Tiny Buddha

Tag: unstuck

  • Getting Unstuck After an Unexpected Life Change

    Getting Unstuck After an Unexpected Life Change

    “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” ~Lewis Carroll

    After an unfortunate layoff earlier this year, I found myself feeling stuck, spiritually, physically, and mentally. I had moved from Virginia to Los Angeles for my MBA, and I was working remotely as a product manager for a climate fintech company, which combined a lot of things I enjoyed.

    In the two years I had spent out west, I built a great group of climbing buddies, felt a sense of community, and was involved with local non-profits. Los Angeles wasn’t a perfect match for me, but I had made myself at home, and I was feeling settled.

    When the layoff happened, it was jarring. I felt I was an asset to the company, and I had built solid relationships and finished important work in my tenure there. But I wanted to maintain the go-with-the-flow attitude I aspire to, so I told myself everything was fine.

    After my computer dramatically shut itself off, I pulled out some Post-it notes. Then I added to my wall some goals that I wanted to accomplish in my personal and professional life, with my newfound lack of purpose. I knew a big shift was happening and it felt non-consensual.

    I had been content in my role. And previously, my life changes had been easy to predict. Graduate > get a job > apply to grad school > move near the grad school > get a job > aim for promotion. I had yet to experience a life change where I didn’t know what was next by the time the last chapter ended. I felt like I was in a sort of purgatory, waiting for something to happen to me.

    I started applying to jobs right away to numb that feeling and the discomfort it brought. Initially, I was searching for an exciting opportunity to magically appear and fill my time. 

    I didn’t expect much to change in my life, just the team and the name of the company I worked for. I expected to get hired and go back to what I was doing before—working on something I cared about, living in Los Angeles, and continuing my nice little life I had started to feel comfortable in.

    But I struggled. The market wasn’t great, and I found myself putting in great effort on applications only to be rejected automatically. Or I’d get interviewed, but they’d decide to hire internally instead. Nothing seemed to work out, and I couldn’t figure out why. I was networking, customizing my resume and cover letters, and getting referrals—everything I was supposed to be doing after a layoff. It was demoralizing.

    Eventually, I realized I was struggling because I was resisting the change. I was looking for the same situation I’d had—remote work as a product manager in climate tech. I was trying to resurrect the life I had been living before. But that version of reality was over, and there was no going back. 

    Even if I got a new role in the same industry and function, life would be different; it was a new chapter. And maybe seeking out something that already left my life wasn’t a great idea but was actually a way of clinging to the past.

    So I set out to intentionally figure out what was next. I decided to give myself some space to do that, and I spent time road tripping, climbing, and sleeping outside or in my car, living very simply and introspecting. I looked back at how I’d ended up in the situation I was in. I had always been good at fulfilling the expectations of others and doing what I was “supposed” to do.

    External forces had driven my life. I had always been pushed toward something or pulled by something. I got a job offer, so I took the job; I got admitted, so I matriculated.

    I had never given myself permission to turn down a “safe” opportunity that came my way. I had never taken a next step in life from a point of stillness, only as a result of some irresistible magnetic external force.

    It was time to exist in the stillness and choose which path to go down rather than wait for something to pull me. As a people-pleaser, it felt daunting to sit in the stillness and create my own vision for my future, not driven by an external magnetic force. But I was already unemployed, aka not doing what I was “supposed” to be doing, so I figured I might as well lean into the discomfort and really focus on what I wanted.

    I had to get in touch with my own gut, something I had long silenced. So I evaluated the parts of my life that I liked and the parts that I wanted to adjust. It looked a lot like my annual goal setting, which was full of goals that I wasn’t going to reach this calendar year anymore, including “get promoted to senior product manager,” among other things.

    I evaluated my satisfaction with my life, broken out by category. I looked at how I spent my time within each category and how I felt during that time. These are the categories I used:

    1. Career & Financial

    2. Relationships

    3. Wellness

    4. Fun & Hobbies

    5. Lifestyle

    I was left with a clearer picture of what I valued versus what was in my life due to external forces. I loved climbing; I didn’t love living downtown. I loved working on climate issues; I didn’t love driving in traffic. I started creating a vision for my life with these values in mind and I began to feel more at ease.

