is also another. Because you see, a divorce, for example, can affect the way that you parent if there's children involved, your home, your finances, your confidence, and then also your future plans, or even the dreams you may have had that you will now have to grieve from the loss of that relationship. From a career perspective, a career change, a professional shift, it can affect your identity, your routine, your daily routine, your schedule, your income, your sense of purpose, and also how you see yourself. And when you think about life transition, a life transition can look like one event on the surface, but underneath any life transition, it can touch every and multiple facets and parts of your life. And that is why transition can feel so cloudy. You're not only trying to solve one problem per se, you're trying to understand who you are now becoming while still handling the responsibilities of everyday life. You still have to go to work, you still have to parent, you still have to make decisions, you still have to respond to messages, pay bills, manage your calendar, and also show up for people. But inside all of that, especially through a moment, a pivotal moment of change, anything and everything can start to feel unclear. And when life feels unclear, many people start becoming critical and judging themselves. They think that they should be perhaps further along, potentially. They think sometimes they need to feel better. Now, sometimes when we think about divorce, some people think that because maybe the divorce finalized, or maybe from a career perspective that the job changed, or a move happened, or the hard decision, a hard decision was made, that all of a sudden you would think stability in your life should should should be in play again. But unfortunately, and I think this is not just my my personal opinion, this is not how transformation or the process of transformation, it doesn't work that way. Because the truth is transformation and when a life reset happens, that is the moment where transformation and transition begin to happen. Transformation, here's the thing, it's a process that's going to take time. And sometimes it goes from not just days and weeks, but sometimes it's going to span months, sometimes it's going to take a year or longer before you can even begin to feel like you're reclaiming your life again. And that that does not exactly mean that you're failing at life. What

The C2R2E Five-Phase Framework

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it really means is that you're still moving through the early stages of a life of what I like to call a life reset. And this is where I think the framework that I have been able to develop that represents the Elevatus brand, that represents the next baseline. It's the C2R2E framework. And what C2R2E stands for, it stands for collapse, confrontation, realignment, reclamation, and elevation. And so I use this framework because I think people need a language. I think people are starving for a language that they can use so that they can name and describe what is actually happening to them during a major life reset. So, you know, and I've talked about this in other parts of my work, when you don't have language for change, everything feels like one, could feel like one giant emotional mess. But I think when you can name name the change that you're in, when you can specifically hone in on a stage or a phase of transformation that you're experiencing and going through, I think it empowers people to stop treating the whole process of transformation like a failure. C2R tweet, it's five phases collapse, confrontation, realignment, reclamation, and elevation. So just because you're spending a long time in collapse, and I'm going to go over these steps in a moment, just because you spend a long time in collapse, for example, doesn't mean that that it's that you're failing. All it means is you're going through something really, really difficult. But you can see there's several steps right after collapse. So with that, let's let's take a little bit of a deep

Collapse And What It Means

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dive here. See, when we start with collapse, collapse is the point where the old structure of your life is no longer working. Could be the marriage ends, the career path shifts, the role changes that you you you played in everyday life. The plan that you, the perfect plan that you put together has fallen apart. The version of life you're operating from really cannot carry you the same way anymore. What got you here is not going to get you there. And sometimes collapse can be sudden, it can be very loud. Sometimes it builds for years before you can even finally admit it. Sometimes it's very quiet, doesn't always have to be loud either. But either way, collapse forces you to face the fact that something in your life has changed. And that's really all it is. Is that collapse is not just my life turned to crap. What collapse is, is the moment that you are faced with facing the fact that something in your life has changed. Nothing more, nothing less. So what comes after collapse?

