Most of us may feel stuck at some point in our lives. Feeling unable to move forward, not sure where to turn or what to do next. There may be a multitude of unique reasons for individually being stuck, but these reasons don’t need to endlessly prevent us from advancing.
The secret is that being stuck — no matter the root cause — is a only a feeling and not an actual state of being. Since feelings lie within us, they can always be addressed. I believe that this is most of where our potentiality to change our lives lies. For whatever we feel, even if it’s super stuck, we still have the ability to shift out of it.
Here is the fastest method I’ve used to becoming unstuck in my own life:
1.) Commit to becoming unstuck.
2.) Be willing to shift thinking.
3.) Be willing to make different choices.
4.) Be willing to meet life where it calls.
If we really want to become unstuck, this is the expressway. The first step of becoming unstuck is very simple. Deciding and then committing to being unstuck. We constantly underestimate the core plate-moving power of decision making. We fear we will make the wrong decision, but not deciding is in itself a decision.
It’s an inadvertent decision to remain fuzzy and unclear at best, and at worst, in pain. I would like to empower anyone who is feeling really stuck to courageously make a desicion. It doesn’t have to be the *RIGHT* decision or the ultimate answer to everything in your life. It just needs to be some kind of decision with a commitment to follow through with it. It could be “Tomorrow I’m going to submit my resume to ten different companies.” Or, “I’m going to get up one hour earlier each morning for the next week to take a walk.”
And then do these things.
It can even be a broad decision like, “Today I am done being stuck and while I don’t know what will happen next, this decision is the first step.” We can get into the spin cycle of over-think everything and overlook the clean and spare elegance of just deciding to make one change for the better.
Having the big solution at our fingertips is not required. But know that nothing will accelerate change in our lives like deciding. Realizing and claiming the power to decide means that we are then willing to shift our thinking. See? We’re already on Step 2. That wasn’t so hard, was it? When we are willing to shift our thinking, it means that we are willing to consider all points of view, including how we view ourselves. We are willing to see our lives differently. This takes some effort if not a little bravery, but I never said becoming unstuck was completely easy, especially if you want it fast.
Shifting our thinking is not about judgement or blame. It’s about being willing to see our situation for different vantage points. Developing some objectivity about our stuckness is the flash point when we can really begin to pick up speed. When we do this, we can then apply the third approach.
We can begin to make different choices. It has been my experience that one of the purposes we become stuck is to show us how our previous choices have not fully served us. Let me be abundantly clear here: it’s not that we’ve made mistakes, because I don’t believe in mistakes, only lessons.
And lessons ultimately morph into gifts.
If we fail to recognize what our lessons from our previous choices have taught us, we are at great risk of repeating them. Gaining some mental space around our stuckness, we will naturally begin to make new choices which will prevent us from repeating the same old choices that led to our stuckness in the first place. While we’re looking into making new choices, we are then ready to meet life where it call us which is the ultimate liberation.
It’s always calling us to not only to fully accept the present, but to embrace it — warts and all. This includes embracing what we most want to jettison. This is the where the real work must take hold, because here we surrender to where we actually are, which is code for: making peace with our lives, our past choices, our lessons, letting go of previous disappointments and hurts, learning to forgive, and eventually developing gratitude for the whole shebang.
I am not saying this is easy, let alone pain-free, but it is the fastest and most powerful form of personal transformation at our immediate disposal. Where we have the potential to not only become unstuck, but to change our lives for the better forever.
