The Fastest (and Most Surprising) Way to Get Unstuck

Do you know that sick feeling when you know there’s some area of your life that simply isn’t working? It just keeps showing up like a bad penny. You know you need to work on changing something, but you’re just not ready to have a good look at it.

You feel resistance. You want to defend yourself. You certainly aren’t going to admit your problem to anyone else. You may just choose to shove it down and ignore it altogether. Or you simply eat or spend or drink or talk incessantly to avoid thinking about what isn’t working.

The truth is that when we resist looking at things that aren’t working in our life, we make it harder for ourselves. We THINK that if we take a good, hard look at the problem, we will feel pain. We might feel shame. We THINK it will take too much time. We THINK that if we don’t admit the problem, we will stay safe and happy.

Instead, resisting increases our discomfort, makes our pain worse, and erodes our time like acid. Learning to lovingly hold space for yourself with patience and compassion can transform your life. Learning this skill is often the fastest way to move past that difficult problem that keeps tripping you up.

You can do this on your own, but most of us find it very difficult to see ourselves clearly enough. If you work with a coach, they can guide you through this. Here’s what it looks like.

Step One

What if you really believed that you are immeasurably valuable, whether you “fix” this area of your life or not? You decide you are as worthy as you will ever be. You will not become more worthy when you lose 10 pounds or stop procrastinating or save more money. You do not need to be “fixed” to be more worthy.

When you decide to believe this, you get to join rest of us imperfect humans. Welcome to our beautiful, messy oh-so-imperfect thing we call life.

Stop for a minute and re-read that. You are human. You can remember that, as humans, we all have “stuff” to deal with. You can remember we are ALL full of unlimited awesomeness; and, at the same time, we all have areas that don’t work well and can benefit from our loving attention. We don’t have to hide from our humanness anymore. We can become tender and compassionate with ourselves.

Step Two

We also don’t have to rush to find all the answers or to fix ourselves. Most people make the mistake of focusing only on the actions to solve a problem, and only when the problem becomes so severe it can no longer be ignored. This keeps them stuck.

Instead, we can patiently explore. We can root around and question why our brains offer us these terribly nasty thoughts about ourselves and others. We can get curious about why we don’t want others judging us, but completely ignore our own self-judgments? We begin noticing how badly we trash-talk ourselves and start exploring why we do that, in light of our absolute value.

Because we have gotten clear on the certainty of our value, we can create this safe space for our ourselves. We can explore where we want transformation, without self-judgement. We can notice any shame and simply decide to drop it, because we are human and we are worthy. We can explore what we really want, and why and how we work against ourselves.

We can look at our life with curiosity about possibilities we’ve never considered. We can lay down our defenses and question the story we tell ourselves about our own self in peace.

This beautiful space is where you can safely decide what you want to keep in your life, and what you want to let go of. With peace, with joy, with resolute confidence. This is where you remember your power.

This practice doesn’t come automatically or easily. It takes practice. It takes commitment to stop the automatic negative thoughts and decide what may be more true. Only when you can truly hold space for yourself will you be able to receive the space that others offer to you. Only when you love yourself can you really receive the love that others have for you.

Spend some time being kind to yourself. Get unstuck. Love yourself and love your life.