By Jeremy Godwin
What does feeling stuck mean? Why do you feel stuck sometimes? And how can you work on your self improvement so you can figure out how to get unstuck in life?
That’s what I’m talking about this week here on… Let’s Talk About Mental Health — the weekly podcast focused on helping you to improve your mental health, with simple ideas you can put into practice immediately. So, get comfortable, and Let’s Talk About Mental Health…
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This podcast episode was originally released on 26 March, 2023.
Hello and welcome to Episode 172, and thanks so much for joining me as I talk about feeling stuck and mental health!
I’m Jeremy Godwin and I share practical tips for improving your mental health based on quality research and my own personal experience of learning how to live with anxiety and depression following a breakdown in late 2011. Each week I look at how to improve one specific aspect of your wellbeing.
In this episode I’ll be talking about what feeling stuck is (and what it isn’t), why confronting those feelings matters, and how to get yourself unstuck. So, let’s talk about feeling stuck!
Introduction
Back in 2008 an English singer calling herself Little Boots released a delightful little slice of electro-pop called Stuck on Repeat, which starts with the line: “You’ve got me stuck on repeat, And I just can’t seem to break free,” and since I’ve been singing that to myself on a loop for the entire week I’ve been working on this topic, I decided it just had to be used somewhere in this episode. Because do you know what? Sometimes we all feel a bit stuck in life!
Whether it’s feeling like you’re just in a bit of a rut or if you feel like you’re fully inhabiting your own personal version of the 80’s movie Groundhog Day (with or without Bill Murray’s dry and sarcastic observations), feeling stuck in life can be draining and disheartening; after all, I don’t know about you but I feel like I want to be constantly moving forward and seeing the results of my work on self improvement and betterment, not just going round, round, like a record, baby, right round, round, round as though I’m stuck in an endless version of Dead or Alive’s classic 1984 tale of faulty turntables (and a side note here: I was going to remove that terrible joke about the song You Spin Me Round but it made me laugh, no idea why, so it’s staying!). OK, moving on…
When you feel stuck in life, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you actually are stuck; more likely, it means you’ve hit an obstacle, or a series of challenges, and you’re finding it tough to figure out how to get yourself out of a rut. Or maybe you’re dealing with self doubt which is then making it that much harder for you to focus on your personal development… and hey, if that’s the case then don’t stress because it happens to the best of us!
The good news is that feeling stuck in life is actually an excellent opportunity for your personal growth and development, so this episode is all about helping you to get some momentum happening in your life.
Let’s go through some definitions and let’s talk about…
What does ‘feeling stuck’ mean?
And the phrase “feeling stuck” generally refers to a sense of being trapped or unable to progress in a particular area of your life. It can describe a feeling of being in a rut, where you might feel like you’re not making any real or substantial progress towards your goals or experiencing any significant change in your life, especially if you’re dealing with challenges and it feels like it’s hard to catch a break or get yourself out of the tough times you’re dealing with.
It’s a fairly common feeling for a lot of people that can happen in different parts of your life such as your work, your relationships with others, your sense of personal growth, or your mental health in general. For example, you might be dealing with feeling stressed or burnt-out, and it may feel like there’s no end in sight sometimes. Or maybe you’re struggling to keep on top of everything going on (like with the current cost of living pressures that feel like they’re longer than The Neverending Story; and yes, I mean both the 1984 film and the theme song by Limahl!).
Anyway… feeling stuck can be frustrating and demotivating, and it might lead you to feel like things in your life are stagnant or that you can’t figure out how to move forward because you just don’t see any positive changes happening. Or you may feel momentum happening in some areas of your life but not others; for example, maybe you feel like work is going well but nothing much is happening in your personal life. I’d generally encourage you to think about eight key areas of your life which are: physical health, mental health, spirituality, emotional wellbeing, financial wellbeing, your close relationships, your career, and your general social wellbeing. The thing with feeling stuck is that you might feel that way in one of those areas or even several of them — hopefully not all of them at once, but hey if that’s the case then it is what it is and there’s always a way to move forward — and so the main point here is to be aware of how you feel about those different aspects of your life so you can then figure out what you might need to do to improve things (and I’ll come back to that point a little bit later).