    “The direction of your focus is the direction your life will move.” ~Ralph Marston

    One big takeaway I got from the exercise is that I was leaving the city to go climbing (and therefore sleeping in my car) more nights than I was spending in my downtown LA apartment. Plus, I had insomnia when I was staying in LA. When I lived out of my car, I felt at ease. Everything felt simpler and made more sense. I didn’t feel frenetic or stressed, yet only my surroundings had changed.

    That’s how I realized that my downtown apartment had come to represent clinging to the past. I didn’t even like spending time in it—my insomnia was cured whenever I left. It was time to leave that apartment for good. LA wasn’t the problem, but what the apartment itself had come to represent was pointing to the problem—I had been playing it safe trying to please others and ignoring my own gut. It was time to rearrange my life to stay focused on the things that energized me.

    I wanted to live out of my car and just climb for a little while. But that felt like jumping off a cliff. I researched options and talked to friends living the so-called “climbing dirtbag” lifestyle.

    I gave myself permission to embrace the instability and the uncertainty. I canceled my apartment without another living space lined up and moved my things into storage. I knew I would have challenges and inconveniences in my life either way. At least this way I felt in alignment with my gut.

    The move created real momentum in my life. I was no longer waiting to be pulled by the external happenings in my life. I was intentionally creating movement in the direction of something I wanted.

    I was moving even though it was scary, and even though the change may have been small in the eyes of others, I didn’t know how the gaps would be filled in or what would be next.

    The change was an emotional rollercoaster. The planning phase was incredibly stressful, amplified by the questions others asked me, which I did not have answers for. But once I started acting on my move, I felt more relaxed, then elated and grief-stricken all at the same time.

    I was relaxed because I fell into a flow of checking off to-do items. I was elated because opportunities were opening for me. I began to see a vision for a future that was positive and that also looked very different than the past. I was grieving the loss of the job I’d enjoyed and the life I’d had.

    I realized a lot of feelings I had silenced right after the layoff were surfacing during this move. In my effort to “go with the flow,” I hadn’t let myself fully experience the present moment and the discomfort it brought. I resisted rather than surrendering.

    I learned that I have to actually experience the discomfort that is there in my life. I can’t avoid it, or it will keep resurfacing again and again, pushing me to make a change. And if I experience it, it will pass.

    For me, there was so much tied up in the apartment and what it had come to represent. The change was hard, but I felt more authentic. I was in the driver’s seat, and I was starting to feel more comfortable making decisions about the direction I wanted to take.

    Just taking some small decisive action in alignment with my own vision for my future made it possible for me to see good things that might come next—possibilities that felt exciting. It’s a lot easier to exist day to day from a place of playfulness when the uncertain future feels bright.

    If you’re at a crossroads after an unexpected change, like I was, take a pause before jumping into a life that looks a lot like the one you had before. Maybe this is a perfect opportunity to reevaluate your life and consider what would really make you happy. Surrender to the changes, and the flow of life might surprise you.

  • The Hidden Reasons You’re Stuck (And What to Do When Conventional Advice Fails)

    The Hidden Reasons You’re Stuck (And What to Do When Conventional Advice Fails)

    “The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.” ~M. Scott Peck

    Have you ever been in a situation or a stage in your life where you’ve felt physically stuck, as if you’ve fallen into some kind of invisible quicksand that you can’t get out of?

    Or maybe it’s felt more like you have a thick, invisible elastic band around your waist, and no matter how hard you push forward, it pulls against you, holding you in place? Or maybe it’s like a sky-high brick wall that you can’t find your way through, around, or over?

    Getting stuck in life can feel frustrating, annoying, upsetting, and confusing. And if you’ve been stuck for too long or at a time when you really need to move forward, you’ve probably found yourself panicking and feeling afraid because if you don’t take action, it may seem like your life will collapse—that you may end up financially destitute, homeless, alone, or a failure.

