People Who Always Find A Way Forward Do These 9 Things When They Get Stuck
How resilient people push through obstacles and keep things moving.
Roberto Hund | Unsplash There are a lot of events that can lead to you feeling stuck. Getting fired, the death of someone close, realizing you hate your job, a failed romantic relationship, financial problems, becoming a parent, and just about any other type of life event can leave you feeling lost and alone.
The feeling of being stuck in life is always rooted in fear. You are afraid of making the wrong decision. You don’t know what to do because you think you have made bad decisions in the past that have led you to your current predicament, and you’re afraid of spending more time going the wrong way.
In the end, the only way to get unstuck is to do something, even the wrong thing. How do I know? I’ve been stuck on the side of the road both literally and metaphorically many times. The first time I questioned everything was when I had a nervous breakdown and quit the practice of law. I had no idea what I was going to do next.
After recovering from cancer and other related illnesses, instead of feeling a sense of clarity and gratitude, I felt lost and like I was wasting my life. There have been many other smaller moments as well, but each time I eventually got unstuck. But it was always gradual, and nobody else ever came to my rescue. If you’re stuck, you can get unstuck. But first, you’re going to have to try some new things.
People who always find a way forward do these 9 things when they get stuck:
1. Prioritize movement over direction
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Your brain loves to control you. There’s safety in being stuck. That’s one reason why all you can think about is how there is danger in every direction.
That’s why no choice feels right. Your brain doesn’t want you to change. Change is scary. When you’re stuck, the direction you head matters far less than the fact that you are moving at all.
It’s a bit like this exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat: "If you don’t know where you want to go in life, then it doesn’t matter what direction you go in."
Just do something. It doesn’t have to be the one right choice. Take the job you’re unsure about, take the class that seems interesting, try a different career.
The worst that can happen is that it doesn’t work out. You already know what that feels like. At least you will have done something. Every time you try something, you make it easier to try something else.
You learn new skills and meet new people that may help you in surprising ways later in life. Don’t try and make the right choice, just make any choice. Movement matters more than direction.
2. Do things scared
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Humans are a risk-averse species. That’s why you’re stuck. You’re scared of taking a risk. If you weren’t scared, you would do something.
Do you know the difference between people with insane amounts of confidence and you? The people with confidence, the people who are doing scary things, are also scared. They just do it scared.
Life is an adventure. A journey without any danger or obstacles is an errand, not a quest. You are on a quest.
The funny thing about fear is that it’s at its peak before you do the thing. Stage fright goes away once you say your first line. The water feels cold until you get used to it.
If you want to get unstuck, decide you are going to start doing things scared. You’ll be shocked by how far you can go, even when you’re afraid.
3. Notice what you notice
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Stop focusing on all the big things. Instead of trying to figure out relationships, career, and happiness, start looking at the small things in life.
Notice what you notice. What patterns keep showing up? Do you feel excited when doodling in your notebook? Are you more relaxed when you exercise?
These are clues. Most people get stuck and stay stuck because they’re waiting for a someone to tell them exactly what to do. They want a clear message written in the sky.
The reality is, clues are telling you what to do, but they are small and easy to miss unless you practice staying in the moment.
I went from being a lawyer to being a freelance copywriter because I kept seeing people talking about freelance writing online. I enjoyed reading about the mechanics of building a business and learning about the art and science of copywriting.
There was never one lightbulb moment. I just noticed that I kept noticing freelance writing opportunities. Then one day, I decided to take one of those opportunities.
That choice changed my life, but I didn’t know my life had changed for more than a year afterward. By noticing what I noticed, I had forgotten to feel stuck. I was too busy doing things.
4. Build escape velocity
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Are you waiting for motivation to do something? Then I have some bad news for you. Motivation isn’t magic. Motivation comes from the neurotransmitter dopamine. Do you know what increases dopamine in your brain?
Doing things. You get motivation from doing things. You don’t do things because of motivation.
As someone with ADHD, and therefore a very complex relationship with dopamine, that seems incredibly unfair. When you’re stuck, you need to build up enough momentum to get moving. You need to reach escape velocity.
Instead of waiting for motivation to do some big thing, start doing very small things. Building escape velocity is a combination of the concepts of atomic habits and habit stacking.
You start taking a series of small actions that all feed into each other. When I get stuck on a book project, I do not decide to focus on finishing a chapter. I don’t even try and focus on finishing a page.
Instead, I create one notecard a day. That notecard may have one sentence or one paragraph. It might have a crude sketch for a comic.
Once I do this for a few days, I feel more motivated to put some of those cards into a page or two. But, even on days when I can’t bring myself to do a page, I keep making the cards. Many cards will never be used.
Some of the cards will be useful in other ways. But the practice of making the cards helps me build the escape velocity I need to get unstuck.
Remember, right now you don’t need a direction, you just need movement. String together two or three very small habits to get some dopamine flowing. It might be doing one sit-up and writing one sentence. No action is too small.
5. Practice being the person you want to be
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Most likely, you are hyper-focused on figuring out what you want to do. What if you stopped worrying about what you want to do with your life and instead asked, “Who do I want to be?”
You have some sense of the kind of person you want to be. You know what it means to be a good person. You know what the kind of person you hope to be looks like. Instead of trying to find your calling, practice being the person you want to be.
