Stuckness appears in many ways – almost everyone can relate to stuckness in some way – e.g.
– Getting emotionally triggered over and over
– Emotions and issues that don’t seem to heal – often felt in the body as stress or anxiety
– Overreacting
– Procrastinating
– Emotional avoidance or even numbness
– Failure
– Repeated relationship breakdown or problems
– Not making enough money
– Starting a business but not really getting it off the ground
– Certain life patterns repeating themselves over and over
– Lack of joy in life
– Stress
– Frequent frustration or anger
– Failure to reach your potential
We are all familiar with some of these to some extent – or a lot! Even people who outwardly seem happy and successful often have some of these things going on – for example, up to 75% of business managers and executives feel like frauds, waiting to be found out ( impostor syndrome)
And yet very few people succeed in resolving their stuckness in any meaningful way. Why?
To answer that, we must look at how people relate to their stuckness.
The most common thing people do is either NOTHING – or MORE OF THE SAME.
NOTHING means we avoid the problem and we may even attempt to distract ourselves with alcohol, drugs, work, sport, TV, Eating etc.
DOING MORE OF THE SAME (this seems to be built into most people’s brains) means we work harder, get into the same fights, keep suppressing emotions, use the same money making strategies that are already failing, maintain the same thinking as always, beat ourselves up, or simply hope things will get better.
The deeper reason we stay stuck is because our stuckness is actually a subconscious or deeply unconconsious pattern we are running related to suppressed emotions, limiting beliefs, fear, low self esteem, learned behaviours – what I call the Subconscious Blueprint.
The subconscious blueprint is responsible for whether we succeed or fail in life.
Most therapy and a lot of coaching fail to change the subconscious blueprint – mainly because the therapists or coaches have never been trained to change it!
So, people try to change it themselves with self-help books and the like. Sometimes they succeed! But more often than not – the stuckness continues year in year out.
So, what can you do? As you can imagine, change often requires a dedicated effort and a lot of untangling and subconscious reimprinting. But there are some key things you can do that will get the ball rolling:
1. OWN WHAT IS GOING ON! To do this requires you to take responsibility – to slow down and notice your stuckness – and to notice how your efforts to deal with it have not been working. Understand that you are running some kind of automated programme that keeps the stuckness in place. This returning to yourself and acknowledging a truth helps you to start to see and even go beyond blind spots. As you own what is going on, you can start to listen to yourself at a deep level.
2. BE WILLING TO STOP REACTING AND INSTEAD TO START RESPONDING. When we react we try to fight ourselves; we try to push away a problem, or artificially shift into positivity or some better state. We fail to deal with reality. How to respond? We need to stop and feel. Our mind-body system is beautifully designed to provide feedback and a doorway to problem resolution. When we stop and feel and start to relate to ourselves compassionately, problems start to fall away.
3. COMMIT YOURSELF TO BEING YOUR BEST AUTHENTIC SELF. Intentions are powerful. When we have a truly committed intention, our subconscious mind gets onboard. It starts to present solutions – sometimes insights that enable us to let go of what we have been holding onto, sometimes a book or a YouTube clip appears, or sometimes we meet a coach or mentor who can help. Becoming authentic is key to becoming unstuck. So many people are masking, and in order to mask we stay tense and hide from ourselves and others.
4. CHANGE YOUR STORY. Our subconscious blueprint expresses itself to us consciously as our fundamental attitudes and the story we tell ourselves over and over, often in the back of our minds or as the internal critic. When we consciously start to catch what we are doing, we can experiment with changing the story – which in turn filters down to the subconscious and begins to change the blueprint.
These four steps alone will go a long way to initiating deep change. Print them out – stick them on the fridge or your computer and find the time to give them space in your life.
If you need more help, I am Steven Lane, A Transformational Coach working online and in person. I have more than 25 years of experience and many thousands of hours of client time. Check me out on www.achangeofmind.ie