Life can throw curve balls your way and challenge you even when the best of conditions have manifested in your movement through it. Whether you are a middle aged working parent, deep into your retirement, or somewhere in between, there are times when we all feel like we are stuck in our lives. I have a strong familiarity with this feeling of low energy levels, a lacking in motivation to the point where getting out of bed can be a struggle that you are fighting each morning prior to work. I often deal with my own struggles of feeling stuck when it comes to writer’s block. At times the words can flow out of me like lava gushing from an active volcano but in other moments, my motivational levels and willingness to engage in thought feel absolutely dormant. What are some of the tools or techniques that one could lean on in these moments where you just can’t seem to get out of the hole you feel stuck in? One major emphasis that I’d like to make in discussing manners to beat that feeling of “being stuck in life” is that this feeling is extremely normal. We all will experience at some point or another as we navigate this journey in pursuit of happiness. Too many individuals experience this diminishment in encouragement and joy and allow it to alienate them from the people who care about them most. Which brings me to my first step in beating that feeling of being stuck in life.
1. Ready to Throw in the Towel? Welcome to the Club
You’ve got to recognize that this idea of being stuck is a natural and oft occurring feeling that we all experience whether in our work life, a relationship, or perhaps a scholarly pursuit or business endeavor. You have to allow yourself the realization that life is hard and there will be days, weeks, months when you don’t feel like you have enough fuel in the tank to push onwards and upwards. Even as I write this post, I will admit that I had that feeling of being stuck when I woke up this morning to come to work. Let me set the scene and you tell me if this sounds familiar. Monday morning. Your alarm goes off. You begrudgingly hit the snooze and let out a sigh of exhaustion as you consider that the weekend is officially behind you and the work week is looming over you. You pause to consider whether to go in at all before finally capitulating and dressing yourself for the day. As you drag yourself to work and take the morning drive to the office, you officially feel tired and stuck in this situation. This type of feeling is healthy and we all have moments where there may be a lull in our work requirements, or perhaps you’ve been working an overly abundant amount of overtime, etc. Whatever obstacles you face that are giving you this inability to get excited about your weekly movements, you must first understand that these aren’t abnormal thoughts to have and you aren’t alone in experiencing them. If you can allow yourself that small but vital realization, then you will be well on your way to breaking out of the cycle of feeling stuck and unable to move forward in your life’s pursuit. This brings me to step number two in breaking out of that feeling!
2. What’s the Source?
Struggle is an obstacle that will never be fully gone no matter where you find yourself in life. We all have to face an adversity at some point in life. How you handle struggle, however, is going to be a key point in managing your emotions, temperament, and the overall outcome for your life as you try to regain your internal confidence and start breaking out of the mental chains that you’ve found yourself in.
“We act like wind-up toys, repeatedly bumping into the same walls, never realizing there may be an open door just to our right or our left,”
Susan David, a psychologist at the Harvard Medical School, writes in her book,
Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life. Essentially what Susan is saying, is that we often get stuck in a situation but continue the same approaches that got us stuck in the first place, instead of searching for an alternate path forward. Challenges throughout life are an inevitable aspect of the journey of life and so, when you are feeling really stuck in a situation that you are finding discomfort in, it is time to start a full evaluation of your situation to try and better understand what the source of that feeling is. One thing I’ve learned in going to therapy as a manner to deal with my own struggles with anxiety, motivation, and self-destructive tendencies, is that you must first identify the root cause of an issue before you can make positive changes in a new direction. If you are feeling stuck or in a rut, try to trace back in time and determine what got you in this mental headspace in the first place.((Greater Good Magazine:
What to Do When You Feel Stuck in Negative Emotions)) Knowing the why and working to understand the internal foundation for this moment of apathy will empower you to make the changes necessary to get out of that funk and begin your climb towards a more productive self, revitalized with a strengthened energy.
