‘Tis the season to be… STUCK?  (Yep, you guessed it as I started writing this in December).  So, are you feeling a little stuck at the moment? Let’s face it, we’ve all been there, and, quite frankly, the feeling of being stuck can hit anyone at any time.  AND yes, even I get stuck occasionally.  It happened to me back in May. When visiting my ninety-eight-year-old mother in NJ (who sadly passed mid-December), a car went through a stop sign and totaled my car. I was fortunate to not have been injured seriously… Okay, I did need hand surgery to re-attach a ligament; but overall, I considered myself lucky.

SO MANY REASONS…

I was hit with something I was not anticipating, however, and that was—I felt a little stuck.  Feeling stuck can happen at any time and for many reasons… sometimes this can happen when something unexpected happens. I’m not sure why a car accident would be a catalyst for moving into the void of being stuck, but sometimes you don’t need a reason… it just happens. My being stuck was focused on one area, and that was my writing. I just wasn’t feeling it.

As I mentioned earlier, feeling stuck can happen for many reasons: a change, a limiting belief, a relationship or career issue, illness, or an unexpected incident. There’s no rating system or hierarchy on the seriousness level for what has delivered someone to this paralyzing mental zone… it just happens, and once you land here, it’s pretty much all the same. You feel frozen, locked in a time warp, a meltdown, a feeling of being in quicksand.

TIME OUT TIME

I tend to be an especially positive person and always look for the upside in any negative situation. Perhaps there is a reason why this happened.  Whatever the reason, it’s best when feeling stuck to take a timeout, a time for a reset. It’s constructive when you’re experiencing a down feeling to lean into it.  Don’t try to ignore what you’re feeling but rather try to understand it; befriend it, even laugh at it. Try not to fight but welcome the feelings you are experiencing.

For me, even though the accident might have triggered my feeling stuck, I found it was more about not feeling inspired to write. My writing has always been about my passenger conversations and their life issues. To date, I’ve written over a hundred essays about my conversations with passengers and coaching them to some level of resolution (www.drivinginsigts.net).  And in them, I’ve covered many topics: from coaching a married pregnant woman who wanted dating advice to conversing with college kids on their issues in their careers or relationships. So, I began to understand that I seemed to have covered so many topics, I was merely looking for something new to write about. I never panicked, understood what was going on, and just went into “patience mode.”  I decided that if it took a year to find my next story, then that would be fine. I accepted my condition, understood the void I was in, so I waited until, finally, a passenger from last week cured my feeling of “STUCK” (and her story will be told next month).

DON’T PANIC!

If you are feeling stuck, don’t panic, lean into it, understand it, and most importantly—don’t be stagnate, take turtle steps… be open to right the ship, make a plan, and when the time is right, be ready get back on course. For the moment, I have escaped the quicksand holding me from writing, and prepared myself in case I step into it again.

©Jim Stern Coaching 2024, All rights reserved.