How radical thinking will help you get unstuck.
Everything I know about escaping the prison of past choices.
Last Monday I went for a morning meander around Fitzroy Gardens. The freshly mown, fluorescent green lawns were covered by a carpet of fallen leaves, and the sun beamed down through the crisp Autumn air. As I sipped my latte surrounded by all this natural glory, I was struck by a moment of clarity.
For the first time in a while I feel like I’m exactly where I need to be. I’m doing work I love, connecting with people who inspire me, and building a wonderful community through this small but mighty newsletter. Right now I feel momentum, and I won’t lie, it’s damn nice.
I must admit it’s taken a lot of courage, risk taking and sacrifice to get to this point. My life and career have been as non-linear as they come, and I’ve found myself stuck in the mud more than once: not knowing how to leave a bad relationship, agonising over whether to move on from a job or change career paths, and trying to figure out how to artfully extricate myself from situations I no longer wanted to be involved in.
Fortunately I’ve found my way through these tough moments, and it got me thinking: what causes us to feel trapped in the first place? And more importantly, what steps can we to take to get unstuck?
The paradox of progress
At the core of feeling stuck sits a deep human contradiction. On one hand we so desperately want progress. We want to feel like we’re making moves. Taking steps. Building to something bigger or to a better version of ourself.
But on the other hand, we’re terrified of change. Change brings uncertainty. It assumes risk. It opens the doorway to potential failure and financial ruin (at least that’s what we tell ourselves).
The feeling of standing still is unbearable but the thought of extricating ourselves is even worse, and therein lies the paradox. We want progress but not change, however change is inherent in progress. Without it, we can have none.
Understanding this contradiction is the first step to getting unstuck. We need to know that to get what we want (progress), we need to do what we don’t (make changes).
Radical acceptance, radical action
Making change is both excruciatingly hard and laughably simple. It involves radically accepting our situation and taking radical action above anything else.
When I’m feeling trapped in a prison of my past choices, I first try to radically accept that I’m not where I want to be. I acknowledge this fact wholeheartedly. I don’t berate. I try not to justify. I accept and then acknowledge that change will be hard. It will involve being brave and probably disappointing people I care about. To get unstuck, it will at first suck.
I then make the decision to do something to haul me from the mud. Excuses inevitably crop up: that I’m not ready or that I need more information or that it’s too risky. I ignore them, politely declining an invitation to my very own pity party, and take radical action instead. It doesn’t matter what the action is, just that I take it. Because I know that any action is movement, and any movement is progress.
Free radical
With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that I’ve applied these principles many times over the course of my life. They’ve moved me from the mud to a freshly mown, fluorescent green lawn covered by a carpet of fallen Autumn leaves. They’ve taken me to a place full of hope and light, ambition and freedom, new plans and endless potential.
Despite where I am right now, I’m fairly certain that sometime, somewhere, somehow in the future I’ll feel stuck again. So will you. And when you arrive there, you’ll have a choice. To radically accept or deny. Take radical action or none. You can stand still or you can move forward.
The choice is up to you.
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Super refreshing to know getting stuck is a common thing many go through! That in itself actually helps release and open up to new ways of thinking and new possibilities!! I have been stuck in my transition for a while now. I say stuck but at the same time I can look back and see that there is progression, even if it’s in needle point movements! Being open and flexible and creating space has been my biggest takeaways during this time!! Also removing the pressure to get somewhere by a certain time helps create the space. Love the audio 👌😀
I love your voice note at the end of this, Anna. I just found your newsletter through the note you shared yesterday: 'not writing is harder.'
That hit home for me, because I was just back from what's probably another failed job interview (me, a career freelancer, trying to land a salaried job in this economy.) And because all I really want to do is write. To start writing a newsletter and building a community here on Substack, and explore the possibility of writing fiction for publication.
I was writing a response to your note when I paused mid-sentence and realized I could, if I wanted to, potentially turn what I was writing to you into a newsletter post. Hah. In a sense, I *was* writing, just not in a post. Doing the thing, without doing the thing. (And finding highly creative ways to avoid doing it.)
Spoiler: I wrote a bit in a Word doc instead, and now came back to leave you this note. :) I don't know if that's the post I'll end up sharing, but it's got me a lot closer to hitting publish. So thank you <3