3. Budget Your Time
It can become all too easy to fall into a trap of negative routines or unhealthy habits that can contribute to that lull in your life where you just don’t feel like doing much at all. So considering the facts that this feeling is normal, and in working to identify the root cause of being stuck, you should start evaluating how you utilize your time. Too often I hear the phrase, “I don’t have the time to work on [fill in the blank]” as an excuse that enables individuals to forgo a responsibility or necessary action and instead, slough it off and continue down a path of unproductive behavior that will only entrench the individual further into a hole that they never wanted to be in to start with. For this reason, it is important to analyze your time usage. Create a budget for your time in the same way that you should have a budget for your finances. I don’t just want you to make your time budget for what you want to accomplish in a week. I also think it’s important to create a time budget that accurately reflects your current week-to-week behavior. Seeing how you are utilizing your time in the present moment might be eye opening if you have been over binging on Netflix shows, overly consumed with social media, or working yourself to death. By creating a time budget where you set aside your hours in each day for work, for yourself, for sleep, and for whatever things you want to accomplish, you are establishing a plan that can help guide you through the moments when you’ve actually had enough and don’t feel as if you can continue onwards anymore. Time is our most precious asset and if we waste it away without a second thought, then life will pass you by and you will stay stuck much longer than you ever anticipated possible. By constructing a more established schedule for how you will utilize your time, you can train yourself up to be more naturally productive and disallow the creep of feeling stuck back into your life. Take a look at this article to learn how to budget your time better:
The Ultimate Guide to Prioritizing Your Work And Life
4. Talk to the Mirror
Don’t you find it interesting that so often, we can readily provide solid advice to a friend, family member, or co-worker without much reservation or issue; but when it comes to our own decisions, we often feel paralyzed and unable to make a decisive move? I like to employ a strategy that I call talking to the mirror. Essentially, I try to step outside of my own internal monologue or perspective and give myself the sort of advice that I’m usually able to readily produce for a close friend or family member who is struggling with issues of their own. Often times when I step outside of the confines of my own mind and feeling of being stuck, I’m able to better gauge my perspective and whether or not it is healthy or realistic. I find that it can be even more productive when you examine your own life as an outsider and try to look forward into what your trajectory will be as a means to better analyze your path and understand how to let go of that feeling of being stuck. By committing to such an exercise, you have the potential to increase the success of reflecting on your path through life. You also potentially learn more about yourself and why you may be feeling trapped in your current walk through life. Mentally stepping outside of your own perspective for a moment and taking more of a third person view on your situation can be helpful. That distance from your traditional outlook can be enlightening. According to authors Kross & Ayduk in their study of Focusing on the Future from Afar:((Emotion:
Focusing on the future from afar: Self-distancing from future stressors facilitates adaptive coping.))
“Prior research indicates that self-distancing enhances adaptive self-reflection about negative past events.”
When feeling stuck, it can be so easy to allow yourself to feel down trodden and out of it from a mental perspective. This is why it is very important that you take a good hard look at your own behavior to determine whether anything you are doing either externally in your life, or internally, has a hand in the feeling that is overtaking your spirit! Very much in line with the idea of “talking to the mirror,” you need to understand that it is important to treat yourself with the love and compassion that you deserve as a human.((VeryWellMind:
Self-Compassion Makes Life More Manageable)) People will so quickly work to ensure others around them feel loved and cared for but neglect themselves in the process. Dr. Kristin Neff, a psychology professor at the University of Texas drew the conclusion that,
“Self-compassion involves treating yourself just like you would treat your friends or family members.”
Much like the simple idea of treating others the way you’d want to be treated, it is key to have
self-compassion and build yourself up with
positive self-talk rather than view yourself only through a negative lens. This is an area that we all could probably improve in. In my own life, I can often be my own worst critic. So in working to break out of that stuck feeling, try to step outside of your normal thought process. Take a good hard look in the mirror to come up with some creative solutions for yourself!
