How to get unstuck
We’ve all been stuck before. But realize that your current situation in life does not have to be where you stay.
We can't control the cards we're dealt but it's up to us to take agency and steer ourselves where we'd like to be.
March 2020, my world was turned upside down. Like many times in life, things had gone less than ideal.
The year began with an air of excitement. Graduate university, move to San Francisco and snag a full time job. In March, I found myself on an aunt’s couch in a Southern Californian suburb with less than two days to pack my stuff up from London. Although I was happy not to be sleeping in my brother’s race car bed in Michigan, disappointed can’t describe how low I felt.
With California’s emergency order enacted I also had no distractions. It was me, my thoughts and I…
This led me to a few realizations:
I needed to address trauma
My life was not where I wanted it to be.
I was flying by the seat of my pants.
I could not keep ignoring this reality.
Now, three years later and my life has dramatically improved. I’ve gotten somatic-based therapy, gained a stronger sense of self, created community, become conscious of my needs and moved to San Francisco.
Here's a few things that helped:
Reckon with the past.
A while back a different auntie of mine in her fifties languished that if only she had her looks or body of her 20s and the wisdom that she had now, she could "snag a millionaire husband”. This is something commonly repeated by women as society (sadly) puts an emphasis of our youth as our greatest assets. The truth is — she won’t ever be in her 20s again. If she wanted to, she could snag a millionaire husband. It probably won’t be easy, or even fun. But it is still possible.
Like my aunt, I’ve thought this too: “If only I was 19 with the knowledge I know now" It would've saved me a few bad relationships, bad decisions. But I'm happy for my mistakes, I forgive myself for the ways I hurt myself when I didn't know better.
The point is - why hope to be 19 again? You won’t ever be, no matter how much you wish for it or face creams you buy. Why hope to be the star quarterback or for a job you no longer have? It’s just torturing yourself. As soon as we accept that we cannot change the past nor should we retreat to it, we're free from its tyranny.
The past is the past. Ruminating is fine, but you need to realize that you have the agency to change your life as it is *right now*. The longer you allow yourself to grief for your past, the more time you waste in the present.
If you wish you would've went to culinary school twenty years ago, why not do it *right now*? Sure, it may not be the same journey it would’ve been if you had done it two decades ago but so what. Leave the past in the past and go for what you want, now.
Forgiveness
Once you are able to live in the present, this should be easier.
The common sentiment is: forgive others who hurt you. I'm sure there's some truth to this as a process of relinquishing anger, yada yada. To get unstuck, I think it’s most important that you offer forgiveness for yourself. Life always has plenty of regret. Forgive yourself for what you didn’t know or the person you weren’t before.
Be Like Water
The only thing constant is change — Life will never go exactly how you plan and having the tenacity to change alongside it will be of benefit to you. Be flexible and change along with the grooves of life. This will help you go further along.
Be Real
It’s helped me the most to be as realistic as I can about my situation. Sure, this can bring up dark feelings at times. Especially if your life is completely different than how you’d like it to be. But it’s an integral step to planning out your next steps. Let’s say you live at home with your parents in the Midwest, work part time, but your dream is to live in Manhattan and work in finance.
Leaving home may be out of the question for you but you can’t let the fear and challenge keep you from what you’d like to accomplish. If you’re real about your situation, you’d realize that it would take a lot of money in savings, planning and professional connections to pull this off. OK a lot of work but not impossible. Once you assess your current situation it’s a lot easier to think smaller — visit New York for a weekend trip or call up an old highschool buddy who did something similar(moved to a big city). You could start doing online training for finance stuff or even take a job locally to give you the skills you’d need. Obviously, for someone in a situation like this they’d need to put in a lot of time & effort.
Yet like with most goals whether they’re to leave your home town or something a lot easier, it’s important to break your goals down so they don’t seem so intimidating
We’ve all been stuck before. But realize that your current situation in life does not have to be where you stay.
This was a great article. Glad to hear things have gotten better. Also thanks for the tips, those are very vital ones. Especially reckoning with the past and being like water, so many things change so rapidly with time. All the best!
If I could go back in time with the knowledge I have now, I would not do it. You don’t know what will change. You might think you’re more streetsmart now but life hangs on coincidences and sometimes you have to make a mistake or something has to go wrong to get something else later in life. If I would try to fix the things that I did not have control over then but that I know now I’m hindsight, some bigger problems might happen or I might miss out on the most fun and happy memories of my life.