Feeling Stuck? Simply Begin Again.
Everybody comes to a point in their life when they want to quit, but it’s what you do at that moment that determines who you are.” — Anonymous
Getting stuck is normal.
For the most of us, it’s the usual suspects; money, freedom, time and sanity. We live in such a rushed world filled with expectations which we impose on ourselves and those that are heaped on us by our friends, family, co-workers, bosses and peers.
What matters is how we deal with it — can we get back up, dust ourselves off, and start all over again?
Sometimes though, I wish that I could just press a “pause” or “mute” so that I can take a time out; not matter how short.
Does it always have to be like this? It shouldn’t, but it does.
There are, however, ways for you to guide and train your mind to reset; to simply begin again.
Altering our state of mind, isn’t easy but it is not impossible. Being human, we have an innate ability to make decisions that can instantaneously affect how we feel. All it takes is open awareness and consistency of practice.
Here are some proven techniques to consider.
1. Find the Bright Spots
As Chip and Dan Heath set out in their book, Switch, we have two sides to our beings; the emotional side and our rational side. Our rational side knows what needs to be done but it is playing a constant tug-of-war with our emotional side that keeps looking for a quick payoff rather than long-term benefits.
To achieve balance, we must learn to give our rational side a clear direction to where we want to go so that it can put its planning and rational thinking to good use.
Therefore, instead of concentrating on how we feel about the problems we face; find and focus on the “bright spots”; the happy place where change has already happened or presently exists in our lives.
According to the Heath brothers, Ambiguity is the enemy.
We need to think about the situations that are most crucial for change and script the critical actions that are required for those situations. A simplistic example would be that inorder to eat healthier, you would need to script the critical action for shopping; what you shop is then what you end up eating.
When scripted correctly, even small changes can bring big benefits. What we then need to look for is achieving small wins which create hope that change is not only possible but attainable.
Hope is like fuel for our emotional side. The milestone we achieve, and small wins accumulated gives our emotional side momentum; making the change effort self-sustaining.
2. Mind-Dump
At any given time, what we feel is the result of the brain and the mind interacting with each other.
The theory is that by engaging in self-reflection, we can lead a happier and more fulfilling life.
As defined by psychologist and author, Dr Rick Hanson, self-reflection is the active endeavour of trying to understand our mental processes to gain better mastery over them; processes such as emotions, thoughts and wishes that we experience daily.
Since the brain develops and adapts to whatever it focusses on, positive focus teaches the brain to take in good experiences and incorporate them into our lives.
The key to self-reflection is learning to Externalise; externalising our thoughts, our worries and our hopes.
Our brains aren’t made to remember things forever, when we externalise, it’s as if we are emptying our brain.
We are then able to either focus on new things or deal with the task at hand, instead of constantly dwelling on past things taking up valuable bandwidth.
There’s a simple, quick solution to this problem — it’s called a Mind Dump.
A Mind Dump is simply a way for you to get everything out of your head and onto paper. Executing a mind dump is simple: take out a pen and a piece of paper or fire up a new document on your computer. Then, write down everything that comes to your mind.
Anything and everything is fair game; what you have to do, what you’re thinking about, hopes, dreams, goals, and whatever else comes into your mind. Set a time limit — say, 20 minutes — and everything that enters your brain immediately must exit your brain and go onto your paper.
Once you’re done, look at what you’ve written. With this visual, you and your mind can begin to take action on the items you’ve written. This technique allows you to take a step back; it gives you an opportunity to visually connect the dots of your thoughts.
There’s no set way for doing the best mind dump possible. The point is to reset your brain, update your productivity system, and put onto paper all the things that have been taking up the valuable (and limited) space in your brain.
It’s amazing how many things come out of your brain and into your internal and externals organisational system, when you devote time and space to emptying it.
3. Cultivating Mindfulness
Emotions can be a major source of distraction, according to Richard Davidson and Daniel Goleman, in their book, Altered Traits, Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body, talk about one of their most important discoveries: repeated practice helps us untether from emotional cues that keep us mired in distraction; specifically, our own thoughts.
Mindfulness practice can strengthen the connections between the brain that direct our decision-making and impulses, so that when we encounter a strong emotional trigger, we’re not pulled to immediately react.
It does this by stimulating the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). We stimulate our PNS when we’re mindful. The PNS reduces the heart rate and makes us feel calm, restful and strengthens the prefrontal (cortex’s) ability to say “no” to emotional impulse.
This increases resilience because it helps us become more aware, allows us to hold things more lightly and prevents us from devoting all of our attention to our emotional cues. So instead of ruminating about the things that have made you feel stuck; you can come back to equilibrium and recover.
There are many simple ways to incorporate mindfulness into your daily life. All it takes to start is one breath. Committing to taking one deep inhale and one deep exhale before you start anything new will make a world of difference.
Mindfulness simply allows us to transform a position in which everything feels blocked, into an opportunity of positive change and evolution.
By building better awareness of what’s going on in our lives and in our nature, we are building our internal witnessing capacity, by looking at resistance with kindness and sincere inquiry. This is the key to getting unstuck. It allows us to liberate ourself from the patterns that limit our happiness, creativity, and success.
I’m interested to hear what you think about this and your experience with getting unstuck, so please comment and share.
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