Feeling stuck? Here are three sure-fire ways to move past your blocks…

Growth

10 Nov

Written By Mia Ali

Are you feeling stuck? Stuck in your job, stuck in your ways, stuck in your relationships, stuck in your…life?

Do you wish things were….different?

But are you overwhelmed by the task ahead of you?

Perhaps you can start changing things tomorrow….

“Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that; intentions” - Jordan Belfort

There are lots of ways to work on your blocks (like, I dunno, working with an amazing life coach?!), but you’re busy, so I’m going to give you some straight-up, practical ideas that I have tried and tested.

Repeatedly.

Because even life coaches get stuck sometimes…

Schedule some daily time to work on your mindset

Mindset, shmindset…yeah yeah, I know, to some of you this sounds like woo-woo nonsense. But it is NOT nonsense, my friend. It’s important to understand that we don’t simply respond to the things going on in our lives, but to our interpretations of those things (yup. We’re in the Matrix now). And if we can change the way we interpret things for the better….well, we can do anything. Actually, Icarus just came to mind, so let’s change that to ‘we can do pretty much anything’. (You can’t fault Icarus for the effort he put into his mindset though…)

Our mindset shapes our emotional experiences – if we develop a positive mindset, limits can be seen as challenges, and challenges as a source of opportunity and growth. Now, you can do some great mindset work on specific issues with a coach, but that’s not enough. You need to take responsibility for your mindset every single day. Because you’ll be using your mind every single day, so don’t you want to set yourself up for success?

I recommend adding mindset work into your morning routine. Which might mean getting up a bit earlier, setting things up the night before to save you time in the morning, foregoing the snooze button, utilising your commute – whatever it takes. Just 15 minutes would make a real difference, more if you can swing it. I do between 1 and 1.5 hours of mindset work every morning and still hit my desk at 9am, and I have a 5 year old to get ready for/to school – so if I can do it, so can you.

So, what could you be doing in those 15 (or more) minutes? Here are some ideas:

Visualising what you life will be like when you’ve successfully achieved your goals
Morning pages (have a google – a friend recently described them to me as ‘mental hygiene’)
Meditation – I love Headspace, but there are loads of options
Reading a book/listening to a podcast about personal growth – this works well with a commute
Dancing to your favourite upbeat tunes – I LOVE dancing to extremely loud house music in the morning, or whenever I need an energy boost during the day. I’m sure my neighbours love it too.

Work on specific thought patterns which are holding you back

If you’re stuck, nothing is keeping you where you are except yourself. I’m not saying this to make you feel bad - I’m saying it to make you feel in control.

Sure, there are probably some external circumstances, outside your control, which are contributing to your current situation. But as Maria Forleo says

“Everything is figureoutable.”

Certain things might be out of your control, but I’m willing to bet my mac & cheese leftovers that there are more things within your control than you’d like to believe (and I take my mac & cheese very seriously). And on top of that, how you react to those things is completely within your control.

So, what to do?

The first step is awareness. Find 15 minutes somewhere you won’t be interrupted. Think about the change you want to make. What does the voice inside your head start to say (listen hard – it always has something to say)? What stories are you telling yourself? What are your fears? What are your beliefs? Write it down. Write it ALL down. Be specific.

Great. Now you know exactly what you’re dealing with. You can now take those thought patterns and slowly, intentionally, replace them with more positive thought patterns. Because we don’t overcome negative thought patterns – we replace them.

Here’s a really simple thing you can try (because sometimes the simplest solutions are the best). Think back to a time you’ve successfully dealt with a similar thought pattern. What did you do that worked? How can you bring that to bear on your current thought pattern?

There are LOTS of other ways to work on negative thought patterns – get in touch if you’d like some more suggestions.

Take messy action

Think back to your school days, to a time when you were preparing for some big exams. Did you ever create something like this?

I used to LOVE me a revision timetable. I would spend ages creating it, neatly drawing lines with a ruler, colour coding it, making it all fancy – and by the time I’d finished, I’d used up half of my revision time so I had to…yup, make another one! If there was an exam on making revision timetables, I would have ACED it!

When we want to make a big change in our lives, common wisdom is to break it all down into manageable chunks and plan it all out. That’s how we deal with projects at work, right? So why wouldn’t we do the same with our lives?

Look, I’m all for planning things out, and seeing how it all fits into the time available, and setting milestones and all that good stuff. But if the process of doing that is paralysing you, or keeping you busy so you don’t have to make yourself uncomfortable and actually DO something…then, much like the revision timetables, THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU NEED RIGHT NOW.

“The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.” – Tony Robbins

What you need is messy action. DO something. ANYTHING! It doesn’t have to be perfect – messy is beautiful! Move FORWARD. Try something and see what happens.

But…what if I fail?

GREAT!!!

Failure is UNAVOIDABLE. (sorry for all the caps – I just feel very strongly about this stuff). Failure is a GIFT! Because when we try, and fail, then we learn something, and we can try something else that will get us closer to success.

“Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward” - John C Maxwell

So I invite you, right now, to come up with one – JUST ONE – action that will move you closer to your goal TODAY. Make it teeny tiny, so small that it will be impossible for you not to do it.

And when you’ve done it, however it turned out, have a little think on it, see what you’ve learned, and plan your next, teeny tiny messy action. And then the next one. And the next. And…..

As you take these messy, teeny tiny actions, not much will seem to happen at first. Slowly, but surely, momentum will build. If you take a teeny, tiny, messy action every day, think where you’ll be next week – next month – next year. Your confidence and trust in yourself will build. And at some point, you’ll be ready to make your plan – and you won’t feel the need to use your ruler and colouring pens...