So let’s discuss what ‘feeling stuck’ isn’t. It doesn’t mean that you’re actually stuck, because you’re not; what it means is that you cannot currently see your way out of whatever situation it is that you’re dealing with, and that’s a very different thing than actually being stuck. You always have options — and even not taking action and remaining stuck is an option — and so that means there is always some way out… you just need to identify those options (and I’ll talk through how to do that shortly). Realistically speaking, the only way you’ll ever actually be physically stuck and completely out of options is if (a) you lock yourself in a room and then lose the key, or (b) if you find yourself in quicksand. And even though the cartoons of our childhood told us all that quicksand was going to a very big problem that we’d all have to deal with as adults (along with pianos and safes randomly falling out of windows), it’s not really something that anybody has to deal with these days. So, logically speaking, that means you’re not actually stuck even if it might feel that way… so, you know, hooray!
But now comes the challenging part: to get yourself unstuck, you need to confront those feelings and deal with them or you’re never going anywhere (or you’ll just go round in circles). I’ll get to the ‘how to’ part in a moment, but first we need to explore the ‘why’ — so, now let’s talk about…
Why does confronting feelings of ‘being stuck’ matter?
And it matters because unless you know what you’re dealing with and, more importantly, why it’s happening, you’re going to struggle to make any meaningful and lasting progress. Life is a funny old thing in the sense that we are constantly challenged to figure ourselves out, because nobody can do it for us, and it’s that ‘figuring out’ that helps us to see what is working and what isn’t, so we that know what we need to focus on for our self improvement. The thing is that just knowing you’re a bit stuck is fine, but it doesn’t really change anything; you need to work out why you feel stuck so that you can then address the root cause.
So then why do we feel stuck in life sometimes?
There are lots of reasons, but some of the most common ones are:
- Having a lack of clarity: in other words, not being clear on what you want out of life or what your goals are, or not having a solid understanding of what really matters to you so that you can use that to guide what you do and do not do; if you don’t have clarity and a strong sense of direction, it’s really easy to become lost and then it can be tough to figure out how to move forward. Next…
- Having fear and self-doubt: and these are two very common challenges many of us deal with, especially if the idea of moving forward — or pushing ourselves to take chances in life — might be way out of our comfort zone, because we’re hard-wired to protect ourselves and so we might worry about failing or making the wrong choice… or we might just end up completely paralysed by fear and unable to take even the smallest of steps forward, which then keeps us stuck. Next…
- Feeling overwhelmed: When we have too much going on in our lives, it can be really tough to identify where to start or how we should prioritise, which can then lead to a feeling of being stuck and struggling to work out what to focus on (and this can also very often lead to procrastination, which I covered back in Episode 129). Next…
- Difficult situations: which could mean external factors like a toxic work environment, conflict with co-workers or with your manager, having issues with a personal relationship (like a friend, family member or partner), or dealing with challenges like financial problems; in short, the more ‘stuff’ we’re dealing with, the harder it can be to feel like we can make changes in order to move forward and so we may end up feeling stuck in the situation.
The thing is that when we feel stuck in our lives, it can lead to a range of negative impacts on your mental health and wellbeing. You might find yourself experiencing increased stress and anxiety, low mood and depression, a lack of self-esteem and confidence, social isolation, and a loss of purpose or direction in life. On top of that, feeling stuck might lead some people to turn to substance use as a coping mechanism, you might find yourself engaging in negative self-talk, and you’re also likely to experience chronic stress that can impact your physical and mental health over time. Plus, generally speaking, you’re far more likely to feel less satisfied with your life and that can have an enormous impact on your wellbeing and your peace of mind.
So to circle back to my original question of why confronting these types of feelings matters, it’s because when you begin acknowledging these feelings of being stuck it can help you to break out of negative patterns and start actively making progress towards your goals. When you confront these feelings, you increase your self-awareness, which then helps you to make better decisions and take actions that align with your values and goals. It can also provide you with motivation, facilitate your personal growth, and improve your overall sense of happiness and fulfilment in life. By facing your fears and working through your challenges, you can become stronger, more resilient, and much better equipped to handle future obstacles.