    The Place Where You Are Stuck is Your Growing Edge

    Everyone gets stuck at times. It tends to occur when you arrive on the threshold of a new direction, taking a risk, doing something new, or needing to leave something behind and launch yourself into the unknown.

    I’ve been stuck many times in my life, sometimes briefly and sometimes for longer periods when I’ve had to accept that I needed to make big changes to my life and along with them, make choices and difficult decisions or learn something deeply and powerfully.

    This place where you are stuck is your growing edge. It is the threshold between the known and the unknown, who you are and who you’re becoming.

    Sometimes you might have no idea why you’re stuck, only that you can’t move forward. It’s a place that you may consciously or unconsciously try to escape by either avoiding your stuckness or trying to get over your edge and out of the discomfort too quickly.

    Sometimes we get stuck unnecessarily for way too long because we keep hitting the edge and avoiding it or keep applying strategies to get unstuck that don’t address the real cause.

    We often think of getting stuck as a problem to solve, but in my experience, it usually holds a bounty of insight, gifts, power to reclaim, and healing. It can even serve the unfolding of your life by keeping you aligned with your destiny and soul’s callings (or greater purpose, if you don’t believe in those things).

    Why Conventional Advice Didn’t Help You Get Unstuck

    Much has been written about how to get unstuck, but I’ve found that a lot of the advice is based on unnamed assumptions about the reasons you are stuck.

    A common assumption is that it is a mindset issue, so a lot of the advice relates to changing your thoughts and conscious beliefs, cultivating different attitudes and positive mindsets, or using willpower to keep going and find the next step.

    If you have followed any of this type of advice but failed to get unstuck, you may feel like something is wrong with you. But I want to lovingly tell you that there isn’t anything wrong with you. The problem is in the solution that simply didn’t address the root of your stuckness.

    My Experience of Being Stuck

    My most recent bout of stuckness was pretty painful and at times frightening in the context of my life. After pushing hard over several days to write a heap of content for my business, I woke up the next morning feeling depleted, empty, and sad. And I couldn’t write again for weeks.

    If I was writing for fun, then maybe I could have just completely surrendered and waited for the words to return, but as a self-employed business owner, writing forms a large part of my work. I write all of my own website, blog, and marketing content. Not being able to write was scary because it put my business at risk.

    Initially, I tried all the usual things: surrender, acceptance, movement, doing something fun, positive self-talk and encouragement, believing in myself, and looking for the next small step I could take. While these things were helpful, especially in terms of alleviating stress, they didn’t help me get unstuck because when I came back to writing, I was still blocked.

    The Real Reasons I Was Stuck and How I Discovered Them

    When the usual things didn’t help me get unstuck, I sat down with my journal to start inquiring in a loving, gentle way about was happening in my experience and inside me.

    To begin, I did some slow, deep belly breathing with one hand on my heart and the other on my belly. This is a polyvagal breathing exercise that helps to bring your nervous system into a state of relaxation and increases your sense of safety.

    Then I sat with my experience of stuckness and the uncomfortable feelings that arose and noticed what was happening inside me. A conversation with my body and soul unfolded that continued on and off over many days.

    This is what I discovered about why I was stuck.

    1. I had become too immersed in masculine energy in my approach to my writing: linear, direct, and factual.

    I had made it a problem to be solved, a task to be completed. While I cared about writing well and my audience, I had disconnected from the deeper voice within me that held the poetry, beauty, and wisdom of what I truly wanted to say. I call this my soul voice. Essentially, I was trying to write from my head and not my heart.

    2. I was trying to write what I thought others wanted to know or read, in a way I thought I should do it, which wasn’t congruent with what my soul wanted to express through me.

    I believed that I had to write in a certain way to connect with people and be liked rather than just write as myself. I was trying to people-please, which is an old trauma response.

    3. Different parts of me were in conflict, and their conflict needed to be listened to and resolved.

    My sensitive parts didn’t like my overly practical approach to writing and were actively pushing against the “let’s get on with it” part that was trying to get it done. You could think of it like my heart pushing back against my head in opposition, saying “this isn’t the way to proceed.”

