How to get unstuck

If you’re human, you’ve probably been stuck a time or two. In fact, if you’re reading this, there’s a good bet you’re stuck on something right now. (If that’s the case, please keep reading. I can help.)

Being stuck is exhausting, because even though you’re not actually getting anywhere, you’re in constant emotional motion. You see, stuck comes with it’s own playlist of dark feelings.

In the beginning, you might be frustrated, impatient, or indignant. Eventually, after fighting stuck for a while, you transition to feeling angry, sad, and possibly even hopeless.

Stuck-ness involves struggle and repetition. Maybe you’re having the same argument over and over again with your spouse (or boss, or parent, or child) where you talk the problem to death, but you can’t seem to solve it. Or the same kind of person could be showing up in in your life again and again, derailing you with their drama and distraction.

You could be in the worst of stuck, where you’ve fallen into a self-defeating pattern. This is the stuck where you’re doing something that isn’t good for you (or your life). You know your behavior is in conflict with what you say you want. You know it’s not good for you. But you keep doing it anyway.

Maybe you’re spending money you don’t have, or you’re procrastinating and avoiding doing the things you know you need to do to move your life forward. You could be self-harming. Maybe you’re drinking or popping a pill to numb out, pounding bags of Doritos to comfort yourself, or confusing sex with love (and therefore indiscriminately having quite a lot of it).

Every morning you vow you won’t do whatever your “it” is again, but you do. Again. And again. And again.

And that makes you feel so bad about yourself that you need a little something to numb or comfort again, so you go right back to what you said you wouldn’t do. It’s a vicious cycle on perpetual repeat. Until you bring it into your awareness.

Would you be interested if I told you I had a formula you could use to get un-stuck? I’ve used it myself (for some doozies) and as a life coach for women I’ve taught many of my clients how to use it for themselves.

No matter how bad things are right now, or how long you’ve been dealing with your problem or self-defeating pattern, I want you to know you can change it. You don’t have to live with stuck. You are way bigger than that, my sister.

Let’s do this, shall we? In this week’s episode of GrooveTV, I’ll give you 3 steps to get un-stuck once and for all. Press PLAY already. Sticky is icky. :)

Step 1 - Stop resisting. Start responding.

Life will present you with plenty of problems. Things aren’t always going to work out the way you want them to. You’re going to have to do some hard things (that you really don’t want to do), and you’re going to be disappointed.

I wish this wasn’t true, but I’m here to give it to you straight. What’s straight is that life comes with hard stuff. The way you meet your difficulties and disappointments matters. In fact, it decides how often you hang out with stuck.

There are two paths available to you when you encounter a problem. You can take the path of responsiveness, or the one called resistance. The responsive road is the one we want, but it’s not the one most people take. If you’re stuck, it’s probably not the one you’re on either.  If you’re stuck, you’re probably on the road of resistance.

Resistance is the refusal to accept truth. It’s arguing with life. It’s futile and exhausting, and it quite literally steals your power.

So how do you know if you’re in resistance? If you feel annoyed, frustrated, or defensive when you think about your problem, you might be. If you find yourself playing the victim, arguing about how unfair your situation is, or justifying your actions, you probably are. And if you’re emotionally reactive, and losing it over the situation, you’re in it.

Outside of the fact that it feels terrible, resistance keeps you stuck. It focuses you solely on the problem instead of the solution, and it puts you smack dab in the middle of your own poor-me-story.

You will not solve your problems by playing poor me.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not for one moment saying you don’t have a right to be upset when difficult things happen in your life. You do. In fact, you have a right to every feeling that bubbles up in your heart. When you encounter hard circumstances, I want you to feel your feelings. I just don’t want you to live in the dark debilitating ones. (For a little help on feeling your feelings check out my blog How to deal with disappointment.)

No matter what you’re feeling or facing, it’s important to know that you can overcome resistance. Just choose the other path. Get responsive. That’s just like it sounds. When a challenging circumstance presents itself, instead of reacting to the unfairness of it, use your energy to figure out how to solve the problem instead.

You can put this into practice by asking two questions.

• What are you resisting? (It helps immensely to name it. This is the awareness piece.)
• What response gets you closest to what you want? (This focuses you on possibilities instead of the problem.)

While it may feel a little odd at first, you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly. Once you do, you’ll leave resistance in the dust. Where it belongs.

Okay, you ready? The next one’s a whopper.

