“I’m stuck!” Dare you admit it? Along your path of life decisions, you bore left when you should’ve leaned right. And now you’ve ended up here. It’s a dead end. Admit it.
Without acceptance, you can’t understand this problem of feeling stuck for what it is. It’s a gift. So, where are you stuck? To know where you’re going, you must remember your point of origin.
It’s this constant self-exploratory homework that wears past the routines and asks the perpetual question, “Are you happy? Really?”
“No?” Well, you have options. These five acts will get you unstuck in your life.
What is this stuck feeling?
The feeling of being stuck is a message to yourself that you’re dying not thriving in a part of your life. Can you hear the echo of your stunted professional growth? This post tackles the dying of a dream career. But that’s not the only area of life where you can experience being stuck.
1. Notice the Symptoms of Being Stuck
Most people don’t notice they’re stuck in their career life until something dramatic happens. As Julia Cameron says, pain makes us pay attention. But she’d agree that the same thing applies to the intensity of pleasure and joy. Thus, take time to stop and look at your current level of life fulfillment in your career.
Here are six sample questions you can ask yourself.
- What did you do this week? When you finished these duties and activities was there anything that stood out as enjoyable or avoidable?
- Did any reaction appear like, “Hey, that was fun?” or “I wish I knew that better?”
- What act, within your job duties or outside of them, has put you in the creative flow? (The creative flow means that as you do this activity you lose yourself and forget time?)
- When, where did you feel most inspired this week?
- If you could put your life purpose for this week into one sentence, what would it have been?
- What are three core life values you saw factor into your actions this week?
2.Consider All Stuck Energies
Life is about balance. At times, you feel stuck because of lost energy. For instance, parenting can zap career-designated energy.
Wheel of Life
The wheel of life is a tool to give you a visual representation of your balance in fulfilling all your life needs from basic to complex.
What is the Wheel of Life?
My business coach taught me how to use a wheel of life exercise. This exercise helps you make the connections to shed light on the low areas of your life. Once recognized, you can create a game plan to increase your joy levels in those low spots.
The areas he asked me to evaluate were romance, career, spirituality, health, family and friends, money, personal growth, and fun and recreation.
Set up for the Wheel
Follow my lead? Use a scale of 1-10 (ten being the highest level) list your life fulfillment in that area.
Ex:
- Money- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
- Romance- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
- Family and Friends- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
- Career- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
- Health- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
- (Diet, sleep quality, exercise)
- Personal Growth (Includes spirituality)- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
- Fun and recreation- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
- Physical environment- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Plot the Wheel
You can plot these points on a circle graph using the worksheet below. Then, connect the dots. That shape reflects your life’s balance or imbalance.
Evaluate the Wheel
After you have written down your level of fulfillment, then list the amount of time you spent that week on each activity/associated role this week. Sign up for your own wheel here.
- Family (Parent) (Parenting)
- Career (Boss/Employee) (Working)
- Friends (Phone calls, chats, social media)
- Recreation
- Personal growth (Spirituality)
- Health (Exercise/diet/sleep)
- Romance (Significant other time)
- Physical environment (Homemaker/Caretaker to Maintain Evaluated Quality)
Likewise, to tell whether you’re stuck, ask yourself more pointed career/interest-related questions.
- What’s made you the happiest in your job or career?
- What do you enjoy doing in your career that if you engage in it, time disappears? Outside of your career?
- Where do you receive your most inspiration?
- Describe what you’re good at doing.
- What is it you do that makes you feel good?
- What would you like to get better at doing?
3.Stuck? Ask for help to set your goals
Matthew Kelly’s new book, Life is Messy starts to explore getting unstuck on page 81 under the subheading, Getting Unstuck. He gives his reader action steps. As I read this passage, the message became clear. Stuck people need to create a setting that allows them the best opportunity to get unstuck. This was his recommended game plan given to you, his one reader.
- Get regular sleep and exercise (My coach insists on seven hours minimum)
- Eat the right foods
- Rest
- Read (One-hour daily minimum)
- Pray and Reflect
- Feed your mind with healthy ideas (Any Media)
Rid yourself of toxicity in your setting
- Surround yourself with supportive people
Self-Care + Soul Care + Supportive Environment = Flourishing
Matthew Kellly, Author, Life is Messy
His game plan suggests three broad action steps.
Self-Care (Universal)
Here are non-negotiables you need to work within. I stress sleep for a minimum of 7 hours a night, eat three balanced meals a day esp. breakfast, and engage in daily exercise (move inside depending on rain/sleet/snow/wind).
Soul Care (Individualized)
Regular prayer, meditation, and relaxation. Kelly has a process to help with prayer. But meditation and reflection are something you must figure out what works for you by yourself.
Kelly’s last suggestion? Read books and media with ideas that feed your mind with healthy ideas.
