Feeling Stuck? 3 Steps to Move You Forward

^{This article originally appeared in Forbes.}

I was on a coaching call this week with someone who felt very “stuck.”

Outside of my work, most people I chat with generally use the word ‘busy’ whenever I ask them how they’ve been, yet as an executive coach, the most common word clients use to describe themselves, at the beginning of our engagement together, is ‘stuck.’ 

The feeling of stuckness is one that I help my executive coaching clients work through all the time in my practice and I’ve given the idea of feeling stuck a lot of thought.

The places where my clients feel stuck are individual and context-dependent. However, even though stuckness is often personal, here’s a general guide to help you identify what’s needed to grease your wheels and get you moving forward again.

Dr. Jo’s Guide To Identifying How You’re Stuck (and How To Get Out Of It):

Stuck Type #1: You keep doing the same things over and over.

This type of stuckness can be metaphorical – “I keep finding myself over and over in the same types of situations,” or very literal “Every day is the same, it’s my own personal Groundhog Day.”

The phrase “if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten,” comes to mind with both these scenarios. The key to getting you out of this type of stuckness is to find a pattern interrupt you’re actually willing to do… and start small. People in these types of stuck situations love to make drastic New Year’s Resolutions for how they will enact a change and truly shake things up. The problem with those types of changes is that they’re usually too ambitious and too overwhelming for your nervous system, so it becomes easier to settle back into your familiar routines.

I love the tiny habits model of picking something shockingly easy to do differently to start out with, and then adding in only very small increments of change each week. This is the exponential effect of change: if we keep taking baby steps forward, eventually we will have crossed over the threshold, yet it feels less scary and hard than just forcing ourselves to jump over that threshold – which usually ends in us jumping back over that same threshold, this time more discouraged and feeling even more stuck. 

Stuckness Recommendation #1: Pick something new and intriguing to try and make it so easy to do it that you feel stupid even making it a goal. Then nudge the dial forward every week or two. Whether you’re trying to read more, have more fun on the weekends, or break your phone addiction to checking email, your first step needs to be one that is embarrassingly easy and something you look forward to – then build from there.

Stuck Type #2: You keep thinking about/worrying about the same things over and over again.

This is the kind of stuck where it feels like our worries have developed deep and well-worn grooves in our brains, taking us repeatedly down the path we’ve been down many times before. This type of stuckness feels more mental and can wear down your energy, your optimism, and your sense of confidence. While it can feel tempting to orchestrate one big jumpstart to get you out of this mental rut, I’ve found it’s more powerful to notice the good. This type of stuck can overly focus your attention on what’s wrong and what negative results could happen, so you need to intentionally counteract that.

Stuckness Recommendation #2: Pick a gratitude practice of your choice and work on noticing and savoring the good in your world. While gratitude sounds like a new-age practice, years of research keeps proving that just paying attention to “Three things that went well today and why” is enough to impact your happiness for the next 6 months and beyond (and that seems like a small investment to payoff ratio, right?)

I’m personally a huge fan of the 5 minute journal which gets me to reflect every morning and evening about what I’m grateful for, and what went well during the day. We’ve even ritualized this at home with everyone checking in at dinner about the favorite part of their day. Just pick one practice (feel free to google for more) that doesn’t make you gag and try that for a few weeks. . . the science is on your side!

Stuck Type #3: You’re exhausted and can’t keep going on like this.

In my call, the person who was stuck looked a lot like this. This person is hugely successful and having enviable results in their career but there’s a nagging sense that it’s feeling more and more overwhelming – yes, sometimes even the good can overwhelm you. In this case, the antidote to stuckness is to start tapping on your brakes. 

Stuckness Recommendation #3: Enforce boundaries around what is “enough” in your life. For some, this might mean setting an end-time to your work day, no matter what, so you know you always have some time to recover daily. For others, this might mean scheduling a well-deserved and well-past-due vacation – one where you’re not working and is at least a full workweek off. Even the anticipation of that time off duty might be enough to sustain you until it arrives but if not, think about scheduling in “mini-breaks” until then.
A few years ago during the pandemic I reached my own internal wall and set some important guardrails in my life; I stopped working at night and have continued to maintain this, only logging back into work under rare circumstances. I also shifted my schedule to allow a mix of deep thinking time alongside client meetings, making sure not to inch too much towards back-to-back days that leave me mentally exhausted.

To be certain, none of us can keep walking down this path of life without hitting the occasional show-stopping roadblock, those are the necessary ingredients of your hero’s journey and growth throughout life. But too often, you’ve hit a smaller barrier and it’s internal, you end up getting in our own way, and so you need to look back inside yourself to create a new way through.

Now it’s your turn: if you’re feeling stuck in your life – do you think it’s reason one, two or three? Or is there another reason you feel stuck right now? Comment below and let me know what types of stuckness I might have overlooked. I look forward to learning alongside you!