    4. Less obvious was an inner critic that redirected me to write from my head.

    Its voice was quiet, blended in my thoughts. It was trying to stop me from writing as my true self to protect me from the risk of criticism that a young innocent part of me would find devastating—an old trauma.

    Once I recognized and sat with all of my insights about why I was stuck, I was able to hear my deeper self and find my way back into writing by listening to what my heart and soul wanted to express, while reassuring my anxious parts.

    I shared little chunks of writing on social media that I felt inspired to share, not because I thought I should or wanted to please anyone but myself. This trickle eventually found its way to become a greater river. My writer’s block ceased. My stuckness was gone.

    The Hidden Reasons You’re Stuck

    The reason you’re stuck is not necessarily a result of your mindset, attitude, or willpower, or solely because of your beliefs. The reasons you are stuck are deeper than that.

    They’re often hidden, obscure, or unobvious because they’re hanging out in your unconscious where you haven’t looked or been able to see them. They can be entangled and intertwined.

    We get stuck because of deep inner conflicts between parts of ourselves that we aren’t aware of or listening to, limiting beliefs created and held by young parts of ourselves, and trauma that has been protectively pushed down but may surface.

    We get stuck when we try to ignore or avoid difficult feelings, or when we’re scared of going for the thing that we want or need to do that our nervous system perceives as dangerous, sending us into a fight, flight, freeze or even fawn response to try and make unworkable situations work.

    Your conscious mind might think you want what you say you want, but unconscious parts of you say no.

    You might have inner critical figures meanly berating you or quietly discouraging you in a way that seems helpful or loving but isn’t. You might not have enough inner or outer allies to help you take the step you want to take or cultivate the skills you need to cultivate.

    You can also get stuck when the thing you’re trying to do isn’t aligned with your destiny or soul’s calling and your stuckness is a symptom of higher intervention.

    How to Find the Hidden Reasons You’re Stuck

    1. Offer yourself love and compassion, coupled with gentle curiosity about your stuckness.

    This will help your body relax and feel safe. You won’t discover what you are looking for by being forceful or unfeeling toward yourself.

    2. Befriend it.

    Before you can get out of your stuckness you must be willing to be with it and relate to it. Even if you try to detour your way around it or avoid it, the lessons that lie within it will appear again at another time in your life because you’re here to learn and grow.

    Life lessons we need to learn repeat. What you learn will serve you for the rest of your life.

    3. If you feel stressed and anxious about your situation, try some polyvagal breathing exercises to bring your nervous system into a state of rest and digest so you’ll feel safer.

    It’s hard to think and see clearly if your body is very activated or stressed or even in a freeze or shutdown.

    4. Find time to consciously hang out with your stuckness, breathe with it, and if you are able to, tune into your body.

    Ask, listen, and see what bubbles up and what you notice is going on beneath the surface. For me, meditation and journaling worked, but they’re not for everyone. Maybe intentional walking, dancing, praying, or talking into your phone is better for you.

    Here, you must be kind, gentle, and welcoming. Digging for answers and clues, especially in a forceful or problem-solving way, can make your sensitive inner world and young parts freeze up and not reveal anything because they feel unsafe.

    5. Hang out and breathe with your insights so you feel safe.

    This can often be enough for your stuckness to unfreeze or for you to form insights about your next step.

    Other times you will need to do some work to process emotions, work through inner conflicts and limiting beliefs, and heal your young parts and traumas. You may need therapeutic support for this.

    6. If you’ve tried the above and you’re still stuck, seek the help of a therapeutic practitioner or safe, compassionately honest loved one.

    We all have blind spots where we can’t see things clearly about ourselves. It’s human nature.

    You may have painful experiences kept out of your conscious awareness that need healing.

    Sometimes you just need help and a safe space to discover what you can’t see and to be held safely with your experience and what arises.

  • 4 Things to Try When You Want Change but Don’t Know What to Do

    4 Things to Try When You Want Change but Don’t Know What to Do

    “If you get stuck, draw with a different pen. Change your tools; it may free your thinking.” ~Paul Arden

    For a year and a half, I could feel a career shift coming. I had worked hard to cultivate a career I loved, but I began feeling disconnected from my work. The meaning I had originally felt from it was no longer there. Each time I started a new project, I felt tired and unmotivated.

