The Start of Getting Unstuck

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I’m embarking on a new adventure in these pages. I’m prepared to peel back the curtain as I dig around to uncover what lies beneath the surface and put the puzzle together. I am offering you a front row seat to the show.

Feeling Stuck

Lately, I’ve spoken with many people who feel stuck. Not only are they feeling stuck, but they are most often stuck in an area where they help others. People pay them – a lot of money – to work through the very issues that are trapping them.

It is a common experience that we somehow seem to get stuck in the places where we are called to help others. No matter how gifted we are and how much people pay us for our advice, we cannot see outside our own tunnels.

So how do we get unstuck?

Some people advise that to get unstuck, we simply should focus our attention on others and how we can serve them.

This is well-intentioned advice, but it often doesn’t work that way. As much as I’ve seen my own gift for helping others highly successful achievers get unstuck, I’ve noticed that doing so can make me feel more stuck in my own evolution.

Somehow, seeing how well I am able to help others triggers that inner voice that says:

What’s wrong with you that you can’t help yourself?

Here’s what’s wrong with me: Nothing.

It’s hard to move the obstacle in your path when the obstacle is you.

(1) Get Perspective

The best coaches and mentors I know are constantly seeking outside help. Not just from books and courses, by the way. There are some places where we need to engage in one-on-one work with someone else: an objective third-party who can help us get above the details of our experience to see the big picture.

In fact, research shows that we make more creative decisions for others than we do for ourselves, by bringing a wisdom that can only be accessed from a place of objectivity and distance.

This is why people hire us to help them.

I followed my own advice, and hired a new coach.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be intentionally embarking on some new work to get out of my own way and put the pieces of my experience together in a way that will help me better articulate and align with the transformations I facilitate.

(2) Break Some Habits

Today I read an article on Copyblogger published by Jeff Goins in which he shared lessons from his evolution as a writer. He advised us to practice in public so that others can see our evolution.

I realized – not for the first time – that I am not fulfilling my mission by waiting until the writing is perfect or the idea is completely thought through before sharing it.

My intention for this blog was that it would serve as a space to hone my writing craft as I openly navigate the path of my evolution. I want this space to be a place where I share what I’m learning so that you can benefit from my experience.

I haven’t always been great with my follow through on that, because I often get stuck in my need for completion.

The result: hundreds of half-finished blog posts, sitting in the cloud, but not published. That doesn’t really serve you.

 

Lessons happen in the experience.

So, especially as I start in a new chapter of my evolution, it seems like a good time to renew my intention and launch a new experiment.

I am setting an intention to dissipate the resistance I have to publishing – especially unfinished work.

I will not be perfect in this. Not even close.

Hitting publish on something that I feel is incomplete will require massive reconditioning of some ingrained habits and standards honed through years of higher education and legal practice.

This is part of my process.

For me, the act of publishing is separate from the act of writing. I already write daily, but to publish thoughts and idea that are still in process and still in formation is counter to years of conditioning. It won’t be easy.

Sometimes (often) the hardest work we must do is not in creating habits, but in breaking habits.

This is part of how we get unstuck: shake up what we “know” works well and try things even if we expect to fail.

This will require me to surrender to imperfection and to allow myself some grace.

I believe that my experience and what I learn will serve you, and I’m determined to stick with it. I hope that you’ll join me as I open up these pages to more experiments, half-formed thoughts and ideas, and (I hope) a lot more insights.

Let my pain be your gain.