There’s nothing more discouraging than feeling stuck in your life. It’s a place where the enemy would love to see you locked down, where you lose your sense of movement and progress. When that happens, you can easily slide into a posture of victimhood.
Those with a victim mindset come into agreement that in life, they have no choice and no options. It’s the ultimate place of being stuck and under the lid of limitation.
Feeling stuck does not mean you need to remain there. When you carry the symptoms of “stuck,” it’s actually a signal that it’s time to grow and stretch to a new level. An upgrade is actually awaiting you. This means accessing a new level of thinking, searching and faith that has never been accessed before in your life.
Whenever I feel stuck in my life, here are ten things I find incredibly helpful to keep my heart and mind alive, while giving room for the new level I am being invited into.
1. Take a pause.
Stop all the panic and catastrophizing of where you’re at. It doesn’t help to portray the tough situations as worse than they are. Be honest about them. But don’t domino them further than you need to.
Pause, take a deep breath and allow yourself to get some perspective. Put a stop to the spiraling and the non-stop thoughts that keep yelling at all the reasons why you are stuck.
2. Stop beating yourself up.
You’re already in a tough position. There is no need to add more to it by being hard on yourself, angry or fall into self-loathing spiral. Those ditches do nothing to serve the life of your heart, nor will they provide any direction.
In fact, most people get angry when they are stuck because deep down, they are angry with themselves. They may blame others or their situation, but their pain is self-hatred and self-loathing.
This is the time to love yourself, so you can see with greater clarity. Don’t waste another minute getting lost in self-contempt and self-hatred.
You need to access the power of love right now so you can deal with yourself and the problem you are up against with kindness.
3. Be patient with yourself.
If you want to master what it means to love yourself, learn to exercise patience with your journey. What makes being “stuck” even much more frustrating is when we are impatient with others, impatient with the process and most of all, impatient towards ourselves.
It takes time and learning to get yourself out of a stuck position. If you don’t exercise patience with your journey, it can be so easy to get angry, stressed and lose perspective.
Love yourself with patient eyes, so you can see your situation with compassion, not so that you can just sit in the muck of stuck, but to see more clearly. Let patience empower your endurance, so you can keep going and learn to break through for the opportunities that lie ahead.
Patience makes way for kindness. You may be stuck because you are avoiding issues you need to deal with. But you haven’t learned to face those issues with patience and kindness. If you’re always hard on yourself, the quicksand of stuck will keep a hold on you.
4. Get clear on what you want.
When we are in a stuck position, it’s so easy to get lost in confusion. In the process, you lose sight of what it is you are going after.
Many times I will simply ask people, “What is it that you want?”
“I want whatever Jesus wants,” they often say.
I often respond, “That’s a cop out. Go deeper than that.”
The reason this is so important is that most people live their lives according to what everyone else wants or they have never thought about it. They lost their compass a long time ago, so they don’t have a clear sense of what they are moving towards. Their vision is blurry, their thoughts are double minded and their decisions hesitant.
It’s time you get clear on what it is that you want and what you are moving towards.
This opens up our God-given power to decide–to make a choice and chose this day what it is you will move towards.
5. Are You Avoiding the Obvious?
Many times people feel stuck, but they are avoiding the obvious decision they need to make.
They feel stuck in a relationship, but don’t think they can walk away. They’re dying in a lifeless job, but they don’t explore other options.
Are you ignoring really good council you’ve already been given, but you want something easier? Don’t look to get unstuck if you are avoiding the answer that may be right in front of you.
6. Lean into the Learning
Here’s the hard truth, whenever you feel stuck, it’s a sign you lack experience or understanding in how to break through in this area. Therefore, you need to lean into learning about what you don’t know so you can move forward and grow.
Instead of spinning endlessly in anger and pent up frustration, turn your frustration into learning. Get hungry about learning what you need for the next level.
Sometimes we say things like, “Well I have tried everything,” when in reality, we know that’s not true. There is an option or a mindset that you may not see or may not have engaged just yet.
The next level is awaiting you, but you need to learn some things to break into those seasons. It’s time to learn.
To learn, you need to get around people that will sharpen you and cause you to stretch who you are.
7. Ask Empowering Questions
Most people remain stuck because they throw up questions to God that are disempowering and lack any faith. They say things like, “God, why are You not helping me?” They wonder why they don’t get any clarity, when they are asking questions to God that are not in line with His nature.
Instead of prayers that accuse God and question His goodness, ask more empowering questions to get you “unstuck.”
So instead, ask,
- “God, what possibility does this situation open up?”
- “What can I learn in this season?”
- “What powerful decision can I make right now?”
When we move ourselves toward empowering questions, we set ourselves up to stretch in challenging times. When you feel stuck, get excited, because there is some new discovery available!
Instead of making disempowering statements like, “I can’t do this,” move them into more empowering statements that reply, “But what CAN I do right now?”
This will help you gain a sense of movement in your life. In a lot of my coaching work, I find that many people are encouraged when we can get some movement going. It grants you a personal sense of encouragement, as you see the wheels slowly turning into new directions.
8. Get Single Minded
Nothing stalls a person more than double mindedness. You were not made to live with two minds inside of you. You end up “tilting” like a pinball machine.
When you are double minded, you are relentlessly entertaining two or more conflicting mindsets over and over again. It causes you to overanalyze your choice without ever acting on a decision.
For many, your hesitation is killing you, because you want everything perfect before you will jump. It won’t happen.
Others of you are terrified of the fear of failure, but it’s keeping you imprisoned in a cell of indecisiveness.
Make a decision. Move forward. Don’t look back.
9. Confront limiting beliefs that are holding you back.
Whenever you talk to someone about being “stuck,” their limiting beliefs come the surface. Oftentimes these beliefs arise to justify why we are where we are.
But these beliefs must be confronted if you are ever going to experience change.
I often find that limiting beliefs which come my way, often look to keep me in a cozy blanket of comfort, but things don’t change. Transformation and change only come about when we face the discomfort of breaking through the limiting beliefs that are holding us back.
10. Take fresh action.
For many, the reason you feel stuck is because you haven’t taken action. Therefore, you become like a reservoir that has no outlet, becoming stagnant over time.
For others, you’ve been taking action for years, but you’ve been tenaciously digging the same tunnel. When in reality, there may be another option, approach or action step that is going to be more effective.
What’s the next step? Let the love and faith of God speak into that. It may involve making that one decision you keep avoiding or that one change that you need to make.
I often find that most believers are one decision away from everything changing. Is that where you’re at?
Take the step.
Want to go further? Learn about the cycle of limitation and how to break free in my book Exposing the Rejection Mindset. You don’t have to remain stuck in your life.