How to Get Unstuck
‘Stuck’ is about the worst place to be.
Everyone loves moving forward. Forward motion means you’re making progress. You’re getting somewhere. You’re growing. Step by step, leap by leap, you’re reaching your goals. Everyone loves forward.
While no one enjoys moving backward, at least there’s something to be said for setbacks. You have the potential to learn from your mistakes. Your failures—rightly handled—make you stronger, smarter, and give you the humility essential for enduring success. Even when you’re going backward, at least there’s still movement. If the winds of life blow you back, you learn how to turn your sails against them and redirect yourself toward your end goals.
What’s hard is when you have no momentum. No movement. No nothing.
It sucks to be stuck.
Unfortunately, many people feel stuck in life. You might find yourself stuck working a job with no opportunity for growth or advancement. You’ve hit the ceiling! Relatedly, it may be that you’re unable to get ahead financially. You keep paying on your credit cards, but it never seems like the balance goes down. Or you’re trying to save money, but the costs of life—housing, food, transportation, insurance, everything!—continue to rise, leaving you at an unfortunate standstill where you never seem to get ahead.
Whatever the specifics, you know you want more for your life or your family, but you feel helpless to move forward. You’re stuck. And that’s a miserable place to be.
So, how do you get unstuck? That’s the million-dollar question—perhaps literally.
Step One: Take Ownership
The first thing to do is take responsibility for yourself and your situation. By and large, you are where you are because you got yourself there. That’s not to say you haven’t had some bad breaks, endured mistreatment, or been disadvantaged in your skill, connections, or opportunity. Any number of external factors have contributed to your position in life, but at the end of the day, you are not merely at the mercy of your circumstances. It’s up to you how you will respond to life’s challenges. Your life is your responsibility.
Step Two: Take Action
The next step in getting unstuck is to stop passively waiting for your circumstances to change and, instead, take action. You’ve heard it said, “If nothing changes, nothing changes.” Take that statement to heart and decide to make a positive change. Sign up for a course and up your skills. Reach out to an old connection about potential career opportunities. Take the first step in starting that side hustle you’ve been dreaming about. Whatever the action, no matter how small, take responsibility and do something. You’ll be surprised how even a handful of seemingly small steps can generate powerful momentum toward realizing the changes you want to see if your life.
Step Three: Cultivate Three Key Relationships
Once you’ve taken ownership of your life and are determined to take action toward your goals for the future, the third step is to surround yourself with key people who will prevent you from getting stuck again. There are three categories of people you need in life: mentors, peers, and mentees.
You need a mentor—or mentors.
You need someone you look up to who has gone ahead of you and is willing to help you overcome the obstacles you will face in reaching your goals. Mentors come in many shapes and sizes depending on your aims in life. The main thing is to find someone who inspires you and shares similar values to your own—ideally, someone with strong morals and ethics who measures their success and the enduring impact they’ve made for the good of their wider community. If someone like that comes to mind, find a way to connect with them. Before asking them to mentor you, consider how you can add value to their life (do they need an assistant, a researcher, someone to run errands or watch their kids?). Offer to bring them value, establish a relationship, informally glean as much as possible, and when the time seems right, ask them to formalize their mentorship.
A good mentor is someone you trust—almost like a surrogate father—who will guide you, counsel you as appropriate, and present you with opportunities and connections you likely would never have acquired on your own.You need peers. Peers may be friends, but it’s better to think of your peers as people in a similar stage of life and striving toward the same goals. For most people, it’s nearly impossible to maintain their drive and commitment to their goals on their own. Instead, you’ll find you go further and faster if you have some like-minded people working alongside you. Seeing their successes will motivate you. Encouraging one another through failures and setbacks will help prevent you from prematurely giving up. And there’s a deep satisfaction in celebrating the accomplishment of significant goals together. Find good people to ‘run’ with and carve out time to connect regularly. Hold each other accountable for taking action and making the changes you want to see in your lives.
You should have a mentee—someone you are helping, training, or teaching. No matter how stuck, unskilled, or far you feel from where you ideally want to be, you’re still further along than someone else. Don’t sell yourself and your experiences short, thereby limiting what you can offer to others looking to grow and learn. Instead, look out for people who are younger than you, in subordinate roles, or have less skill/experience. Cultivate the habit of going out of your way to encourage them and, inasmuch as they are receptive to help and feedback, teach them how to improve. Teaching is the best way to achieve mastery in any given subject or skill, so mentoring others will also benefit you. But more than that, giving of yourself to others is richly rewarding and will create a network of relationships that will be a blessing to you for years and years to come.
You Don’t Have to Stay Stuck Forever
Feeling stuck is awful, and long-term staying stuck is worse than failing. But you will never get unstuck by doing nothing. Instead, you must take responsibility for your life and how you respond to your circumstances. Then, you must resolve to take positive action—no matter how small the first steps may seem! Finally, you’ve got to surround yourself with key people who will help you move forward and reach your ultimate goals.
Easier said than done, right?
Yes, but that’s also why Abundant Journey exists.
Abundant Journey is here to help you when you’re stuck and keep you moving forward. We are building a community of like-minded individuals who want to live in abundance. We’re glad you’ve found us, we trust you’ll benefit from the ideas and encouragements presented here, and we’d love for you to contribute so we can celebrate your successes as you share about your journey.
