What do you do when you feel stuck?

What is your first reaction to stuckness? – Stuckness can come out of the blue or in response to certain circumstances. For example, you’ve returned from your holidays and are feeling the post holiday blues; you’re dealing with a disappointment or facing either a challenging, routine or even boring task and you feel blocked and unable to move on. When you think about the task in hand your energy is sapped, you lack enthusiasm and any inclination to undertake it.

What is it like when you get stuck? How do you feel, what thoughts go through your head? What impact does this have on you?

How to unstick yourself? – These are some of the things I find useful – and if you are reading this edition of Inspire, it shows they work!

• Do something, anything to move you on. The worst thing is to sit and do nothing. The task in hand just looms ever bigger and more and more intimidating or uninviting. You might think it seems like procrastination, but if you do something useful and easy to achieve it can give you the energy to tackle the task in hand
• Re-energise yourself by changing your posture or your location (if possible). Sit up, take a very deep breath, look up and visualise yourself doing something or being somewhere that you really enjoy and that energises your. Spend a few minutes there and then bring that energy back to your current situation
• Talk to a colleague, coach or friend to get another viewpoint or to get the energy to move on
• Step into a mentor’s shoes – there is a wonderful exercise that I would be happy to send you. It involves stepping into virtual mentor’s shoes to gain a new perspective on a situation
• Watch out for your inner dialogue – is your inner critic starting to beat you up, undermine your confidence and ability to handle what you have on your plate? It is amazing how sneaky it can be, it can quietly, but persistently provide a negative sound track when things are not going so well – see the right hand column for information on the Mastering Your Inner Critic workshop
• Decide when to drop something – sometimes we feel blocked because we either don’t really want to do something, but feel we ‘should’ and perhaps the task in hand maybe not the best use of our time. I’ve just been coaching a client and we’ve discussed a task he has been putting off for months having tried many different techniques. I asked him what it would be like if he just dropped it. During our discussion he identified an ‘ought’ which came more from the inner critic than his inner wisdom, as it seems that the task in hand might not be the best use of his time.
• Go for a walk if you can – anything to get you out and about and provide you with more energy. Walking helps to free up the old brain and you will probably find you are far more productive after a quick walk around your office block or garden if you work at home.

Teams or working relationships stuck in a rut – this could be:

• A cosy rut, where you are reluctant to move out of your comfort zone. This can stifle innovation and creativity and ultimately performance. Perhaps discussing this with your colleagues, thinking about how you can support each other to move out of the comfort zone, develop new skills, take on new roles or tasks. Is there something new that the team can offer either internal or external clients?
• Or a destructive rut in terms of how you communicate and work with others. Destructive ruts can strangely lead people to remaining stuck with the ‘better the devil you know’ attitude. It might be about changing the current working relationships rather than getting out of the situation completely. It always amazes me how some people stay stuck working in some really destructive and soul destroying work environments. Identify what is within your control, start to take steps even if they are micro steps to help you to move forward. We can provide both 1:1 coaching and team development programmes to assist with this. Contact me for more details on mg@grovelands.org.uk

‘If you believe it will work out, you’ll see opportunities. If you believe it won’t, you’ll see obstacles.’ Dr Wayne W Dyer