Confrontation And Telling The Truth

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What comes after collapse is confrontation. And this is a stage I think many people want to skip because it's not going to be the most comfortable thing you're ever going to do as a human being. Confrontation is where you have to face what the disruption or what the collapse revealed about your situation and about you. Not just what happened, but what it actually exposed, its exposure. Maybe divorce revealed how much of your identity was connected to the relationship. I mean, there's other, there's more nuance to that. But when we thought talk about divorce, because it's natural that you will change to be more in alignment with your partner as the years progress. And when that relationship breaks, you feel like your identity has just cracked with it as well, or broke with that relationship. But also, let's look at it from a career and professional perspective. Maybe from that perspective, change revealed that you were chasing security, but maybe ignoring purpose. And, you know, I'm not saying, you know, for those that have careers right now, I'm not saying go out and blow your career up just for the sake of chasing passion and purpose. You still need to pay the bills. So, so you still need to be responsible for your life. But I just want to caveat, but for the purpose of explaining confrontation here, you know, from a career and professional standpoint, maybe that thing you were chasing could be job security, it could be position, it could be status. Maybe you are ignoring something else in the background as well. Something to consider. Maybe you're experiencing burnout right now. And what burnout has revealed is that your pace is not sustainable. For those single parents out there, let's talk about co-parenting for a moment. Maybe co-parenting, the stresses of co-parenting revealed that your peace really can't depend on another person being reasonable. And so you're going to have to find ways to cope and not to be cold-hearted about this. At the end of the day, when you're co-parenting with somebody, especially someone that you're having a hard time with, can't really get along. Just remember, you're you you chose them to be the mother or the father of the children that you have with them. And so unfortunately, you know, these are consequences of our own doing to some extent. So with that, you know, I'm a big proponent that your peace cannot depend on another person. Because if it depends on another person doing what they're supposed to do, you're going to be in for a lifetime of rude awakening. Now, shifting from a personal wake-up call perspective, maybe the could be in your health, could be, doesn't just have to be your health, could be just anything in general. But let's just say you got a you got a wake up call of some sort. And what that revealed is that you have been surviving for a long time, but not leading your life, not taking responsibility, and not claiming the personal agency that you have, whatever the reasons are. Okay. Here's the thing confrontation is not about blaming yourself, but it's also not about blaming other people either. It's about getting honest, getting ruthlessly honest. It's going to ask a simple but difficult question. What is true right now? And that question is a question that I believe cannot be answered in just a few seconds. It takes some time to fully answer that question. What is true right now? And here's the thing, you're not gonna you're probably not gonna know right away. And at first, you may only know that something is off. Then over time, the picture is gonna become clearer. You know what that time frame is, who knows? It's gonna be different for everybody. But you're gonna begin to see patterns. You're going to begin to see what you have been tolerating, and you're also going to see what you have also avoided. And you're also going to begin to see what you what can no longer continue on this journey of

Realignment Through Small Daily Changes

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transformation. So after after you can after you navigate confrontation, now comes realignment. So, what's realignment? Realignment is where you start adjusting your life around the truth that you can no longer ignore. This is where transformation becomes practical. It is not just about insight, it is about what changes in your daily life, your routines, your boundaries, your communication, your schedule, your priorities, your decisions, your standards, who you spend your time with. And here's the thing: realignment is not going to always feel exciting. Most of the time, it's going to be quiet work. It's going to look like creating a better morning ritual rhythm routine. It's going to look like setting more clearer boundaries, not just for other people, but for yourself. It's going to look like changing how you respond to conflict, how you talk to people, how you connect with people. It's going to look like creating that financial plan that you keep putting off. It's going to look like updating your resume. It's going to look like being honest about the kind of work that fits, that's going to fix your next season of life. It's also could look like building a parenting structure that's going to lower confusion, especially for those single parents out there with their co-parents. It's also going to potentially look like choosing stability over reactivity. And this is the part that I think people tend to underestimate. Realignment can take months. It can take repetition. It can take trial and error. It can take several rounds of saying this part of my life does not fit. So I need to adjust again. It's not a one and done. Realignment in and of itself is a journey. And that is normal. Because here's the thing: you do not move from collapse to clarity overnight. You usually, you usually you move from collapse to confrontation, then confrontation to realignment. And then after enough realignment, you begin to feel the small signs of reclamation, achieving personal agency. Because reclamation is when you start to feel like your life belongs to you again. Not perfectly, not completely, but enough to notice that you are making decisions from a better and more clearer place in yourself. You're not only reacting, but you're choosing. You're choosing with deliberacy. You're not only surviving the change, you're actually starting to build from it. You're starting to rise from those ashes. And that may look simple from the outside, but the truth is it may look like getting through a week with more stability. It may look like having a hard conversation without losing yourself. It may look like applying for that for that job that you've been you've been you've been uh postponing. It may look like getting your home in order. It may also look like creating that parenting routine that's going to give your child more consistency. It's going to mean it could potentially mean becoming a better co-parent, improving your co-parenting skills as well. And it also may look like waking up and realizing that the future does not feel as as heavy as it used to feel. And all of that matters because sometimes the first sign of progress is not confidence. Sometimes the first sign of progress is actually that life feels a little less chaotic than it did yesterday. And eventually, reclamation can begin to lead to elevation. Elevation is not about pretending that the disruption, the initial collapse, never happened. It is not about going back to the old version of yourself. Elevation is when you begin operating from a new and higher baseline. You're not the same person you were before the life reset came in. You have seen more, you have experienced more, you have learned more, you have adjusted more. And now this is