    At first, I thought it might be burnout. So I took a few weeks off to see if I could reset myself into feeling excited about my work again. But when I returned, I felt the same. The things that I had built my career around, that previously gave me energy and meaning, no longer resonated.

    I thought about the type of work I did daily and couldn’t imagine myself still doing it ten years from now. But what could I imagine myself doing? I had no idea.

    I struggled and strived to figure out what a career shift might look like. I read several books, including Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life by James Hollis (Ph. D.), but while I resonated with the ideas in several of them, I still felt no closer to an answer.

    I became very intentional about noticing when things gave me energy. At one point, I went to a dinner party where someone brought tarot cards and gave me a reading. It was so energizing! I went home and immediately ordered the same set of tarot cards. I began learning about them and started doing readings with friends and at parties.

    “What does this mean? Should I become a tarot card reader?” I thought. But that didn’t resonate for a variety of reasons.

    By this point, I was telling everyone who would listen that I was “directionless.” It was a new label I used often. When someone asked what I did for work, I would say, “Meh, I’m directionless.”

    Well-meaning friends and acquaintances started offering their opinions of what I should be doing next. I even googled, “How to make a career change.” I felt like I was walking around in a black fog where I could barely make out what was ahead of me. Sometimes I could see a slight shape—a glimmer of something that gave me energy. But what did it mean? And how could I use that information for what was next?

    I went through a cross-country move to a location where I had no friends. Because of this, I had more time to myself than usual. I spent each day going inward and connecting to my body through meditation, simple somatic practices, like stimulating my vagus nerve, and parts work.

    Finally, I realized that the answer was never in my head. It was in my body—wisdom that had been blocked by all the thoughts and old beliefs that had formed, and parts of me that wanted to protect me and keep me safe.

    I found that a part of me didn’t want a career change because it was too scary and unstable. Instead, it wanted to stay with what was known, dependable, and safe. I befriended this part and worked through the fears. As I spent more and more time going inward, the answer appeared clearer and clearer. It had been there all along, and finally, I was able to access it.

    If you’re feeling stuck, here are a few things to try.

    1. Identify parts that may be trying to tell you something.

    If you are feeling stuck, there may be a “part” of you that is keeping you there to protect you. These parts are often created during childhood when we might not have had as many resources as we do now.

    For example, maybe you learned during childhood that being seen by others can be unpredictable and dangerous. So a “part” of you could have been created that helped you make decisions based on that information. Now, as an adult, you likely have more resources, but that information never got to the “part” that was created.

    So, let’s say that you want to write a book and you just can’t seem to move forward. No matter what you do, you’re staying stuck. Why? One reason might be because this “part” knows that if you write a book, you will be seen by others, and based on experience, that can be unpredictable and dangerous. So it prevents you from stepping out and taking risks where you might be seen. You may not even be aware of this part consciously. Yet it could be there, working day and night to protect you.

    2. Meditate.

    Being stuck can sometimes prompt negative thoughts, such as “What if I’m stuck forever?” or “I’m not good enough.” These thoughts can then lead to negative emotions, which can then make us feel even more stuck and overwhelmed. It’s a vicious cycle. Meditation can help you break out of this cycle and receive clarity, which can help you find direction and move forward.

    Set a time each day to meditate. It doesn’t need to be that long—even just ten minutes is enough. If you have trouble sitting silently, you could search for a guided meditation on YouTube.

    Make it part of your routine and do it at the same time each day to keep momentum going. Doing it at the same time each day will help it become part of a habit and make it easier to remember.

    If you start thinking while you’re sitting silently, that’s okay! Just come back to your breath. You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to cultivate some stillness and silence. This practice helps you drop out of your mind and into your body, where so much wisdom lives.

    3. Stimulate your vagus nerve.

    Your vagus nerve regulates your entire nervous system. When your vagus nerve is activated, it helps calm your nervous system, which helps shift you into a more creative, open state of being. It is from this state that you can more easily access wisdom within yourself.