Step 2 - Stop arguing for your limitations. Look for opportunities instead.

How often do you make excuses?

When someone offers you advice, what’s the first thing you do? Do you pause and consider how their approach might work? Or do you start making a mental checklist of all the reasons it won’t?

If you’re making excuses and arguing for why you can’t have what you want, you’re keeping yourself stuck. If you’re doing it, you need to stop it. For real. Because you’ll live in stuck city for the rest of your life if you don’t.

It doesn’t make any sense to argue against yourself, does it? So why on earth would you do it? Many times, something called secondary gain is at play. This sounds fancy, but it just means that on some level, being stuck is working for you.

Maybe you get attention for having this problem, or it lets you avoid risking or putting yourself out there. What part of stuck is working for you right now? If you’re living on excuses, it might help to take a look.

Another way limits can show up in your life is when you develop a pattern of only seeing through a lens of limits. You get what you look for, so it’s important to get clear about how you’re seeing.

If you see through the lens of limits, habitually noticing what’s wrong or why something can’t work, you’re going to get a lot of wrong and not working. If you focus instead through a resourceful lens, noticing what’s right and how you might figure something out, you’ll surprise yourself by how much rightness is surrounding you and how just many solutions are available to you.

I want you to see opportunity instead of limitation when you look at your life. That does not mean I want you to pretend something is okay when it’s not. You have to see what isn’t working before you can change it. The trick is to see what isn’t working through a resourceful lens.

A resourceful lens reveals possibility. It focuses on how something can work instead of looking for why it can’t. When you begin to look through a resourceful lens, you tap your inner knowing. And solutions and resources begin to present themselves.

You’re seriously gonna love this once you get the hang of it. It feels like a super power. But don’t take my word for it. Try it out for yourself.

This week, catch yourself when you start to defend an action or make an excuse. (No beating yourself up. Use your awareness for good.) Take a beat. Breathe. Breathe once more. Then look through a resourceful lens. You’re gonna take your breath away with just how much good stuff you see.

Okay, that was the hard part. Now our final step will be a breeze. 

Step 3 - Focus on forward movement. 

If you want out of stuck, you need to move. You need to step on that life path of yours and start walking. But you don’t need to run. (Crawling is even quite acceptable.)

You know what else you don’t need? You don’t need to know what every step on your road looks like. In fact, I don’t believe that really happens. (And anyone telling you that they know all their steps is either not-of-this-world, or not being honest.)

Because the truth of the matter is this. No one knows all their steps. And everyone is afraid. In fact, once you get clear about what you want, and then you look at where you’re at in comparison to your goal, that gap can terrify and paralyze you if you let it.

It can feel overwhelming. It becomes more manageable when you break it down. If you’re at point A, the steps to get to Z might as well be a big black hole. (And staring into a black abyss is not exactly motivating, is it?)

When you stare into the abyss (and you will) remember this. You only need to know your next step.

If you’re at step A, just focus on how to get to B. Once you land there, C will reveal itself. Which will reveal D. And so on. There’s a trust required here, especially for the first few steps. You have to believe the next step will appear, and you need to know that whatever it is, you can handle it.

You can handle it.

In fact, you can handle whatever life serves up. Even if step L reveals itself to be a doozey, you got this. Remember that every step counts. (Even the half ones.) And if you stumble backward (or have to do that crawling thing we talked about), don’t panic. Pause. Breathe. Eyes forward. Respond.

Start stepping, my sister. You’ll create momentum, and stuck can’t survive the magic of movement.

That’s it for the week. Please remember that I never want you to blindly take my word for anything. Only you know what’s right for you. (I just happen to have a few coaching tools that can help you get closer to that wisdom.) Give this week’s advice a test drive. Once you do, let me know how it goes. I love hearing from you! There are four ways for us to interact.

• Comment in the comments section below.
• Chat with me on Instagram or Facebook.
• Email me if you have something more private you'd like to ask. My personal email is [email protected]. I'm the only one reading your messages, and it's always me answering them.
• Join me on FB Live for a free coaching session every other Wednesday at 12:30PT (next week). I give a live workshop, and answer your questions about the latest episode of GrooveTV. The best part is that we get to connect live, which is so much fun! 

My mission is your empowerment. That's why I'm here. If you haven't already joined my community, please do it at my website (www.kimberlyfulcher.com). I'll send you free weekly coaching, and we'll get your groove back together.

Until we meet again, know that life is happening for you.

Kim