How to Get Unstuck: The Easier, Softer Way

When you feel stuck and find it hard to take action, sometimes you have to find an easier, softer way.  This episode reviews actions you can take to get unstuck that don't require harsh and hard-core action.  Also discussed: 

• Targeting five essential areas to create change
• How small, incremental actions can lead to significant progress
• The myth of instant change
• Strategies for staying motivated
• How small steps can help you get unstuck and make a big difference in your career

Chapters

• 0:00 Getting Unstuck and Taking Action
• 10:56 Seeking Support and Taking Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey friends, this is Jill Griffin, the host of the Career Refresh podcast. Welcome back. Today I'm talking about how to get unstuck and I'm hearing from a lot of people that they feel stuck. It feels heavy. They don't know what to do. They don't know where to go next. They may have lots of choices in front of them. They may feel that they have no choices in front of them. Either way, they feel stuck.

Speaker 1: 0:25

And if you don't know what to do about your career, people are thinking should I leave this job? Should I stay? Do I take a less ideal job with higher pay or a better job with lower pay? And just to be clear, folks, it's not binary. There are no two jobs that are alike. But the odds are that one job is going to offer you more pay than another. They that one job is going to offer you more pay than another. They're not also both going to offer you the exact same dollar amount, right? So this idea that one feels better but maybe it's a buck less, or vice versa how do you make that decision? What I hear from people is that they might be moving around and doing and responding and reacting and uncovering, discovering, discarding. So it feels like there's a lot of activity and you may have some level of exhaustion or mental fatigue because you're continually thinking about the same thing but not moving forward because you haven't made a decision. A decision is a committed thought with a committed action. I often suggest to clients that they get into a framework of thinking or decision-making that enables action. So here's what I'd suggest that you do there are five areas and I'm going to run you through them but that you start thinking about these areas and you may customize them for your own lives, of the areas that you want to create change. As we move into mid-year if you're listening to this, when this episode is actually dropped you may be working in a company that's on a July fiscal. You may be thinking about oh my gosh, we're already at July, so that means we're in the back half of the year.

Speaker 1: 1:58

The idea that you can create a lot for yourself if you could get unstuck is true. If you're coming from a place of stuckness or burnout or freeze or exhaustion or just mental fatigue, it's going to be very hard to make that if it feels like you have to take a huge bite. You have to do a huge thing to create change. You have to do a huge thing to create change. When you're stuck, the way you create change is you do smaller increments. So here are the five areas. One can be physical health. Perhaps there's something around exercise you want to do. Maybe there's something around well-being or meditation or anything around your physical health.

Speaker 1: 2:42

So think about one particular goal or an area that you want to get unstuck. The next might be a mental area. This could be mindset. You want to begin meditating. You want to do breath work. You want to change a thought. You want to be intentional and purpose-driven.

Speaker 1: 2:57

When you go into your job and you're going into a meeting and you're engaging with others, how are you intentional? Who needs you on the A game? Where do you want to be really thinking through as you start an experience or your day that you can create incremental change? Thinking about your career, where do you want to double down? Do you want to get promoted? Do you want to rotate? Is there a project that you'd like to consider? Do you want to do something? Do you want to rotate? Is there a project that you'd like to consider? Do you want to do something that's outside of your day job, like a side hustle or another project that you feel is a passion driven project? Do you want to hire a coach to really prime your brain for what's next for you for the rest of the calendar year?

Speaker 1: 3:43

Next area is relationships. When you're thinking about your professional relationships, are you building your board of directors? I've talked a lot about this. I'll drop the link in show notes of previous podcasts I've done around creating networking and your board of directors and why that's really important. And the last area I would say is, of all those, where's the one area that you need to double down and more right? So it's a little bit of a cheat. There are four, five areas, but one is like what needs a little extra love. So next I want you to think about what is one behavior and one action that you can do to get unstuck and go after this goal and go after this goal. So one behavior, one action, and then the last is incrementally 1% movement, 1% better if you're already in it 1% movement. So let's look at what that might look like If you decide that you're going to focus first on relationships and professional relationships and your goal to get unstuck around like you haven't really been building your network.

Speaker 1: 4:46

You keep hearing how important. It is Expanding your network very important. The need for both current and future job opportunities. Maybe you decide to make one networking meeting a week, whether that's face-to-face or virtual, but you're going to start booking them out. You need to take that action. Virtual, but you're going to start booking them out. You need to take that action. Here's an opportunity to think that I need to take one action, one behavior. I want to expand my network. I'm going to need to make one meeting a week and I'm going to do 1% better. These smaller increments really help our overall.