    There are a variety of ways to stimulate your vagus nerve. Because the vagus nerve is connected to your vocal cords, humming or singing is one way to achieve this:

    1. Focus on your breath and notice anything you feel in your body. Maybe you feel pressure on your chest, a pain in your neck, a burning in your throat, etc.
    2. Breathe in deeply.
    3. As you exhale, say “Voo” out loud for the entire length of the exhale.
    4. Sit and notice how your body is feeling now. Is there any difference?
    5. Continue steps two through four until you feel a shift.

    4. Change your environment.

    Have you ever taken a trip to a new place or gone on a great hike and felt a sense of renewed inspiration, clarity, or presence? The reason for this is because we grow when we’re out of our comfort zone.

    Being in a new environment, meeting new people, and having new experiences takes us out of our comfort zone, opens our minds, and provides us with the opportunity to grow and learn more about ourselves. It shakes things up from our normal day-to-day experiences.

    Get out into nature or go on an overnight getaway. It doesn’t need to be something fancy—anything that will get you out of your current space can help shift the stuckness.

    Is there an area of your life where you feel stuck or don’t know what to do? Which of these actions most resonates with you? Or, do you have an action you typically take that works best?

  • Our Creative Genius Shows Us Possibilities the Rational Mind Can’t See

    Our Creative Genius Shows Us Possibilities the Rational Mind Can’t See

    “There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.”  ~Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

    In my twenties, I worked for a Fortune 500 company at 401 North Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. It was fun to work in the city, and my office overlooked Lake Michigan—I never got tired of the stunning view. Weekends were spent with friends eating at unique ethnic restaurants and visiting comedy clubs, blues bars, art galleries, museums, and theater.

    Chicago is a thriving city with a vibrant cultural life. I had a great time.

    I eventually went on to get a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and after I completed the degree, everything in my external world nudged me to “get out there and do great things.” Fellow students were receiving grants, fellowships, and prestigious tenure-track positions at major research universities. My advisor (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of Flow) was excited about my dissertation research and wanted me to publish.

    Everywhere I went, freshly minted Ph.D.s were busily writing papers, interviewing, and speaking at important conferences. And if that wasn’t enough incentive, my department was being closed by the University, and administrators, faculty, and students were launching a massive fight to try to keep it open. The centerpiece of their argument was to show how their recent graduates (i.e., me…) were doing amazing, brilliant things in the world. Yikes.

    I pushed myself—secluding myself away at a quiet retreat center for a week to try to focus, write a research article, and finally get serious about my academic career. My writing was stiff, contrived, and boring.

    I was miserable.

    So, instead of launching an illustrious academic career, I moved to the wilderness of northeast Montana.

    Montana enchanted me. Everything was so different. I fell in love with the spectacular natural beauty, but also the people who were so different from anyone else I’d ever known.

    There were backwoods hippies living off the grid, musicians who played on homemade instruments, unique one-of-kind handmade houses, and artists of all kinds.

    I moved in with a longhaired hippy in a teepee. My dog and I could hear the wolves howl at night, and we crossed paths with bears during the day. I immersed myself in the beauty of the wild with its craggy mountains and deep dark winters.

    I was far, far away from the world of exalted professional accomplishments. Here’s what happened instead.

    1. I developed self-reliance.

    One day a bird flew in and got stuck between windowpanes when trying to get out. Another day, a neighbor’s stray dog got his eyelid hooked on barbed wire. (Ouch!)

    In the city, my go-to response was to get the nearest person to help. But here in this remote area, there were no neighbors to be called. I managed to successfully extricate both animals on my own and without harming them further.

    2. I developed a wide skill set.

    In rural and remote areas, by necessity, you become a generalist. I did things I never would have done had I remained in the city.

    I was asked to speak at a church service. I started leading creative writing workshops at the yoga center. I was asked by an artist to write a book about her work and the local paper invited me to participate in a community forum.

    3. I developed openness.

    In the city, I held staunch beliefs about issues such as the need for gun control. Living in the country, I developed a deeper and more fleshed out understanding of diverse views. In rural Montana, churchgoers, new-age hippies, and hunters all mix together at the post office, grocery store, and local cafe.