Supportive Environment (Enlist help)
- Make new friends
- Sit on the front rows at conferences and workshops
- Befriend presenters with a thoughtful thank you after a presentation
- Use electronic chat to compliment others and connect
- Join Supportive Groups
- Brainstorm on groups that will put you in closeness with positive people
- Research groups like Masterminds and visit to listen in on a meeting
- Plan to meet influencers in your sphere and support their work/content
- Cleanse Environment Toxicity
- Sweep your life of negative influence
- Empty your home of mementos of regret and shame
- Purge the office of dream destroyers and naysayers
What is the toxicity?
Kelly explained everyone who wants you to flourish is part of a nontoxic, supportive environment. To flourish means you’re thriving, and you have the setting around you that supports your growth. Anyone who doesn’t want you to thrive, or flourish is toxic.
Procedures to root out life toxicity
Listen to those around you. If you share something that is happening in your life you’re excited about, and someone else turns the attention to themselves, that’s a toxic person. If they belittle your success, they’re toxic too. People who care about you don’t act in toxic ways.
They don’t turn the attention to themselves or try to sabotage your dreams with negativity. They understand that life is an act of balance. And that harmony extends into your conversational life.
Watch out, if someone does not navigate the relationship landscape as if lined with two-way communication streets. This is consumption or domination of a conversation is a toxicity alert.
Remember, you want to attract people into your inner circle that will support you. People who can see the development of your top-shelf, flourishing self, and celebrate it.
Although healthy sleep patterns, diet, and exercise routines are universal, prayer, reflection, and mind nourishment are more individualized. Stick with it.
To get unstuck, you need adequate sleep, rest, the right foods, and routine exercise. Those are universal. The second part, prayer, reflection, and mental nourishment are individualized tastes and palates. So, you must find what works for you.
4.To get unstuck, put an intervention plan together
Set memorable goals. These are goals that make you excited. Goals that feed your passion. Sometimes these may not steer you into what seems like unrealistic places. But that’s okay. In other words, you may need to expand your vision. If you think too small, you lose or lessen your motivation.
For example, my business coach taught me, if you set a yearly goal of $50K a year, ten times that number. Set a goal for $500,000. He also cautioned, if you need only one person to reach your goal that’s a sign, it’s not large enough.
Set up support systems to help you reach those goals. Enlist people’s help to hold you accountable for each step toward your set goals.
If you don’t have people now to help, then, join master-mind type Linked-In and Facebook groups. Listen to any self-talk that sabotages you from your goal. This inner negativity signals the need for healing and affirmation. When you get bogged down with voices, don’t ignore them, address them.
5.Still Stuck? Review the plan and tweak goals after a week’s pursuit.
Evaluate your plan of action. What within your plan helps you to get unstuck? What isn’t doing the job? Fire what isn’t working and replace it with another new tactic or strategy.
Case Study
Point of Entry
In the past year, I felt myself return to a point of origin. I have always loved commercial art and advertising. In commercials, ads, sales pages I always saw myself as the commercial artist behind the advertising pen and ink, not ever on the copy side.
Early Role Models
This from where I began my copywriting journey.
I knew one commercial artist in my life at that time, Ed Draganski. Interestingly, he babysat me and my brothers. The first night he babysat us, I remember I salivated as he turned each page of his sketchbook.
Each page was like a cultural canvas filled with superheroes, Star Wars characters, and even Spot the 7up mascot. I grew so excited.
Stuck in a Journey of Roadblocks
Then it happened, I graduated, but I had only my mutual fund contents and what money I could make in my part-time job to finance my education. With lab requirements and this class on Thursdays in the middle of the day, a major in Art would be far from workable.
It would take me twice maybe three times as long to get through my junior college basics as I could take 10 hours a semester with labs.
My commercial art dream died when I had to fit my own bill for school. I had to pay my dues for ditching my dreams later. But at the time, it felt like the safe and responsible thing to do. That should’ve been my first clue; I settled and bargained with my chip of happiness.
I recall writing a song about this settlement entitled, Selling Out for Food. Writing songs is something I did throughout college life, and I got third place in a contest for one song I entered in a writing competition.
But I wasn’t ready to see where my creative talents originated. They were artistic Who knew my advertising dream coming from the copy direction.
Stuck by Deadened Dead-end
Then, it happened. I read this book entitled, Are You Selling Her Lips? It discussed the subliminal aspects and the corruptness in the advertisement industry.
As someone true to my values of honesty, this dream turned into ashes. And I put on the educational visor and started off at a four-year college. So lifted a new dream, to be an academic counselor.
After that, the Texas code swooped in to block my plan B. The state lists the prerequisites of all academic counselors. One of these applicants must teach at a public school for a minimum of four years before they qualify for school counselor roles. The last thing I ever wanted to be was a grade school, middle school, or high school teacher.