How do you do all of that? Well, let’s get into the how-to part of this episode and let’s talk about…
How to get yourself unstuck
So, first identify your feelings — and that simply means taking some time to be really honest with yourself about what you’re currently feeling. A simple way to do this is to grab a pen and paper and consider how you feel about the eight different aspects of your life that I mentioned earlier: your physical health, mental health, spiritual health, emotional wellbeing, financial wellbeing, close relationships, career, and general social wellbeing. Rate each one as either great, good, OK, needs some work or needs a lot of work; I really don’t think you need to over-engineer this exercise and I encourage you to just trust your initial reaction. That information will then be helpful for my next tip…
Explore your feelings — which means to simply take a look at each answer you gave and consider why that was your response. For example, if you said that your emotional wellbeing ‘needs some work’, why did you pick that answer? What is happening or not happening that’s leading you to feel that way? Repeat that exercise for all eight of the different life aspects I mentioned earlier, so that you’re then building a clearer picture of why you feel the way you feel about different things. This is very much about having an honest discussion with yourself so that you know what your current situation is and why you feel the way you do, and that then leads into my next tip…
Identify what you want to feel — because now that you know where you are today, it’s time to think about where you want to be in the future. Again, sit down with pen and paper and consider each aspect of your life and wellbeing one by one — physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, financial, close relationships, career, and general social wellbeing — and think about what you want that part of your life to look and feel like in five year’s time. You don’t need to be super-specific; the point here is to identify broadly where you want to head towards so that you can begin to set a clearer direction for yourself. And that, funnily enough, leads to my next point…
Identify how you can create those feelings — and this means doing a lot of brainstorming and also some research to help you with discovering ideas from external sources. I prefer to encourage you to start with coming up with your own ideas (because when it comes from your own mind you tend to have a much stronger sense of ownership over it, which means you’re more likely to make it happen!) but if you feel stuck then doing research is really helpful; read articles and books, watch YouTube videos, listen to podcasts, talk with people you trust and respect… there are lots of different ways to come up with ideas. Once you have a list of possible options, then you can do my next tip which is…
Create a plan — and that simply means what you’re going to do, when you’ll do it and how often, and how you’ll monitor and measure your success. Be really clear on what it is that you want to achieve or what you want to change, and focus on what is within your own direct control then break each goal down into its smallest possible steps. For example, if your physical health is in a rut then that could mean making a commitment to walk for at least half an hour four times a week, and the benchmark of success is based on reviewing your energy levels at the end of each month to track how it makes you feel. A plan is simply a statement of intent, so the most important thing is to then actually follow through on your plan one step at a time and keep yourself focused on making progress; remember that you don’t need to do everything all at once and in fact you’re much more likely to be successful if you focus on doing things gradually one day at a time, one step at a time. Remember that even small steps can help you build momentum and feel a lot more motivated and productive in your life, and since energy creates energy you’ll find that a little bit of positive momentum will help you to build more and more momentum over time.
OK, so that was about how you figure out where you are now and why in order to then begin making progress (and I covered progress back in Episode 161 if you’d like to explore that in more detail); now I want to give you a bunch of strategies you can apply to help you generally with feeling less stuck, starting with:
- Practice self-care: because taking care of yourself is important at any time (and it’s something I encourage you to do a lot in this show!), but self-care is even more crucial when you’re feeling stuck. Why? Because if you feel low on energy, or just generally feel rubbish about yourself, then it’s going to be really tough to find the energy you need to start making those positive changes we talked about a moment ago. Self-care can include things like getting plenty of sleep, eating well, exercising regularly, and doing things that bring you joy and relaxation. Next…
- Practice gratitude: because feeling stuck can sometimes make it hard to see all of the positive things that we already have in our lives, but I promise you that they are there and that there’s plenty to be grateful for (like the people you love and who love you, all the way through to the beauty of a starry night sky). Practicing gratitude can help you to shift your focus to what you do have (instead of focusing mainly on what you don’t) and it plays a proven role in helping you to be much more appreciative of all of the good things in your life. Next…
- Challenge your negative thoughts: because, sometimes, feeling stuck can be accompanied by negative self-talk or limiting beliefs that hold you back, so actively challenge those thoughts by asking yourself if they’re really true, and look for evidence to either support them or reject them; remember that thoughts are not facts, and it’s up to you whether or not you believe them (and if you’d like to explore thoughts in more detail I covered the topic back in Episode 123). OK, next…
- Challenge yourself: because often we can find ourselves in a rut because we’re not pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone, and so feeling stuck might be a sign that you’re too comfortable in your current situation. You know those times you stay in a situation that either doesn’t challenge you or isn’t great for you, like a one-sided friendship or a job that kind-of sucks? We’ve all done it before, but the problem is that when you stay because something is comfortable and familiar — even if it’s not good for you — you’re just creating a pathway to future issues. Variety is the spice of life and we need to mix things up from time to time, so push yourself to step outside of your comfort zone and try new things. Which leads to my next tip…
