The solution to feeling stuck is the opposite of what most people think…

 One of the experiences that can lead someone to hire a life coach like myself is the horrible feeling of being “stuck”.

 When we explore this feeling of “stuckness”, there is a circumstance that I encounter in my clients over and over again. Learning how to help them has changed my own behaviour and led me to feel much less stuck in my own life.

 It is one of those magical solutions that seems impossible but works like a charm (perhaps it is?).

 I had a client who came to me after spending years feeling stuck in his job. He hated it. The job had nothing to do with his deeper yearnings but the large pay check every month and the responsibilities it allowed him to meet led him to feel trapped.

 It took us a while, but the solution was very, very simple and obvious once it emerged.

 You see, my client knew he did not like his job. That thought led him to think he must resign. Which led him to think he could not manage without his pay check. Which led him to think he would not be able to feed and house his family, which led him to think he must keep his job, which led him to think about how he hated his job, which led him to think he must resign. Which led him to think he could not manage without his pay check. Do you see where I am going (or, rather, not going anywhere) with this?

 There is a loop we can get into when we start to game out the consequences of our decisions.

 Here is the magical step that my client had never taken, and honestly, I understand why. He had never taken this step because we just don’t often get the support or education on how to do this one simple thing.

 The magical first step was just sitting and knowing and being honest about how he felt about his job. He had been skimming the surface of his true feelings by going around the thinking loop of doom. Projecting into the future, imaging general worse case scenarios: “I can’t pay the mortgage! My children will be homeless!’. But he had never given himself the respect of really allowing himself to feel and honour how he felt toward his job. The disappointment. The fatigue. The boredom. The humiliation. The longing for more meaningful work.

 In order to do this, to feel our truth fully, we need support. We need a container. We need boatloads of love and self compassion.

 As he did this, the desire to quit his job became even more clear. It also became clear that one of the biggest sources of his job dissatisfaction came from the relationship he had with his direct manager. Because he took to the time to get curious about his true feelings, he was able to get much more specific about the situation. It was no longer just a general feeling of “ick” and “stuck”.

 So now he really, really knows how much he dislikes his job. How is that a solution, you may ask at this point. Surely we are about to enter into the loop of doom described above?

 Here is the magic:

 I challenged him to simply claim the desire to leave the job.

 AND NOT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. Zip. Nada.

 I think one of the ways we get stuck is we don’t actually get to the power of making a decision because we conflate having the desire internally and then making that decision real in the world.

 We completely overwhelm ourselves with the pressure that once we realize how much we want to make a decision, we must take action and MAKE IT HAPPEN. Preferably immediately.

 We judge that if we don’t immediately do the scary thing and make our desire real we are a total failure. A dreamer. An unserious person. A fake.

 This pressure makes claiming our desires incredibly scary and painful. So we never claim them fully. And this prevents us from accessing the energy we need to do the sometimes hard work of bringing those desires into the material world.

 Having clarity about what we want and then starting to make moves in the material world in accordance with that decision and two completely separate transactions. They are very different. They require us to be in very different mind and heart spaces, they require a different approach, they require different skills.

 My advice: Let your desires just be. Let them breathe. Let them take on a life of their own.

 By crushing them into reality as quickly as possible all we do is create tension and drama.

 Once we make a decision internally, solutions are more likely to emerge organically. From the solid ground of being in our bodies and our feelings and feeling the support of our own selves and perhaps another person like a coach we see the world differently. As we become more nuanced and sensitive toward ourselves, less general about our feelings we become more nuanced and sensitive to the world around us. We are more able to sense and see opportunities and solutions that might work for us.

 I think part of what leads us to this conflation between having a desire and making it happen is how very vulnerable it is to know what we want. How vulnerable it is to make a decision.

 Because the truth is, we just don’t know what will happen when that desire or decision meets the material world. We don’t know if what we want is possible. That is so hard. I think this is why there is a huge cottage industry around the “law of attraction”: it is so much easier to live the delusion that we can have anything we want.

 There is intense vulnerability in knowing that we are fallible humans in an uncertain and unpredictable world that may never allow us to have exactly what we want. But we can claim our desires anyway, we can have the courage of knowing what we want.

 What we can know is that when we do this there will be change and movement and growth and beauty. Because that is what is birthed by our clarity, our honesty and our courage to truly know what we know and feel what we feel.

 While we may not be able to have everything we want in the material world, I do believe we may be able to have all the underlying feelings we think those material wins will bring: peace, joy, love, purpose. No matter what. And that starts with accepting ourselves and what we want.

 What happened to my client? I am so glad you asked! Turns out, he was promoted internally at his bank into a situation that was not perfect, not what he was yearning for but that now allows him a little more enjoyment, time and grace at work and a much more supportive boss. He feels he now has more energy to put into his next steps, which will probably involve a career change, but with the support of his current pay check, benefits and newfound energy.

 Moving deeply into his feelings about the situation did not lead to some huge dramatic shift externally. However, the internal shifts moved him forward and allowed him to collaborate with the reality of the situation and make it better.

 So I say, let yourself feel what you want. And then just sit there and see what happens. See what actions and opportunities grow from that place of truth.