Getting Unstuck

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Everyone understands how to shift their thinking. We all have been taught how since we were kids.?

When I was a 9-year old, my grandma would convince me how fun it was going to be spending two hours in a hot car to go visit family members I didn’t know. She would say,? “We can play the alphabet game” and would tell me how much fun I would have once I got there. She got me thinking about something else.?

As we grow up, we get how we can do that for ourselves; “this run is going to be a pain but I will feel good afterwards.”

We also understand the value of looking for the silver lining. Realizing that bad things can have some good parts, helps us cope with the realities of life.

How we think about things makes a tremendous difference. We all know this.

Sometimes, however, we can’t see the silver lining and no matter how hard we try, we can’t change our thinking. We are stuck.

It is here where we need to learn something more advanced. I call it perspective shifting because it is so much more than just changing our thinking in the moment.?

A perspective is an entire view or way of thinking. Most of us have our perspectives and rarely change them over the course of our lives as they are tied to our values, our upbringing, our culture, our deepest held beliefs, and in some ways we feel they are tied to our very survival.?

This is why it can be so powerful to open yourself up to shifting your perspective—because even your perspective is a choice. When a leader feels stuck, she knows that there is probably a stubborn perspective that needs to be discovered. Some people call this a blind spot because the leader can’t see it for herself.?

So she gets some feedback, talks to a trusted partner, colleague, or even a coach about what she is dealing with. If she is open to it, she will probably discover that there is a perspective that is keeping her stuck.

I remember one client who was completely stuck until he discovered that he was operating under the perspective that life is hard and anything worth having would take a lot of work. This blocked his view from the easy, simple solution that was staring him in the face. All I did was ask him, “what if it’s easy?” and after getting up from falling off his chair, a new solution came into his view and he was able to move forward.?

Practice this for yourself when you are stuck.?

1. Have a quick discussion with someone you trust about the situation.?

2. Attempt to define the problem and then define the perspective that keeps you stuck.?

3. Try on a different perspective or two. Try the opposite one. This step is the hardest one of all and it requires a willingness to hold loosely to ideas that we believe without a doubt are just “true.” Try it anyway.

4. Contemplate what action you would take from the new perspectives.

5. Try one.?

One example of this is the perspective that there is a good way and a bad way to do things. This is just a normal way of being human. It’s called binary thinking. My whole world shifted when I took on the perspective that every problem has innumerable solutions. Try this one on for yourself next time you are talking to your partner, your kids, your team members, or your peers.?

Let me know how it goes.?