- Start small and build over time: because going from zero to 100 can be a bit terrifying and we’re trying to get you to challenge yourself, not send yourself running for the hills! Challenge yourself to try a couple of little things and then gradually build and build until you’re trying bigger things; when you take your time and ease your way into it, you’re more likely to create long-term success and stability in whatever changes you’re making. OK, next…
- Learn new things: because learning a new skill or taking on a challenge can help you to break out of that feeling of being stuck and it can help you to expand your horizons; when you work on learning and building your capabilities, it helps you to grow (and I covered capability in Episode 144). You might want to try taking a course, trying a new hobby, volunteering in your community; whatever you choose to do, find something that aligns with what you enjoy and which also challenges you. OK, next…
- Be open to change: because your mindset plays an enormous role in your likelihood of success, and so if you believe that change is going to be a positive thing for you then it will be! And, by the way, change is a good thing;even if it makes us feel uncomfortable, at least it forces us to grow and evolve so that we don’t stagnate! Next…
- Visualise success: because visualisation is a very powerful tool that can help you to overcome resistance and the kind of barriers that we put up for ourselves sometimes, and it can help you to achieve your goals. Spend some time visualising yourself succeeding at whatever it is that you want to achieve and imagine how it will feel when you get there, which then helps you to feel good about what you’re doing and can keep you focused. Next…
- Seek support: because you don’t have to deal with these types of challenges on your own… and nor should you! It’s really important to seek support from others when you’re feeling stuck so that you don’t feel isolated or unable to identify a path forward. That might involve talking with friends, family, your boss, a mentor, or a professional counsellor or therapist who can provide you with encouragement, guidance, and accountability as you work towards your goals. Next…
- Be flexible: and that means being prepared to shift direction if necessary, or if your circumstances change, and being willing to adjust your goals and plans as needed, because life is unpredictable and sometimes we need to pivot or take a different approach to achieve what we want.
Summary and Close-Out
Because when it comes to feeling stuck and mental health, what it all boils down to is this: Feeling stuck can have a huge impact on the way you feel about yourself and about life in general, and it needs to be tackled because these types of feelings can have a tendency to suck the life out of you. The thing is that you’re not alone and feeling stuck is a common experience for a lot of people; the good news is that it’s absolutely possible to make positive progress and to move forward with your life by taking action, seeking support and looking after yourself. Be patient with yourself and be sure to celebrate your successes along the way, no matter how small or silly they may feel. Making progress and moving forward is a process, but with time and effort you can create a more fulfilling and meaningful life for yourself.
The choice is yours, as it is with all things related to your wellbeing… so, what choice will YOU make today?
Each week I like to finish up by sharing a quote about the week’s topic, and I encourage you to take a few moments to really reflect on it and consider what it means to you. This week’s quote is by an unknown author, and it is:
“Until you believe you have options, you’ll continue to feel stuck.”
Unknown
Alright… that’s nearly it for this week.
Next time I’ll be talking about shock. Sometimes in life, things happen or we receive news that just completely takes us by surprise and we suddenly have to find a way to navigate through whatever it is in order to process it. Because we’re so often blindsided by this type of event or situation, it can feel incredibly overwhelming and often it can lead us to start questioning ourselves or even re-examining different areas of our life… which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is something we need to approach in a thoughtful and considered way. So next time I’ll be talking about what shock is, why shocks can have such a big impact on our mental health and wellbeing, and how to navigate through shocks and challenges in a thoughtful way.
I hope you’ll join me for that episode which will be released on Sunday the 2nd of April, 2023.
You can find more practical tips to improve your mental health in my latest book Life Advice That Doesn’t Suck! which is available from Amazon and Apple Books, and sign up for my free newsletter Thursday Thoughts at letstalkaboutmentalhealth.com.au for a weekly dose of inspiration. Plus, join me on Patreon for exclusive extra content and benefits, including early access to episodes; you’ll find all of those linked in the episode description.
And follow me on Instagram @ltamentalhealth for bonus content. Plus, check out my other account, @itsjeremygodwin, where I post daily tips for better mental health.
Thank you very much for joining me today — look after yourself and make a conscious effort to share positivity and kindness in the world, because you get back what you put out. Take care and talk to you next time!
Jeremy 🙂
Let’s Talk About Mental Health is an independent program proudly produced by Reconnaissance Media, helping you find gratitude and meaning. For more information visit reconnaissancemedia.com
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Let’s Talk About Mental Health.
Simple ideas for better mental health.
Let’s Talk About Mental Health. © 2023 Jeremy Godwin.
The information provided in this episode is for general awareness on the topic and does not constitute advice. You should consult a doctor and/or a mental health professional if you are struggling with your mental health and wellbeing. You’ll find additional information on the Resources page of this website.
