The Stuck Place: 3 Powerful Tips to Move Through the Muck

This content was originally found on livingfullybalanced.com.

I’d like to get real with you. No matter how much I know or how motivated I think I am, I still get caught in the stuck place. Do you know that place…where we knowingly choose things that don’t move us forward?

Even though I have been trained in helping people get unstuck, I sometimes get caught in the weeds and hang around in the muck myself. (Argh…heavy sigh)

Looking back, I have to say I used to live in the muck more often than I want to admit. At the time, I knew that the stuck place wasn’t a place where I wanted to be. However, it WAS a place in which I was comfortable. I knew how I felt when I was there, yet even though it was comfortable, I so desperately wanted to get unstuck.

Sometimes we have to get deeply uncomfortable in order to make a change. That was surely true for me. And it’s that way for most of my clients.

One of my clients recently texted me in desperation, hoping that she could have a coaching session the next day. She was pretty sure that she wasn’t making any progress and she felt like she was actually sliding backwards. Even though she felt like something was wrong with her, we talked about the fact that what she was experiencing was actually normal.

When we’re moving through divorce we can all find ourselves in the stuck place. It’s a place where inertia gets the best of us, we feel overwhelmed, and like we’re going backward, not forward.

Here are three powerful tips to help you move through the muck in your life.

1. You are not alone. It can feel lonely when we listen to the murky, negative self-talk in our heads. Because we live in a culture that honors bold action and positivity, we often feel like something must be wrong with us, when we can’t “just gett’er done” like everyone else. There is nothing wrong with you!

2. The thoughts in your head are actually not truths. Those thoughts are created by the part of you that wants to keep you safe. And what better way to keep you safe, than to keep you stagnant and not risk anything. But in order to move through a place of stuck, you must take risks. And the real truth is that all of us, even the Tony Robbins’s among us, occasionally need to re-motivate, re-commit and create consistent actions as we move through.

3. You are capable. When you find that you are stuck and don’t know how to move forward, I want you to know that you’re not lacking something that others have. You have the resources and skills you need to move through this difficult and often painful transition. Do what you know you need to do, and you’ll build your confidence, one choice at a time.