The best way to change who you are is to practice being someone else. This isn’t just fake it until you make it.
You have to think hard about the kind of person you want to be, and notice what kinds of things that person would do. Then you do those things.
Do you want to be someone who gets up early? Practice living that way. What do people who get up early do differently from you? They don’t just will themselves out of bed. They have a system.
They probably go to bed early. They also probably have good sleep hygiene. That means they get up and go to bed at the same time each day. They don’t drink a lot of caffeine late in the day. They stay off their phones after a certain time.
In other words, there’s a lot that goes into the simple act of getting up early. If you want that trait for yourself, you can’t just set your alarm earlier. This is a recipe for failure.
Instead, you have to practice the habits that early-morning people have. You don’t need to do them all at once. That’s another way to quickly fail.
Instead, practice one habit, develop one system at a time. Don’t get mad at yourself for falling short — you’re still practicing.
If you put in enough repetition, if you practice long enough, you will change who you are. Practice being the person you want to be; that’s all any successful person does.
6. Enjoy the detours
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Life is not going to go the way you planned. That’s life. You can either get angry about the detours you are forced to go on, or you can enjoy the scenery.
Often, getting unstuck only requires a change of perspective. Perhaps you are not lost at all. Maybe whatever happened to take you off track has put you exactly where you need to be.
Look for the best parts of your life, and enjoy them. The more you look for the good, the more you will find. If nothing else, life’s detours give you wonderful stories to tell.
7. Embrace the mundane
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When I was a young father, being the primary caregiver to four young kids, at times, felt like a Sisyphean nightmare. Every day, there were more dishes and more laundry. These beautiful kids needed to have meals made for them three times a day, every day.
It never ended. I loved caring for my children. I loved being with them all day. I did not love the drudgery.
One day during lunchtime, something happened. I created a character. I became a French chef named Xavier. I started speaking to my children in a thick, French accent and narrating my tasks like I was on a cooking show as I made them their summer lunch.
I diced their cheesesticks and carefully folded their cold cuts like I was plating food at a Michelin-starred restaurant.
The kids loved it, and I loved it too. I embraced the mundane. After that, everything from dishes to laundry became easier. It was less about drudgery and more about finding the magic in the mundane.
My situation had not changed, but my attitude had. I was no longer stuck in the rut of never-ending housework. I was enjoying the small moments of life.
8. Realize that something is always better than nothing
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You may not have noticed yet, but you usually plan to get way more done in a day than is possible. It’s not just you.
By default, all of us overestimate what we can get done in a day and underestimate what we can get done in a year. Life is a game of inches, not miles.
Slow, plodding progress is how big projects are completed. If you fall short on what you wanted to accomplish today, the worst thing you can do is beat yourself up and resolve to work twice as hard tomorrow.
When you are stuck in life, the temptation is to try to make some grand, impossible-to-accomplish plan for each day. This usually leads to more frustration.
Instead, remind yourself that something is always better than nothing. Instead of trying to write an entire article in a day, be happy with just getting an outline done.
Some days, you might find yourself crossing off every item on your to-do list. But most days, you only get a handful of things finished. That’s a win.
If you find yourself at the end of a day where you did not do anything you wanted, spend five minutes and do a little bit towards one goal.
Something is better than nothing. Those five minutes put you ahead for tomorrow and allow you to go to bed knowing you’re a little closer to your goals.
9. Do things you're passionate about
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Have you ever spent hours looking for something, only to find it when you stopped looking?
Getting unstuck is often like that. You only make progress when you stop trying to make progress.
Instead of making drastic changes, try to find your way to financial success or happiness, and find something you love doing.
This passion needs to be independent of money, your religion, and your family. You need a hobby that brings you joy.
Your passion doesn’t have to be complex or expensive. It works best if it’s neither of those things. If you regularly do something you are passionate about, that passion will start to leak into other areas of your life.
You will naturally start to have more patience with things that used to frustrate you, because you have an outlet. One of my passions is collage art in my notebook. I love cutting and pasting stuff. There’s no way to monetize this. I make these collages for my own pleasure.
This helps me relax and gives me more creative energy for the work I do that pays me. Often, the solutions to tough work problems come to me right after I finish gluing down the final scrap of paper, even though I was not thinking about anything but the collage.
Passions and hobbies allow you to get into a kind of trance where your conscious mind is able to rest. It puts you into a creative zone where your intuition is easier to access. Plus, spending time doing things without caring about money or the opinions of others is good for your soul.
When you are in the zone, the rest of the world melts away, at least for a few minutes. When you come out of your trance, you will feel more rested, and you will have more energy for getting unstuck.
You might even find that after a few weeks of indulging in a passion, you aren’t stuck anymore. No matter what you are going through right now, the feelings you are dealing with are not permanent.
Life will change. You will not be stuck where you are forever. One way or another, your life will change.
If you want to get unstuck faster, you need to instigate some kind of change yourself. Even the smallest change can change your world.
Jason McBride is a writer, poet, and illustrator focused on wonder and slow living. He is the author of several books, including the best-selling haiku comics collection, “Wild Divinity,” and the creator of the Weirdo Poetry newsletter.
