How I Move Forward When I Feel Stuck

Have you ever felt stuck in your life? Like just yesterday you were going somewhere with direction and a plan, and now you just don’t. Everything you felt so clear about a few months ago, you now are questioning.

 
I am a person who is attached to the idea of forward movement. As corny as it sounds, I try to be a better version of myself each day.  One of the reasons I can accept my mistakes, is knowing I am actively working on being better in relationships, at work, and in understanding the human experience. I put so much value on that forward movement in my life, that being stuck feels terrible.

When I’m stuck, I’m my own worst enemy – suddenly taken over with self-doubt. Am I on the right track? What have I done with my life to this point anyway? Has anything I’ve done even amounted to anything? Being stuck seems to trigger these kinds of despairing questions that reflect the level of frustration I am feeling in the moment.

I get stuck quite regularly in my career. My work as a speaker, writer, founder, and podcaster are driven by my creativity, imagination, and passion for helping others.  If a want to do something, like launch my new podcast ‘Inflection Time’, I have to imagine it first. This process of imagining seems to bring me through a period of discontent. I need to feel that what I am doing is not enough. That I want to do something different and that I want something to change. This discontent isn’t a super fun place to be. I know that something has to change, but I am not quite sure what it is.  It’s this period, that for me can go on from a couple of months to a year – and in this space, I am vulnerable to taking the first opportunity that is presented to me.

It’s when I’m stuck, that I can make a mistake and take a contract to work in an area that isn’t truly aligned with my long-term goals. I want so badly for that stuck feeling to go away; for that negative inner dialogue to stop a loop that I know is keeping me stuck and stuck and stuck.

Taking on something new is a tempting ‘quick fix’ for this uncomfortable feeling I cannot stand. I have learned that when I’m stuck and don’t know what my next move will be, the best thing I can do is wait. To be with the stuckness.

This waiting can go on for quite some time for me, often it is about six to eighteen months of this unease until I begin to shift.  During this time of waiting, I try to regain my energy. I invest heavily in self-care; like going on long walks and keeping my evenings unstructured and media free. During this time, I am resting while creating space in my head for new ideas. This resting period is so important, especially if you have been going at a hard pace before the period of feeling stuck. The resting is maybe the most important part of getting unstuck, because it’s in the resting and the restlessness that comes with resting that you begin to regain your creativity and your energy for the next evolution of you. 

This is true in our work life, but also in our personal life.  If you are stuck in your relationship, and feeling extremely frustrated and discontent, sitting with these feelings is what provides the motivation to do things differently.

After this important but difficult resting period, I go through a period of exposing myself to new ideas. I go to art galleries, I listen to podcasts, I connect with friends who broaden my thinking. None of this is done deliberately, but after years of living through these stuck/unstuck cycles, I have begun to identify a pattern. 

 
I have come to accept that being stuck is part of the cycle of relationships, of work, and of our life path. We get stuck in order to take the actions that lead to what’s next. In fact, being stuck is a gift, because it asks us to take a minute. It asks us to stop doing exactly as we have been doing, because that is no longer serving us.  If we didn’t get stuck, we probably wouldn’t take as many risks or find the courage to do the hard work of moving forward. It’s when the pain of being stuck becomes too unbearable that we find the strength to do the hard work of taking that next step forward in our lives.