Speaker 1: 5:23

If we are feeling stuck and sort of in that frozen space, that small incremental way of thinking about it is often a way to get you out of it. If you are hitting it, achieving and you don't need this, this isn't necessarily the approach for you right now, but you might need it at another point in your life and it's really good to know this, or someone perhaps that reports to you needs to understand a way to snap them out of this stuckness. But I want to tap into this idea that we're going to get unstuck, sort of at the stroke of midnight. Right, this fantasy, thinking that, all right, I'll do it Monday or I'll start after the summer back in. You know when school starts. If you have children, when they go back to school in the August-September frame, that becomes like the flip of the calendar year. But this fantasy thinking or Cinderella thinking or January 1st thinking, as I love to call it, a date on the calendar, doesn't get us to change behavior. You want to work in small little bits right, it's that like margin accretion, that small little repetitive things that you can do that are not too taxing but help you get unstuck.

Speaker 1: 6:36

Consistent actions, making a committed decision with a committed action, and doing ones that feel achievable and not overwhelming. You want to get in your reps. You want to think about what do you need to do to maintain both the action and the behavior? So when you're thinking, all right, jill, this is great, but like I just lack the motivation right now, I just want to sit, I just want to be, I can't take anything on, but I feel stuck and I'm not going to get out of this place unless I take action. Right, it feels very meta that you're sort of in this loop.

Speaker 1: 7:14

First, I'm going to ask you to get really curious when you say that you're not feeling motivated, or you feel frozen or you feel stuck. I want you to get curious about what you're thinking. You may be like I'm not thinking anything, I'm just thinking that I'm stuck. Okay, I get it, but you're stuck about something. It usually has an underpinning of fear or doubt, frustration, which you know when you think about laddering up a feelings. It could be anger. Why don't you think and get just like, take a moment, connecting with your internal GPS, take a breath and be like why is this so hard for me? Why can't I take one action? So there might be feeling, some doubt, some fear, and then you want to ask yourself is there a small thing that you can do? Right? That's the purpose of this entire episode.

Speaker 1: 8:04

What's that 1% that you can do? You may need to phrase it like can I take action for 10 minutes? Am I willing to sit down at my desk for 10 minutes? Am I willing to stand in line for this thing? Or can I just make an appearance and show up and say I only have to stay 10 minutes? You know my my husband's a fitness professional and one of the things that he often will say to clients that are thinking oh, I don't really. I know I need to work out or I need to exercise, but I don't really feel about like doing it. It's just you know what, putting on the clothes that you might wear to exercise and maybe just go standing outside and starting to take the action. You'd be surprised. When you do that. You think you know what. I can walk down the block and back. It's not that much of an undertaking and I can do that. 1%.

Speaker 1: 9:05

You also want to think when you're practicing how to get in and out of this 1% better. Think about it like a zone and you want to think about what are you willing to be doing? What are you learning? What are you starting to believe? When you think thoughts that start with I'm willing to, I'm learning to, I'm starting to believe it's possible that any of those thoughts that means it's not here at the second, but it could be here in the future right, those future focusing thoughts, it's how you manage your mind and it's how you train your brain and care for your brain along the way, because your brain knows in this moment you don't want to do it. But when you tell yourself something like I'm willing to take an action or I'm learning how to take an action when my body feels this way. It starts to create a feeling of possibility because you start to feel a little bit better and then you're taking an action from feeling a little bit better and not necessarily that deep stuckness. Overall. When I'm hearing people say that they're stuck, there tends to be a lot of fear and judgment there, and I understand a lot. But I'm just suggesting to pause and be really compassionate with yourself and then think about the ways in which you can take small incremental actions, build the rep, build those repetitions right, strengthen the muscle and get yourself into action. And when you start to think about one action, one behavior, 1% better, like it's not a straight math equation that after 30 days you're going to say, oh look, I'm 30% better. Right, it's not going to be like that. But in time you will see, you will start to find that there will be an incremental increase of improvement on whatever that goal is.

Speaker 1: 10:53

Friends, I want to hear from you, I want to know how you're doing.

Speaker 1: 10:56

Drop your thoughts in the socials. You can always message me. You can also email me at hello, at jillgriffincoachingcom, and I want to know like are you stuck right now? Are you feeling like I really need to get out of here. I need to find a new job, but I don't really know what I'm doing, and that's a whole other conversation. But are you feeling that way? Cause I'd love to know, and maybe we'll talk about it on a future show, if you'd like to come on. I also want to know who you're getting your support from. I would love to be your coach and to help you. So, again, you can go to my website, jill Griffin coaching. The information is in the show notes and you can see what it's like to work with me and get a bit of an idea of what we could do together and the goals we would accomplish. All right, friends, as always, I wish you a day of not being stuck, of taking some action, incremental action, feeling inspired and creating what's possible for yourself. Have a great week and I'll see you next time.