Why Do You Feel Stuck In Life And How To Move Forward

There are techniques to unstick yourself emotionally if you're just going through the motions or operating on autopilot. Everybody has a sense of being stuck in life. This could be brought on by an unsatisfying relationship, unfulfilling work, or just a general sense of apathy. However, you can overcome a sense of being trapped by first determining the cause of your feelings, and then pivoting your life to enhance your mental, physical, and emotional health.

Do you want something deeply and then lose the will to pursue it—a new career, a better relationship, or better health, for example? Do you find something that appears intriguing and then talk yourself out of taking action to pursue it. Never stopping to consider how things could be improved if you edit your life. You cannot be present and enjoy life as it is when you are plagued with indecision, worry, and overthinking. If this is how you’re feeling, then it’s time to evaluate your life.

There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them. ~ Denis Waitley

Why Do You Feel Stuck?

Finding the source of why you feel stuck will help you focus your efforts and restore your sense of direction. Burnout can leave you feeling helpless and unclear of what to do, from not getting enough sleep to dealing with unforeseen circumstances.

If you're unhappy in your relationship or work, you can be unintentionally undermining your own progress with self-sabotage and self-limitation. Moreover, you can have impostor syndrome, a condition in which you have self-doubt about your value and aptitude.

What inspires you? This is why you have to overcome hurdles by persevering. You can be living day by day, which is a terrific technique to deal with stress in some situations. However, perspective could be what guides your decision. You risk feeling stuck if you don't set clear goals for your personal and professional lives.

If you're experiencing financial difficulties or loneliness these could be the cause of your feelings of being stuck. It could be beneficial for you to seek support from others when things are hard. Just knowing that you have others in your tribe who could support you can give you a sense of relief, even if you don't always ask for help.

Your development may be slowed down if you put too much time and effort into doing something "perfectly" by paying attention to every tiny detail. You can also feel discouraged if you don’t accept your best effort as enough and therefore let go of perfectionism in order to break free.

Choices may be unbelievably hard but they’re never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that’s not how a person with integrity acts. ~ Patrick Ness

The Disguises The Ego Uses To Keep You Stuck

Stuckness can take on various forms. A few situations where you might desire to move but are unsure of how are listed below.

1. You’ve Outgrown Your Environment

People do, in fact, change with time. Your hopes, desires, and needs all change. Maybe now that you've mastered it, that dream job you got a year ago doesn't offer you enough stimulation. You might not know where to turn next in a case like this. Don’t forget that you can also outgrow people and it’s vital to release them and find new members of your tribe to help you feel fulfilled.

2. You Fear Criticism From Others

Everyone has struggled with comparing themselves to others.  There are countless categories upon which to compare and an infinite number of people to compare yourself to.  It’s one of the main causes of your unhappiness and feelings of being stuck. Why? Because you allow what others do to influence how you feel about yourself. Comparison is an act of fear; the fear of being your authentic self.

3. You Aren’t Following Your Inner Truth

When you are aligned with your truth, life becomes enchanting. You no longer are reacting to life out of fear, but consciously responding from a place of love. Living your truth is about synchronicities and meaning, supporting you in magical ways.  This force of energy, which is truth, allows you to get into the flow of life. There’s less struggle and more awareness of the mysteries of living.

Stuckness shouldn’t be avoided. It’s the psychic predecessor of all real understanding. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality.  ~ Robert M. Pirsig

4. You Fear Rejection And Loss

Everyone has the underlying fear of separation, which includes abandonment and rejection.  This universal dread comes from the human need to belong originally for survival purposes. But, in today’s society, the sense of belonging and connection with others is vital. All have experienced different forms of rejection and loss of connection with others, which compounds the fear of separation.  Everyone needs to be wanted, respected, and valued by others.  The ego uses this angst in ways that can keep you separated instead of finding ways to move past to a place of unconditional love.

5. You Feel Hopeless

Everyone has lost hope at some point in their life. When you’ve lost hope, it’s challenging to locate it again. Therefore, recovering your hope is essential to releasing the stuck feelings. Thoughts are useful instruments. They have the ability to move you in the desired direction or hold you stationary. A myriad of emotions, including melancholy, anxiety, and feelings of unworthiness, can be evoked by negative thoughts, which can have a powerful effect. It's challenging to proceed when struggling with intrusive thoughts.