5. Distractions Can Be a Good Thing
I spend a lot of my time in the creative areas of my mind, working hard to create original music for myself at home or even working on writing for my blog. It is a healthy release for me that allows me to step outside of my normal day-to-day operation and escape in a beneficial manner. If you are feeling stuck in a particular area of your life, then try to step away from that area for a moment and re-focus your attention on another area that gives life and energy. When I’ve been working on one song for many weeks at a time, it helps to try and write a new song or revisit an older track to shake things up and keep them fresh. We all have daily routines that can grow stale at times and leave us feeling frustrated. So shaking things up and finding new ways to distract your mind is a perfect way to break out of that mental cycle! I love creating new music or works of writing but I also enjoy physical activities such as basketball, racquetball, disc golf or just going on a nice walk in the neighborhood. All of these things can help clear my mind and break me out of the mental state that will at times hold me hostage and steal away my motivation to keep trucking along at a long term goal or pursuit. If you find yourself at an impasse in work or in life and you can’t break off that stale feeling or inability to garner up motivation to continue forward, then taking a little side quest might be just the thing to get you back on course towards your life’s goals. It’s similar to an academic trying to solve an equation that just seems impossible to figure out. Sometimes, you have to step away and zoom out. I often get caught up missing the forest for the trees. Taking time to distract your mind with something new can give you that motivation to then revisit what was once feeling tired and worn out, and renew your passion to pursue it!
6. Turn That Productivity Up!
Very much in line with the idea that you should find new ways to distract your mind, you should consider building on that foundation by establishing manners with which you can productively utilize your time when you feel stuck in another pursuit. I’ve had seasons of my life where all I wanted to do was leave work, drive home, sit on the couch and waste my evening away watching the latest and greatest shows on Netflix. The problem is that this cycle of behavior was detrimental to my mental and physical health and left a lot to be desired for balance in my life. When I’m feeling trapped at work and unable to continue down the 40+ hour work weeks that I’ve grown so accustomed to, I try to come up with some productive ways to use my time outside of work that give me something to look forward to in the evenings. Sometimes that is as simple as playing with my daughter for an hour or more in her bedroom and letting go of the stresses and anxieties of work even if for just a brief moment. Other times, I find projects to work on at the house such as hiding the wires behind the TV or building a new side table for our bedroom. It doesn’t take long for me to realize that when I work to find more effective manners to expend my time, I feel more fulfilled and better prepared to handle the up’s and down’s of life. Productively using my time in the evenings after work helps to stave off any feelings of apathy or laziness that might lead me down the path of that all too familiar stuck feeling. I’m not advocating that you fill every last minute of your schedule until your hair falls off . Don’t be that person that takes this task to the furthest extreme! But keeping busy with productive things in and outside of the workplace in moderation can be a great way to occupy your mind. It can also help you to establish better habits in your free time that will be more conducive to feeling like you can achieve your goals and experience new found levels of success and motivation.
7. Looking Back and Looking Forward
The last word of encouragement that I’d like to leave you with is to remember that no change comes fast in life. I wish it were as easy as saying, “1, 2, 3!” snapping your fingers, and all of a sudden you feel like your best self. But like anything worth striving towards, breaking out of a funk in your internal perspective takes time, energy, and a strong support group of friends or family. If you attempt to break out of your feeling of stuck but seem to be failing after a short amount of time, don’t give up. Keep working at it and keep trying to adopt a more positive attitude about your situation. I typically give myself at least 30 to 60 days to try and implement a new strategy within my approach to life. Then, pause to evaluate my progress or lack thereof. The key to success isn’t just in the doing. It is also in the analysis of your actions prior to a change, during the adoption phase of a change, and after the change has started to take root in your life. If you fail to reflect on where you were or have been, then you will miss out on important insights into your own path through life.
Final Thoughts
We all move in different paces through the journey of life and in doing so, we will all face struggles and moments where we just want to throw in the towel. I can’t emphasize enough that these moments are absolutely normal and you are not alone in feeling this way! You are a strong and intelligent human being and I know this because you wouldn’t have read this far along if you weren’t serious about breaking out of this funk! Keep your head held high and don’t let the world get you down! I hope that these steps help you to consider your own behavior and make the necessary adjustments to live a more fulfilled life. Instead of feeling stuck, you will feel empowered to be the best you that you can be!
More to Help You Get Unstuck
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