Roadblocks.  Dead ends.  Blind corners.  What to do when you don’t know what to do next.

I know you’ve done it before.  You know—gotten yourself into that trouble again.  It looks familiar, feels familiar—different people or setting, same sorry script.

“I thought I had made headway,” you think, feeling both discouraged and confused.  “How did I end up here again?”

Today we explore how we can be both the cause and the solution for some of our worst sort of troubles.  We will talk about the heaviness of getting stuck or trapped in old and familiar patterns—and how to release ourselves from the snares.

I like to call it “getting out from under yourself.”

Maybe you think that’s a weird or unforgiving thing to say, like I’m assigning you blame somehow.  I promise I’m not interested in assigning blame about how you got stuck—stuckness can happen all kinds of ways, and the cause isn’t really at issue here.

Instead of assigning blame, I am offering you all the power and responsibility you need to take care of yourself.

Let’s use me as a guinea pig.

My stuckness

I get stuck all the time.  For example, I have a penchant for getting locked into unforgiving routines.  Spontaneity gets strangled by to-do lists and goals in various stages of completion.  I feel like Theseus, wandering through the maze of my day, the string leading me home is a series of tasks that tugs me through each hour in rapid succession.  Every spare moment gets scheduled with something.

I often feel most present in my sessions with clients, where I get to connect and step into someone else’s world for a little while.  But outside of those hours, life can move at a bit of a blur.  So I try to stop and breathe, and snag quiet moments as the world rushes by in a tumult.  It’s not always easy, though.

So, what helps me get out from under myself?

From here to there

I am constantly trying to dismantle my own systems.  As I said, I box myself in with routines and obligations and then wonder how I ended up in said box.  So, I get a bit ornery after a while and start pushing back on things.  I question the urgency of the stuff I’ve surrounded myself with.  I ask if it really needs to get done right now… or ever.  I try to accept help graciously and absorb solutions when they’re offered.  I try to be patient.

Here are a few other tips I’ve found that work well for me:

1.)    The “aha” moment.  When I think about my stuckness—the old patterns that pull me back into place over and over again, I picture myself stepping onto a large hamster wheel.  There’s all of these frenetic movements—this lunging and pushing and effort—and yet I stay in the same darn place.  Big power emerges when we realize we are stepping back onto the hamster wheel.  Picture it however you like, but having an “aha” moment is the first step to giving you back all your choice and power to do new and interesting things.

2.)     Irreverence.  So often I get ensnared in a very serious business.  This gets me stuck in a box quite quickly.  I see lots of serious and grim things that need tending to.  But, if I can be a little silly, or just “pan out” on the camera for a minute, it helps put things into clearer, broader perspective.  Sometimes the very serious business is serious.  But sometimes it’s just pretending to be.  Once I can sort the serious from the not-so-very, I can spend precious resources tending to the very and letting the not-so-very cool on the back burner for a little bit.

3.)    I deserve good things.  I think sometimes we expect things to be hard.  Maybe people told us that was our lot in life, or maybe we learned to duck first and ask questions later.  So sometimes it comes down to believing that we deserve to have good things—and not just to say it, but to really feel it deep down.  Careful with this one—it can be a really strange meal we offer ourselves if we’ve lunched for a long time on scarcity, hardship, or feelings of fraudulence and unworthiness.  Sometimes it helps to go slow, or ask loving others to share this message with us.

4.)    Look in the wrong end of the telescope.  Sometimes it helps to start at the end of things—to get excited about the result.  Some people get overwhelmed with that and prefer to think instead about process or feelings involved.  “Good would look like this” or “I’d know I was on the right track if…” or “I would feel this way.”  Maybe you’re too focused on outcome and need to consider the process—the journey in getting there.  Or, you may be too focused on the next step and you forget your destination.  Look in the wrong end of the telescope—get lost in details or love the big picture.  Do the opposite of what you’re used to doing.

5.)    The others.  Sometimes we feel stuck in a job or a relationship and some of the cause of our hardship falls to the folks around us.  The good news is that you still have choice and power in how to choose to respond to this stuff.  It’s as the old saying goes, “You can’t change others, but you can change yourself/your perspective”  … so, do you need to clean house?  Are you surrounded by negative and discouraging people?  Let’s give them the boot, or set up a powerful buffer against them.  If they are masters of getting under our skin, try #2.  If it’s hard to imagine being surrounded by people who really love you, see #3.

This is not a recipe

This is not a recipe for happiness.  It’s not something you do in order, and it’s surely not something you’ll complete in a day.  This is piecemeal work, stuff that happens a bit at a time.  (Good things can happen in ounces as well as pounds and tons.)

These are marinades that take years.  And yet they also happen a moment at a time.  So be patient and go slow—that’s when stuff will actually happen fastest.

How do you get out from under yourself?