Reclamation And Building A New Baseline

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where you live from a standard that fits the life you are actually building for yourself. And this is vital. This is key because many people think healing or growth means going back to who they were. But the truth is, after a divorce, a career change, a major life transition, the goal is not, in my opinion, to always return, if at all. Oftentimes, I think the goal now becomes to be more honest, more stable, more clear, and more aligned than you ever were before. And that is what I call transformational resilience. It is not just about pushing through. It is not just about quote unquote getting back to baseline. I don't believe that you get back to baseline. You get, you establish a new baseline. It is also learning how to operate differently because of what the disruption had revealed. So, with that, if you're in a cloudy season right now, the what I want you to do is to do is I want you to slow down. You may not need to solve. In fact, I don't even want you to try to solve your whole life story today because you're not going to be able to do that. You may need, and instead, you may need a five-year plan today. You may need a vision for tomorrow, a vision for the future. You may, you know, I would not focus, I would not recommend focusing on perfect clarity today. What you may simply really need is to know what stage you are in right now and what the next honest step looks like for you. So go back. You know, look at collapse, confrontation, realignment, reclamate reclamation, and elevation, and pinpoint for yourself where are you in this framework? Where do you see yourself in? So if you're in collapse, your job is just to stabilize. Don't put pressure on yourself to redesign your whole life while everything still feels like it's shaking, like it's trembling. Focus on what can actually help you get through the next day with a little bit more clarity and a little bit more steadiness. And for those of you that are in confrontation, your job is just to tell the truth. What did your transition, your moment of transition, reveal to you? What pattern can you no longer ignore? And what part of your life needs attention right now? And if you're in realignment, your job is really just to make one practical, one practical adjustment at a time. Don't try to change everything at once. Pick one area and start there. Start small. Because small wins are going to lead to big wins. And if you're in reclamation, your job is to shut is to just keep showing up and choosing from the new standard that you're building. Notice the moments when you respond differently. Notice the decisions that feel cleaner. Notice where you are no longer abandoning yourself just to keep an old pattern alive. And if you're in elevation, congratulations. Your job now is to live from the next baseline that you created for yourself, that you built for you. Not just visit it when life is calm, but practice it daily when life applies pressure. Elevation is something that you must protect. It takes deliberacy to protect your next baseline, your moment of elevation. So before we close, I want to walk you through a simple exercise. And you would have thought all of those questions, all you know, the you know, having you identify what phase you're in, you would have thought that's the exercise, but. But it's but it's not. What I want to specifically give you is what I call the next baseline transition audit. And you

