Feeling stuck? Find out why and how to get unstuck! E102

July 18, 2023

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This is something a lot of my students share with me: “Linda, I am stuck. I don’t know what do to.” In this episode, I share with you the reason why we don’t like being stuck, why we are actually stuck and what we can do to get ourselves unstuck.

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When we feel stuck it feels like we are hitting a wall, an invisible wall that stops us from progressing. We feel that there is a wall in our way and it stops us from seeing clearly. We can’t see the next step, the right decision to make or what comes next.

Examples of feeling stuck in our life

As an example, that could be taking action in your career and the stuckness wall is the question in your mind: What do I actually want to do? Does this career fulfil me and my purpose?

Another example could be feeling stuck in a relationship because the wall of stuckness does not let you have an open conversation with your partner out of fear of what’s going to happen.

Or you are shying away from making a decision in your life because you don’t know which one is the right one, so you are stuck at the wall of that unmade decision.

These are some of the typical scenarios in which we can feel stuck. And the reason why we don’t like to feel stuck is that it holds us frozen in feelings of doubt, uncertainty, fear, guilt, shame and many more. And we don’t like being with these emotions as they lower our vibration and our energy.

Being stuck is created by us

The interesting thing is that this wall of stuckness is created for us by ourselves. You might not want me to tell you this, but you are creating the stuckness all by yourself. You are just not aware of it and why it gets created in the first place. So let’s talk about that now.

So why do we feel stuck in the first place? What happens inside of us when we have the sensation or feeling of being stuck?

Why do we feel stuck?

We think not moving forward keeps us safer. Kind of like the saying: The devil you know… do you know that one? It means that you rather live with the current unwanted situation and the stuckness than make a decision or move forward out of fear of the unknown.

As the examples showed before, the reason can vary but in a nutshell, it has to do with moving out of the comfort zone, stepping out of the known.

If you would stay in the known in the predictable, your system would not give an alarm off, you would feel safe – even if the known does not make you happy or is boring or uninspiring.

Your innate systems want to keep you safe

As soon as you are considering stepping out into the unknown, your systems which are the nervous system, your subconscious mind and everything that has been programmed into it over the decades, go: Hang on a minute, what are you doing? We cannot predict this, so it must be unsafe. Don’t do it!

That’s when you can feel stuck. But the thing is that you can probably think about situations in your life where you did something new and unknown, and you did not get stuck. Instead, you just went for it and it all worked out for the best, perhaps even better than you imagined.

Can you think of such a situation? Maybe you started a new job, relocated, or you gave love a new chance, or you tried out a new hobby that others find scary.

Instances where you did not allow yourself to be stuck

In all of these instances, your systems would have reacted in the same way, but your eagerness, your conviction, and your energy were bigger than the alarms. So you ignored them and you rather listened to your intuition.

Your intuition is your higher guidance, this is what your heart wants, and this is what is aligned with your purpose and fulfilment.

The reason you can feel stuck is because of the innate systems inside of us that want us to be safe and survive. These were very useful when we lived thousands of years in the wild together with some dangerous animals that we might need to run away from. Now that this is hardly ever the case anymore, we still have that innate system but we adapted it and use it for hypothetical threats like a bad experience in a new job, or a potential accident when travelling to a new country.

So what was once very useful for our survival, is now rather hindering us from our growth and development.

We can reason with our innate system and move past the stuckness

But once we are aware of that happening when we feel stuck we can see it more objectively. We can accept that our systems want to keep us safe and still make that decision, take the next step or say no to someone we always said yes to.

Do you see now that all you needed is to understand how being stuck is created in the first place? Then you can become aware and reflect on this: Will I let my survival systems stop me from moving forward? Is there really a danger or a threat or does my survival system just perceive it as one because it cannot predict what will happen?

Being stuck is not a bad thing

In a sense, being stuck is not such a bad thing. Now you can see it as an opportunity. Being stuck means now that you are about to step out of your comfort zone. You are just about to do something new and unknown in your life. And you can celebrate yourself for it. And then reflect on the stuckness. What is it trying to tell you?

And sometimes you might even want to sit with the stuckness for a while. You don’t always have to rush out of it as soon as you become aware of it. Sometimes things need some time to get a new piece of information or for you to be more ready to take the next step. But again, once you are aware, you don’t have to see being stuck anymore as something bad or frustrating.

So what have we learned about being stuck?

We don’t like being stuck as it keeps us frozen in an undesired situation and it creates low vibrating feelings inside of us.
Then we learned that we are creating the stuckness ourselves, through our survival system. And the reason is that we are about to step into the unknown.
We all had experiences in our lives where we stepped into the unknown and did not allow our survival system to keep us stuck.
Now we know that we can use the feeling of stuckness to celebrate ourselves for stepping out of our comfort zone and for reflecting on what our systems want to tell us.
And now we never have to stay stuck for longer than we want to anymore. Amazing!

GET UNSTUCK Meditation is available now

I loved the visual with the wall of stuckness and a door to walk through it so much, that I created a meditation for you. During this meditation, I guide you to release the emotional charge of the stuckness and to tell your systems that it’s safe to move past the stuckness. You can find the Get Unstuck Meditation on my YouTube channel (14-Minute Meditation OR 20-Minute Meditation).

OK, that’s all that I have for you today on the topic of why we feel stuck and what to do about it. Let me know if this was helpful. Connect with me via Instagram, Facebook or YouTube as I would love to hear from you. Apply what you have learned today and let me know about a situation where you can get unstuck consciously and quickly.

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