Never assume that you’re stuck with the way things are. Life changes, and so can you.
Maybe it’s the life lessons I was forced to learn the hard way, or the toll of loss and failure I had recently endured, but fifteen years ago in the midst of a panic attack on my 29th birthday, I had to admit to myself right then and there that the youthful world of possibility I once felt now seemed dead inside me. I wanted to feel light and free and ambitious and passionate again, but I didn’t know how. Luckily my grandmother, who was always a true lifesaver, gave me some good advice. She told me that she could still see a positive energy inside of me, but that I needed to do some soul searching to reconnect myself to it.
As I attempted to follow my grandmother’s advice, I remembered that I used to have two quotes written on sticky notes hanging on my bedroom wall when I was a kid:
- “Accept what is, let go of what was, and have faith in your journey.”
- “Paths are made by walking, not waiting.”
So I wrote the two quotes down again, just as I remembered them, and posted them up on the wall over my nightstand. I woke up to those quotes every morning for a few years thereafter just to keep myself centered from the get-go each day. I also took small steps forward, one day at a time, until I knew I was finally moving down the right path again.
For anyone else who’s feeling stuck and without a strong sense of how to take the next step forward right now, I offer the following reminders. They’re actionable lessons that kept me moving forward even on the hardest days when I felt little passion for life. And although these strategies are based on my personal experiences, they’ve now also been vetted by their extensive use in hundreds of coaching sessions that Marc and I have administered with our course students, live event attendees, and coaching clients over the years. Perhaps they can bring some verve back into your days too…
1. A great deal of progress can be made from the inside out.
If the conditions are right, it’s easy to grow horizontally by acquiring more money, newer cars, bigger homes, etc. Vertical growth, on the other hand, is when you stay in the same place with the same things, but grow deeper and deeper into yourself. It’s when you can say, “Five years ago I would lose my temper about that, but now it doesn’t trigger me at all.” This kind of growth is more rare, but it’s truly the most powerful kind.
Sadly, many of us feel stuck, and we age much faster than we grow, because we focus exclusively on horizontal achievements. We spend so much of our lives going through the external motions of what society tells us maturity is — getting married, buying houses, working our way up the corporate ladder, etc. — that we fail to concentrate on our own inner growth. We never allocate enough time to being mindful.
Being mindful as a daily ritual is the ultimate challenge and practice. It’s a way of living, of being, of seeing, of tapping into the full power of your humanity.
Ready to get started?
It’s simple, but not always easy. Practice…
- Being aware of what’s happening in the present moment without wishing it were different
- Enjoying each pleasant experience without holding on when it changes (which it will)
- Being with each unpleasant experience without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t)
Ritualize this kind of mindfulness into your daily routines, and you will undoubtedly change the way you show up in your life. You will free yourself from the inside out. And you will gradually begin to feel yourself moving in a positive direction again.
2. Your self-talk can really make a difference.
Goals are important — all journeys of change often begin with some kind of goal. And you must also have determination in order to achieve your goals. However, what do you think happens when you’re obsessively determined and too hard on yourself about achieving a goal? You begin to nurture another belief: who you are right now is not good enough.
Years ago when I was struggling I had become overly obsessive in my efforts to meditate. As my interest in meditation grew, I began to increasingly say to myself, “I’m not good enough yet,” and, “I have to be better at this.” And there was a ripple effect to that thought process. I gradually began to notice lots of other imperfections I had that needed to be “fixed.”
My over-the-top efforts to meditate for extensive periods of time had opened the doors to lots of self-criticism, negative self-talk, and stress. Thankfully I caught myself and eventually realized that my obsession with “better” meditation had made me forget one of the core objectives of meditation — self-acceptance.
So the bottom line is this: you have to accept yourself as you are, speak positively of yourself, and then commit to personal growth. If you think you are absolutely “perfect” already, you won’t likely make any positive efforts to grow. But constantly criticizing yourself is just as counterproductive as doing nothing, because you will never be able to build positive changes into your life when you’re obsessively distracted by your “flaws.”
The key is to remind yourself that you already are good enough; you just need more practice. Change your inner self-talk from the standpoint of, “I have to be better,” to “I will do my absolute best today.” The second version is far more effective because it actually prompts you to take positive action every day while simultaneously accepting the reality that every effort may not be perfect.
3. The discomfort you feel can be a good sign.
In order to get something in life, we have to give something up to get it. In order to change a situation for the better, we have to take some action that’s not necessarily going to be easy or comfortable. But oftentimes we shy away from suffering through the necessary steps that must be taken because we’re afraid of the discomfort. It feels scary and uncomfortable to upset the status quo, even when it’s in service of something better.
So it really comes down to a simple question:
What do I want to change that’s worth suffering for?
If you can honestly and logically identify a goal or change that’s worth the discomfort for all the right reasons, then it’s a good sign. You can also rephrase the question to help you think through it. For example: What are you willing to sacrifice in the short-term and mid-term, to be happier in the long-term?
Of course, changes magnitude don’t come easily for any of us and I understand that. But once you start to have an honest conversation with yourself about what you want to change in your life, you’ll find it easier to direct your full energy toward overcoming your present obstacles. In any case, getting unstuck from an unhappy or unhealthy present situation is fundamentally about becoming comfortable with discomfort.
It’s about choosing to embrace discomfort, not because you want to make your life overly difficult, but because there are some things that are worth suffering for. It’s about suffering a little bit more in the moment, in order to suffer a lot less in the long run. It’s about giving certain things up right now to get more of what you truly want in life in the weeks and months ahead!
No doubt, if you want those six-pack abs again, you also have to want the hard workouts and the healthy meals. If you want the successful business again, you also have to want the long days, the stressful business deals and decisions, and the possibility of failing five times to learn what you need to know to succeed in the long run. If you want to reinvent your life and adapt well to a “new normal,” you simply have to give up certain ideals, comforts, routines, and so on, to get what you ultimately want.
And remember that giving things up isn’t just about making small, immediate sacrifices. It’s also about gradually gaining the resources you need to do something significant going forward. When you give something up, you automatically create an opening in your life for something else. By saying no to everything that’s not aligned with your priorities, you make room for what is. In other words, if you want to move forward with your life in the weeks and months ahead, you have to give up the things that conflict with your potential to make progress. You have to sacrifice something that you value less than whatever you ultimately want to achieve.
Your turn…
Before you go, please leave Marc and me a comment below and let us know what you think of this essay. Your feedback is important to us. 🙂
What did you think of the points above? Which one resonated the most?
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