Five Ways To Get Unstuck

There was a time when I became really frustrated, living the story I kept telling to myself in my head. It wasn’t a good story, I kept repeating the awful bits on a perpetual loop (like when I screwed up and missed significant business opportunities).  I became really sick of myself.  But I also found myself clinging to this cycle because I felt if I didn’t acknowledge my mistake in a meaningful way, I wouldn’t have learned anything and I would end up repeating it.  Pivot on the word “meaningful”, as repetition doesn’t actually guarantee meaning, but it did suck a lot of energy out of me and erode my confidence.  Not the definition I hold of meaningful, but then I was in a different place when this happened.

I love the outlook that time gives us, as if your whole life were unfolding on a spiral staircase; traveling upward we can see where we have come from, and look at it with 360 degrees of perspective.  The only time you are not traveling upwards is when you get stuck.  It is lonely on that circular stairway when you are trapped with only yourself and self-judgement for company.  The best ways to get un-stuck are to move differently.  Here are five approachable ways to do this:

• Challenge your routine.  Commute to work via a different route, sit in a different place at the dinner table, or in meetings.  Brush your teeth with your non-dominate hand.  Making these changes literally gives you new perspectives, which goes a long way to helping you access new perspectives in your mind and life.
• Move in new ways.  Put on some music and move to it; feeling punchy and aggressive?  Rock it out.  Feeling mired and heavy, put on slow classical and sway to it.  Then, change the tempo of the music from what you started with and move to it.  Moving your body in intentional, but new, ways helps you to think differently.
• Ask someone you don’t know out for coffee.  Use the time to get to know someone better.  Ask this person questions (you may need to think these up ahead of time).  Get out of your own head and start a conversation to intentionally spend your time focused on someone else, and make a new contact in the process.
• Take a class.  It doesn’t have to be work related.  There are on-line free tutorials for everything from watercolor painting to learning how to skateboard.  If you prefer live events, check your local community/recreation offerings for cost effective options that let you try new things without a big financial investment.  Do this not with the intention to master something, but to embrace being a beginner.
• Volunteer your time.  Run a food drive at work, help out at a hospital book fair or offer your time to a local soup kitchen.  There is nothing like giving back to others to help you see and feel the good in you, and to appreciate that your life is pretty awesome just the way it is right now.

“The details of your life do not matter as much as where you are living those details from...”
– Leslie Feist, Q Interview 2019 (CBC)