I don't know what to do

“I just don’t know what to do”.

Have you ever been in a situation when you just didn’t know what to do?

I notice for me and my clients this scenario shows up when:

• The current relationship is not working but fear of breaking it and potentially being alone is so much stronger.
• The work is comfortable and stops being challenging enough but fear of pivoting or going to the next level suppresses ambitions.
• Someone is being mistreated and punished for someone else’s mistakes but we question what we can do about it and dismiss our influence on the outcome.

I can describe many more scenarios but if we look at all of them, we can boil it do to:

You don’t want to continue on with the path you have been on and you certainly don’t want to go with the one clearly in front of you.

This truly sucks. It makes you feel stuck. It puts you in a victim mentality. It can be an emotionally exhausting place to be in.

Why does it happen?

From tons of coaching received, given and observed I find 3 main reasons why we get into “I don’t know what to do”. Let’s look at each of them and see a strategy to tackle them.

Reason 1: “I don’t believe it me”. When you reach a level in your career, skill, relationship and it takes a new energy, a new level of commitment, it requires risks, you start doubting yourself. What I am very intimately discovering for myself is that I don’t think I have what it takes to do the thing.

Strategy: Get curious, get compassionate, understand that primitive fear that just doesn’t want you to get hurt. Then play a game of “what if I could…” and practice daydreaming.

Reason 2: "I don’t want this path”. This one right here is a true dream killer. Our brain is so wired to create the worst-case scenarios and avoid it at all cause that we completely lose site of what is possible.

Strategy: Give yourself airtime to consider positive outcomes of the situation/decision. If it is not accessible to see in your life, look for other people who were able to move forward, get curious about characteristics that allowed them to do so.

Reason 3: "I have no control" AND "I can’t accept what is". Sometimes what we can and what we can not control are so tangled together that we freeze and do nothing.

Strategy: Investigate what is within your control. You will be surprised how much more you are able to influence when you give yourself credit for. And maybe the circumstances of life would show up with you feeling completely hopeless, remember you might not be able to change them, but you are always in control of how to react to them.

Next time you think “I just don’t know what to do”, remember to breath, to slow down, to be gentle with yourself and give a shot to some of the ideas from this article.

I see you, I am you, I know first hand it can be hard. But you and me, we are strong and overcoming these sneaky limiting beliefs are here for a reason, they are here to show us our full potential of what we truly are capable of in this one precious life.

---------

Share

This newsletter is my attempt to share best practices learned, insights gained, opportunities created. It is a way to keep myself accountable to the big goals creating a ripple effect on thousands of people who look for change but still struggle with “But I don’t know how” and getting in their own way.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoy this newsletter, I would be grateful if you share it with another.

Follow and click on the bell ?? in my profile for post notifications.

----------

Next week I will be writing about “don’t know how to do it” and how it gets on our way of achieving/getting what we want.

P.S. If you are interested in working with me as your coach, reach out via LinkedIn messaging or via email to request a consultation.