Think You’re Stuck in A Job, A Relationship, A Situation, Life Itself? Here’s Why You’re Not…
It’s so EASY to convince ourselves we can’t ‘move’ forward. But we’re wrong. Every time.
How often do you say, “I am so stuck right now.”
I get it. Sometimes life can feel like you are wading through treacle, feeling like you don’t have enough time, enough money, enough energy to do what you’d like.
It’s really easy to convince ourselves that we are stuck. I spent decades feeling that way, convincing myself there was no way out and no way forward. I was convinced every difficult situation I found myself in had no exit route.
But here’s what I’ve learned: I was not stuck. I have never been stuck. And never will be stuck, and nor will you.
That feeling of ‘stuckness’ is simply that, a feeling. It doesn’t exist. It comes from the perspective that we are choosing to take at that time. We are never in a position of being unable to move, but we tell ourselves stories that make us feel we are.
Let that sink in. You are not stuck. You simply haven’t figured out the way to change your perspective in order to make you feel able to move forward in life.
I still have moments where I feel stuck, but now I know the key to feeling unstuck is changing the stories I’m telling myself. If I keep up the “I’m stuck” self-talk, I will continue to feel that way. If I choose to change what I’m saying about the situation, my feelings will shift.
I’ve talked before about the stories that we tell ourselves. There may be some truth in our stories. But they’re still a fiction that we tell ourselves. We get to choose better stories — if there’s going to be fiction anyway, it might as well help us!
If you are feeling stuck, you are looking at life from a place of current circumstances. Your stories are about the current world, and convince you that nothing can change. Instead, you get to ask the questions of how you can change, instead of assuming that you can’t.
If you have the belief that you can’t change or that your external circumstances can’t change, guess what? You’re creating the energy that will perpetuate your current perspective, stories and — ultimately — situation in the world. The more you tell yourself change isn’t possible, the less you’ll be able to change.
We are perpetuating the circumstances that we don’t want to have. It is our responsibility, our fault, that we continue to be in that situation. We don’t need to work from circumstance.
I’m sure you’re screaming at me right about now: “But I can’t afford to do what I want!” “But I don’t have time!”
If you are thinking like this, you’re coming at what you want from the wrong angle. Let’s think about someone who already has what you want. Let’s take owning your own home as an example. Do you think the only thing that a homeowner had in order to buy a home was money?
I’m a homeowner, and — to be honest — money was one of the last things that came in the journey to buying a house! I began by modelling those who already had what I wanted. I did this by saving some money regularly, by acting as though I already had a home, buying things for the home I didn’t yet have. And so on.
I behaved like a homeowner before I had the money to buy a home, let alone the home itself.
If, instead, I had sat and focussed on the phrase “I’ll never have enough money to buy a house”, I am certain I’d still be in rented accommodation. We create the world we want by adapting our mindset to one of being open to what we want.
External circumstances only start to change when our attitude begins to shift.
I know someone who could never earn above a certain amount in her job. Every year, she’d earn almost exactly that number. It came from stories she was telling herself about how that was the number she wanted. By never being open to numbers above that, her salary didn’t eclipse it — until the moment she dropped the story of “$Xk being enough”.
She was blocking herself earning more.
How do I know if I’m living from circumstance or an unhelpful story?
Language is everything. There are certain words that creep into my language that makes me realise I’m limiting myself.
“I can’t.”
“I don’t have time / money / etc.”
“I’ve not got enough skill / energy / etc.”
“That’s impossible.”
“They’re more skillful / pretty / etc. than me.”
Those ways of thinking and uses of language are all red flags to me. They signpost areas where my perspective needs to shift. I now realise the more I say those types of things to myself, the less likely I am to succeed.
If your current beliefs, stories, mindset, perspective, and language are not in alignment with the place you want to be, you’ll never get there. Being in alignment with where you wish to be is the only way to get there.
Jim Fortin says, “You are where your attention is”. If yours is on the lack of money in your bank, your clothes feeling too tight, or your relationship being full of arguments, you will perpetuate those things.
If you shift your focus to abundance, accepting your body, the happier moments of your relationship, you will create more of those things you desire. You get to choose to shift your attention to the things that you wish for.
We can have anything we want, but it comes from having the right stories and the right mindset. We need to see ourselves at point B, where we want to be, rather than at point A, where we currently are.
So, next time you feel stuck, remember that it’s an illusion. Look instead to your perspective, your focus and whether you’re actually perpetuating your current circumstances, even when you wish to change them.