    My perspectives broadened. I was no longer automatically locked into a particular position. Whereas before I saw the world in stark black-and-white, I now saw shades of gray.

    4. I developed leadership skills.

    In the city, civic organizations can feel large and intimidating. In a rural setting, everyone pitches in.

    I was asked to organize a United Way meeting. I became involved in the Rotary club. The employment agency asked me to lead a staff meeting,

    5. I developed passions for different things.

    I became proficient at river rafting. I spent weekends contra dancing. A band needed a bass guitar player and there was no one else around, so I volunteered to give it a try. (I loved it.)

    I had no idea of the fun to be had in the country.

    6. I discovered a freedom of identity.

    I’d spent my life growing up in a conservative Midwestern family, then following corporate rules as a computer scientist before embarking on a rigorous Ph.D. program.

    In Montana, I let myself break the rules for a while, stepping out of everything I had known and trying on something completely new and different. I discovered what it felt like to be free of roles and expectations.

    A friend of mine, a massage therapist, absolutely loved her work. After several years, she decided she wanted to make more money and she made the rational decision to switch to a career in nursing. Since both professions involve healing work, she naturally believed nursing would be a good choice for her.

    Years and tens of thousands of dollars later, she admits that she hates nursing. Logic doesn’t help us find our next step.

    By the way, I also have a dear friend who loves being a nurse. This is not a story about nursing (or academia). It’s a story about uniqueness.

    What are the unique paths that inspire each of us? What are the unique places, people, and situations that help us grow?

    When we’re stuck, it’s often because our minds are dead-set focused on the direction that seems reasonable. It’s the only direction that our minds can see.

    Our creative genius has a much different approach. It offers us unique, peculiar possibilities that our rational mind can’t see.

    Your creative genius will take you in directions that you don’t expect and can’t predict ahead of time. Directions that aren’t a linear, incremental next step. Instead, they open up entire new worlds that you didn’t know existed.

    Here’s a tip…

    When you’d like to make a change, feel blocked, or frustrated that whatever you’re doing is no longer working, consciously step back and imagine opening space for possibilities you hadn’t considered. This can be a challenge—your mind may have a hard time letting go of the reins.

    You are more than your thinking mind. You have another, non-cognitive creative intelligence operating in your life as well. It’s your creative genius and it’s worth listening to.

    Opening space for it will give it a chance to express itself.

  • Getting Unstuck: Work Through Fear and Change Your Life

    Getting Unstuck: Work Through Fear and Change Your Life

    Im Free

    “When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    We’ve all been there. Feeling stuck is very distressing, and it can often make a situation feel even more difficult than it already appears to be.

    Many of us may have felt trapped in a job, a relationship, a place; any unfavourable situation, really, that we see little way out of can leave us feeling deeply discouraged.

    The uncertainty of it all becomes overwhelming and, over time, paralyzing.

    I have felt the frustration, the sadness, and the hopelessness that accompany this predicament many times.

    In fact, I’ve lived most of my life feeling stuck in one thing or another—a volatile family situation, unhealthy relationships, various jobs. For a long time, I rarely made proactive decisions about anything.

    I had a number of distractions I used to try to avoid thinking about it. I drank heavily, took drugs, took trips, took on other people’s problems, overworked, over-exercised, over-sexed, under-slept, worried constantly, and generally avoided thinking about the specifics of what I needed out of life, a job, or a relationship.

    Opportunities and endings did flow through my life, as they inevitably will, but they were seldom based on what I wanted.

    After a while, negativity and worry used up much of my energy. I was diagnosed with cancer at twenty-six, and started to have other major physical ailments, not to mention regular nightmares. I knew I had to make changes.

    I started with my diet, something that I felt was within my control. I gained a lot of knowledge about food, health, and lifestyle very quickly and just soaked it all up.

    I also learned a lot more about our inner emotional lives and about taking responsibility for my feelings, my actions, and my words.

    I started practicing meditation and continued to deepen my yoga practice with a new awareness of my mental and emotional environment. I’m now able to observe my thoughts and am quick to see how my thought patterns change when I feel stuck.