What To Do In Your Phase

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can do this after the episode, or you can pause it throughout in between each question and answer it in real time. So you don't need to think overthink it. And the goal is not to achieve or write down the perfect answer. The goal here is to create enough clarity to see what your next step is going to be for yourself. So start with this first question. What transition are you actually in? And I want you to be specific. Don't just say life is hard. Actually name the transition. Is it a divorce? Is it a career change? Is it co-parenting stress? Is it a burnout? Is it is it some sort of professional shift? Is it a health reset? Is it an identity change? Or is it starting over after a season that took more out of you than than you may have realized, or maybe other real other people have realized? And once you name the transition, ask yourself, what collapsed? What part of the old way of living is no longer working? Maybe it was a pattern in the relationship that you were in. Maybe it was the identity you formulated around your work. Maybe it was the way you spent your time, how you scheduled things. Maybe it was a specific belief, limiting belief about what your future could be. Maybe it was also the idea that you could keep carrying everything without changing how you actually live. Then ask, what are you being forced to confront? And this is the honest part. What truth can you no longer avoid? And maybe you need better boundaries, maybe a clearer structure. Maybe you need to stop waiting for someone else to give you closure. Sometimes closure is never going to come. Maybe you need to admit that your current path is no longer fitting who you are or what you want to do, where you want to go. And maybe maybe the current path that you're on is just way too comfortable. Also, maybe you need to accept that the next version of your life will require something different. It's going to require a different version of the way that you make decisions. And then after that, after you get through that, I want you to I want you to ask yourself, what needs realignment in the next seven days? Again, I'm not telling you to to that you have to do it today. Take seven days. Keep this easy, keep this practical, keep it simple. Do not just choose don't don't choose

The Next Baseline Transition Audit

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ten things. I just want you to choose just one. And maybe you need to clean up your calendar, right? Maybe you need to create you know better routines for yourself in the morning or also in the evening. Maybe you know, you need to update that resume, spend some time in that. Maybe you need to send an important email that you've been you've been holding off on for whatever the reasons. Maybe you need to also stop responding immediately to every stressful message and situation you find yourself in. Because responding out of emotion doesn't always get you very far. And I and I say that from the perspective that's easier said than done. I still struggle with that in particular. In particular. Then ask, what would be one sign that you are beginning to reclaim your life? You know, this sign should be simple. It should be observable. And here's what's what's interesting is that we're always asking for signs. And there's a lot of signs that are always around us, and then they're not going to always be on this big billboard. Sometimes they're just going to be simple. Easily, you know, the things that are not always as easily observed. Also, you know, maybe it's going to be getting through one week with more structure. Maybe it's going to be about making one decision without spiraling out of control. And then maybe it's also having one calm conversation maybe with that person with that person that's popping up in your mind right now. Maybe it's applying for multiple jobs, three jobs, four jobs, five jobs. And maybe it's following through on just one routine. Also, maybe it would be about feeling a little bit more steady in your own home. And that is the exercise. Name the transition, name what collapsed, name what must be confronted. So that's the key. Name, name, name, name. Then choose a realignment action. This is where you start to take action. In the realignment phase, you're taking action. You have you're transitioning from naming to action. And then you define what that sign of that you're beginning to reclaim your life, what does that look like? And this is how you begin moving forward from cloudy to clear. And it's not all at once, not by forcing yourself to feel healed. That's going to come in time. Not by pretending the transition did not affect you because it probably did. But you move by telling the truth, making one adjustment at a time, and then building the next baseline one decision at a time. So as you leave this episode, don't ask yourself. Do not ask yourself, why am I not fully better yet? But instead, I want you to ask what I think is a better question. What stage are you in? And what is the right, the next right action for that stage? Because I think that question can lower the pressure. It can give you a place to begin and a place to start. And sometimes when life feels confusing, cloudy, and uncertain, a place to begin is exactly

Closing Thoughts And Next Steps

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what you need right now. So if this episode connected with you and where you are right now, just take 10 minutes and complete the next baseline transition audit. Go ahead and rewind if you need to. Pause in between each question, but write it down. Be honest with yourself. Keep it simple. Because the goal is not to solve everything today. The goal is just simply to create enough clarity in your life to take the next grounded step to move forward. So for more support, you can visit Elvodiscoach.com. The links will be in the description for you. Until next time, I'm going to wish you peace, love, joy, and happiness. And I look forward to connecting with you again on a future episode. Until next time.