Yet, the statutes were clear. My dream and plan B entered the flames. On all fronts, I had settled.
I held duty and nobility high as I strove to give back to a community that educated me. Still, I loved presentations and the thrill of thinking fast and improvising. Teaching had all that and more.
But as soon as I made it through college, my honor roll and University President’s List, and Dean’s List status didn’t matter. My hometown Mesquite had passed on me. With a history degree and no aspirations to coach, I sang the blues at all the district job fairs.
Dream Resurrection (How to stay stuck no longer.)
Decades later after a secondary and college teaching career, I rekindled my love for the written word. Now in Copy Hackers’ Copy School, I realized I could use my copy skills for good, even with the knowledge of their abusive potential. In short, my persuasive skills, my choice.
Feed My Mind with Healthy Thoughts to Unstick
Feast or famine is the language of dreams. The human brain resembles an antenna. To tune into the dream frequency, you must clear the channel. Otherwise, you might try to live out someone else’s dream as I did. Here’s a jump start. Feast on these positive thoughts of the late, great Emmet Fox.
No Greater Thoughts to Unstick
Theologian, Emmet Fox has gifted me with great insights to share. These are certain to pull you out reverse, and neutral in your dream pursuit. Stuck no more, you’ll begin to create a vision more like your full shape in the Wheel of Life exercise.
1. Dwell on Truth as the Great Healer
To know the truth about any condition heals it. Fox is on fire.
2. Love Focus
There is no condition where enough love cannot heal it. When you think about it, Fox says, if you have sufficient love no one can hurt you. Forgiveness is key to Fox’s sufficient love requirement.
If you love God more than you love your lack or your fear, you’ll heal. That’s Fox gold right there.
To get past your fears, you must let in Divine Love. You can do this by thinking about it, claiming it, and expressing it in practice.
3. Belief in an Intelligent Universe
The design of all ideas is to work together for a common good.
Therefore, Fox advised, turn to God today in the same spirit you did as when you were a little child. Plus, add the larger understanding you now have of God’s full nature.
When things in your life seem to be going wrong treat yourself for intelligence. Treat yourself for intelligence two to four times per week.
This will help you be most efficient in your life actions.
4. Visualize through a Spiritual Plane
I confess I’m still chewing on this aspect.
When you realize that any problem in your life is spiritual, not a material one seen in a limited way, that problem changes for the better. This is especially true when something is giving you trouble. Affirm it and try to realize that this thing is a spiritual ideal veiled as matter and watch what happens.
5. Hope 101
Hope is a subject in of your self-homework every day. Journals, affirmations, chosen books should all work to increase this virtue and make you bulletproof to rejection. Rejection is disguised redirection. Believe that.
Join Communities to Overpower Stuckness
LinkedIn– I post on a weekly basis if not more on this platform. I have found LinkedIn groups to be ineffective in dream resuscitation. With four hundred LinkedIn connections, since my start in mid-2020, I can tell that personal invites are effective tools for networking. Check-ups on my LinkedIn messages help me follow up with those people with whom I felt a common resonance.
Facebook groups– On the Write to 1K forum, I check various groups for opportunities and contribute to threads when possible. I have acted on these opportunities, although I have found each offer to be niche-centered.
Messenger-When I find a genuine connection on Facebook I tend to reach out via IM with direct messages. Compliment and connect.
Copy Quad-I answer and ask questions as I complete Copy School boot camps and check my email. I also turn boot camps into what the copy industry calls spec pieces.
Mastermind-I met with a group although the membership price was above my business profit margin.
Reddit– I check my email r/copywriting subreddit daily and add my contribution to respond to applicable questions and gift value to the community.
Today’s Trials and Successes Over Stuckness
As a solo entrepreneur, I started my own media company, jeffsyblik.com with HubSpot certifications in email marketing, inbound marketing, social media marketing, and content marketing. I have published dozens of blogs and my work has appeared in print magazines three times already.
In December of 2021, I enrolled in Copy School with Copy Hackers. I am working to pay for the education I once denied myself due to time and money constraints as a copywriter in training.
I also have written pieces for notable clients. This past year, Forney Living magazine hired me to interview clients and write business spotlights for their publication. As I learn how to better position my company in my desired markets, I will bring steady work to build my business. Marketing is a new world for me, but reinvention is my rule, not the exception.
My dream survives. I have returned full circle.
Try these post tips and let me know if you found them helpful in the revival of your dying dream.
Wrap Up on How to Get Dream Career Unstuck
There are five paths to pull your dying dream engine out of the mud. There’s no excuse to be stuck anymore.
Review.
1.Notice the symptoms of being stuck
2.Consider all life-energy directions
3.Ask for help to set your goals
4.Implement Plan of Action
5.Review and Tweak P.O.A.
If you like this post, share it. Until next time, be your top shelf you.
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