    Those negative, self-defeating, fearful thoughts come creeping back into my mind, whispering to me that I don’t have any other choice.

    The depressed feelings and anxiousness come quickly too, and I often start to wonder, if I’d done something differently in the past, would I be here now? I tell myself that only if a certain event happens in the future will I be able to make a change.

    Dwelling on the past and obsessing about the future is a surefire way to stay stuck.

    I now know that I need to be careful not to qualify decisions based on imagined future events happening or not happening, and not to make decisions out of fear. Sometimes doing what is best for you means facing those fears head on.

    When I was diagnosed with cancer, I told myself I’d only take time off work if I started to feel really physically ill. I was afraid I’d face financial difficulties if I took a leave. I didn’t give myself nearly enough space to process the emotional effects, and I didn’t give my physical body the time to rest that it was clearly telling me it needed.

    I got very ill with a string of severe infections in the two years following my recovery because I never proactively made a decision to take care of myself.

    When I start bargaining with myself, I know I’ve given away my power. I’m no longer listening to my intuition or connecting with what’s really best for my well-being.

    I’ve realized that the only way to get unstuck is to detach from the outcome of our decisions and the fears about things not working out, and instead focus solely on what exactly we want and need. In this way, the uncertainty can lead to opportunity.

    There are a few things I did make proactive decisions about over the last ten years—like pursuing a degree in Environmental Studies, moving to Australia, and committing to building a more healthy lifestyle—that have turned out better than I could’ve imagined.

    It has become more and more clear that the decisions I make from now on need to be based on my true desires, not my fears.

    I now recognize that I’ve kept myself in unhealthy situations mainly because I didn’t have the tools to help myself.

    When I’m having trouble getting unstuck, I use some of these small actions that can be helpful in creating space to move through and out of the undesirable situation:

    Take time.

    One of the most difficult things about feeling stuck is that you want to fix it right away. This urge to control the situation really doesn’t help solve the problem.

    If you’re having trouble moving out of a bad situation naturally, you’ll need time to process all the feelings that will come up as you move toward a new phase of your life. Let it happen and enjoy it as much as you can. The best approach you can take in this situation is to trust that things will improve over time.

    Don’t wait for this-or-that to happen.

    This is a big one. If you’re always waiting for something else to happen before you act, you won’t make proactive decisions in a way that’s in line with what you want. 

    Stop thinking about it.

    I like to practice meditation and yoga, read a good book, or take a nap. The trick is to not think about the issue actively, but just take some time to enjoy where you are now.

    Obsessive thinking can do far more harm than good and never actually causes any change. Once you start feeling more present, you’ll take less joy in feeding the mental drama around the situation and naturally be less willing to put up with negativity it brings.

    Get some perspective.

    Taking a short (or longer) time away can break emotional ties in a big way and allow you to see things in a different way. You may also be motivated to make change as you recognize how much better you feel when you’re out of the environment where you feel stuck.

    Get healthy.

    Focus on yourself. Make your physical, mental, and emotional health your biggest priority. Once I started letting go of all the stress I’d been holding onto for so long, I was truly shocked by how great I could feel. I knew I wanted to pursue that amazing feeling.

    The key here is really to figure out what works for you to help you get unstuck. That may be chatting with one of your friends, taking a weekend out of town, or walking by the water. Then do it as much as you need to until you feel better.

    Don’t lose sight of what’s important to you. And if you’re not sure what’s important to you, make finding out a priority.

    I am still stuck, as I write this, in an unsatisfactory situation. I’m far from being able to completely avoid feeling trapped by certain situations I’ve gotten myself into, but I am committed to the personal values I’ve uncovered within myself, and I’m working hard to build the life I want. I also don’t let depressive and self-defeating thoughts take over at these times.

    Over time, you will learn to move past jobs, people, and places that don’t work for you more quickly and with ease.

    In the meantime, it always helps to remind yourself that you’re doing the best you can, as fast as you can. When you’re finally able to let go of your fears and be proactive about your decisions, you will find that life is yours again, to be shaped and lived in any way you like.

    Photo by Rob Lee