I talk to a lot of clients who tell me they feel stuck.
I know that place. It’s not one of my favorites. When I’ve been mired in it, I feel a sense of powerlessness, like I can’t do anything to change my circumstances.
Fortunately, this is completely untrue.
You can ALWAYS do something – even if you can’t take action, you can always change your thoughts.
I used to think it was all a bunch of nonsense. Choose your thoughts? I was so wrapped up in my mind and so very attached to my thoughts that I couldn’t see I was separate from them.
One of my favorite stories I share with my clients is when I first heard my mentor Martha Beck say in our coach training, “Any thought that causes you pain probably isn’t true.” My immediate thought was, “That sounds like bullsh*t.” Yes, I was a skeptic, and I wasn’t easily convinced otherwise. But I decided to just play along with what she was saying and tried out the tools we coaches call “thoughtwork.”
Turns out, she’s right. I’ve never been so happy to be so wrong before, because I found SO much freedom in recognizing that I am not my thoughts. And once I could see that, I could see that I had a choice in which thoughts I wanted to focus on, to feed with evidence and strengthen.
If you’re feeling stuck – and I would say it may be more accurate to say you’re feeling frustrated or disappointed or unhappy – you may be thinking the thought “I’m stuck.” (It could also be more complex, like “I’m stuck and this SUCKS!” but you get the idea.)
When you think a thought, your brain looks for evidence to prove the thought correct. So basically your brain goes on a recognizance mission with the sole purpose of finding proof for this thought. The more evidence you find, the stronger the thought becomes. It’s as if your brain sees evidence and says, “See? I was right!” and it keeps on looking for more.
Unfortunately, this can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you say “I’m stuck,” your brain only looks for evidence that you are, in fact, stuck. So it ignores evidence of say, new opportunities. New ideas. Helpful friends.
If you can shift the thought even a wee bit – say, to something like “I used to be stuck, but now I’m open to new opportunities.” – your brain suddenly has a fresh mission: New Opportunities.
Your brain can be a powerful tool to help you – once you get it focused in the direction you want to go.
If you can’t see what thoughts you have that are holding you back, don’t worry. We all have that blindness sometimes. That’s why it can be so helpful to work with a coach. I still get so mired in my own thoughts sometimes that I need an objective and compassionate outsider to help me sort it out. And afterwards, I have so much more freedom and am more open to the possibilities, rather than just the limitations.