6. Youre Exhausted Or Overburdened

Your situation and the events of your life may be too much for you to handle. Or you might become stressed out due to the pressure and possibilities of your next action. Overwhelming feelings can be difficult to get over, whether they are related to the past or the future. In addition, you may be experiencing burnout if, like most people, you have been under stress for a time. Long-term hypervigilance can make it difficult to distinguish between something harmful and harmless. Additionally, it may result in excessive weariness, which is not a good state of mind to make decisions in.

Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them. ~ Henry Cloud

Ways To Become Unstuck

Now that you’ve identified why you’re feeling stuck, you can now then figure out what works to help you remove your roadblocks.

1. Become Aware

Raising awareness is an excellent place to start. Think about investigating the possibility that your unconscious is causing you to feel stuck. Detecting cognitive distortions and defense mechanisms that are impeding your awareness, as well as default connection patterns that lead you to repeat familiar cycles, are some strategies for increasing awareness. You can work alone, but not all of it has to be done alone. Think about talking to a coach, like myself, to encourage you and assist you in being accountable.

2. Accept Responsibility

It's normal to occasionally find yourself playing the blame game. However, placing blame on other people for events—or lack thereof—may make you feel as though you no longer have any control over your life or decisions. It’s an unproductive tool of the ego to keep you stuck. The ego is trying to avoid feeling bad for making an error.  But you still have to live with the consequences of the situation.  Therefore, it’s crucial to retake your power by taking responsibility for your role in the circumstances at hand.  Yes, life can make one discouraged, but blaming turns the misstep into a failure because you weren’t willing to look for the lesson you could have learned.

3. Develop Being Present Minded

Oftentimes, it seems like you're being told to do more rather than to be more. When you do this, you frequently find yourself operating automatically. By using mindfulness practices, you may turn off autopilot and refocus your attention from worrying about the past or the future to being present in the moment. Making decisions in the midst of bustle and confusion may not be as beneficial as taking a step back and making them in a clear and calm manner.

4. Let Go Of Attachments

A lot of energy is used to cling to things, ideas, and people. But this energy is better used to detach from your programming so you can respond with an open heart.  Attachments don’t allow for the miraculous.  They only feed the separation and duality of the fearful mind of the ego. Clinginess is not loving others. It’s about selfishness.  Being able to detach is simplistic.  Be aware of your fears and the ways you attach to people and outcomes. As you become more conscious of your thought patterns and see the attachments you have made, you can release them to create a better life.

Put blinders on those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head. ~ Meryl Streep

5. Choose Self-love

By loving yourself, you can invest in yourself. Perhaps the first thing you should do is quiet your inner critic. Rather of being your worst critic, try being your own best friend. Loving yourself and taking care of yourself with compassion and self-care will help you feel reenergized and motivated.

6. Formulatenbsp;A Vision

Creating a vision for your life is something you can do in many different ways. For example, you may attempt writing your own manifesto.  A life plan with quantifiable stages and professional goals may also be beneficial. By living intentionally and defining success for yourself, you may be able to better harness the potential of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

7. Develop Inner Fortitude

Think about developing an attitude that sees failures, errors, and feeling stuck as necessary components of learning. You might be able to recover by using these setbacks as opportunities to get unstuck and go on to develop other tactics and be resilient.

Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Moving Forward Unstuck

In contrast to a ship that has grounded, a car caught in the mud, or a fallen tree obstructing a river's flow, humans being stuck might be attributed to decision, mindset, or viewpoint. Never forget that you may always start fresh because each day is a new beginning. Consider viewing your circumstances from a different angle to see what opportunities present them. With any luck, applying the tactic here may help you break free, discover your voice, and eventually transform your life.

There are two paths of which one may choose in the walk of life; one we are born with, and the one we consciously blaze. One is naturally true, while the other is a perceptive illusion. Choose wisely at each fork in the road. ~ T.F. Hodge

Do you need help to get your life unstuck? Are you looking for ways to build your fortitude?  Do you need someone to help you be accountable during this process? If so, please reach out to me at TerriKozlowski.com and we can create a plan for you to evaluate your life and move your forward.