The meaning of stuckness

I still get stuck. Sometimes it sneaks up on me and I don't realize I'm stuck until I get the feeling that I'm just not doing what I really want to do. I used to think that all my training would make me invincible to stuckness. Ha! Recently I pulled my feet out of a big bog of stuckness about my business and I realized something wonderful from that experience.

What does being stuck mean? Think about it. People treat it as if it's a bad thing. Not true! Feeling stuck is actually the first step when you're making progress. It simply means that you have come to a new place in your life where you're not sure what to do or what action to take. Isn't that a good sign that you're moving forward?

When a new challenge appears, every person experiences that feeling of stuckness, however brief or long. Feeling stuck is really your Unconscious Mind, the part of you in charge of your safety (physical, emotional and mental), saying, "Oh look, here's something that I'm not sure about. I better stop here until I know how best to proceed." It's simply your Unconscious Mind letting you know that you need to learn a new skill, or to renew an old one, before you can go forward with confidence. When you respond to that internal message by taking action, the feeling goes away and progress continues. When you stop and don't take action, that's called "being stuck". It's a holding pattern set up by you to give you room to figure out a solution. The longevity of that feeling depends on you and your willingness to take action.

Taking action doesn't always happen in the physical realm. Don't think that the answer is in getting busy with tasks. That's the mistake I made (and many people make), and the feeling of stuckness did not go away. In fact it worsened! I was doing all the busy work that everyone says you're supposed to do. I made my lists of action items, called the people I needed to call, wrote and prepared materials. You name it, I was doing it. But I just kept feeling more and more stuck. I knew that I was missing an important something. How do you find out what the something is?

It's been said many times that if you change what's happening inside, the outside world will reflect your internal actions. If we are the center of our own universes, and we are...then perhaps the answer is at the source.

So, I went into action - internally. I had to connect with my Unconscious Mind and find out what was going on. Why was she stopping me from going forward? Time Line Therapy helped me find the cause of the situation, realizing that its roots were in a limiting decision I had adopted from someone about how to succeed in the business of NLP training. Self-hypnosis made it easy to forgive myself for the delay I had caused in my progress and to realize the ways that old limitation had affected other parts of my life. NLP gave me the tools to build an effective internal strategy for taking physical action with my new, empowering decision in place.

With the internal action complete, I was able to turn my "busy work" into effective efforts that propel me forward toward my goals. I feel great about the direction of my business and the progress I'm making to grow it the way I want it to be. The challenge has been met, I learned a lot about myself and about the process we humans use to achieve our goals. This world is set up to present us with challenges so that we can apply what we've learned, test it and refine it, and then improve our results. So the next time you feel stuck, say "Thank you, Unconscious Mind!" and take action inward for your true life's progress.