Why do you (we) feel stuck in life?
So many of us feel in a similar way, but few of us are ready to admit it. But, why do you (we) feel stuck in life, in the first place? And why can not we even talk about it, openly?
Some of us fear to be judged, criticized, and even ridiculed by all those people, with whom we’ve spent long years. Admitting that we feel stuck in life, means to so many of us in a similar way: Admitting that we are failures…losers…in life. Perhaps, we were among the crowd which continuously ridicules, until recently. And now? What has changed? Why is it happening to us now? Feeling stuck? Is it because we are getting… Eehhm, older? Is this kind of an indicator for mid-life crisis?
A wiser-than-before client vocalized the following sentences below, in a very emotional tone, some days ago:
I have invested 25+ years into my career. I gave my everything to it. Thinking of starting it all over again feels like torture.
Money and benefits don’t motivate me anymore. Nothing is meaningful. I want to feel the same way as I felt when I was 17.
I want to change my life, but I am afraid my friends and family will criticize me.
People ridicule the ones who quit their well paying jobs and go after their passion. I have no courage to face this.
These type of comments and other similar ones make me think: Why do we have so limited empathy for others, when it comes to ‘admitting of a much needed change’?. Is it really true that we never think ‘it’ may also happen to us some day? It seems that this ‘one day’ has (un)surprisingly come for many of us, now more commonly than before, and it won’t suddenly disappear, anytime soon.
Why now, more than before?
The traditional carrots of the game, ‘promotion’, ‘that guy/girl’, ‘that car’, ‘that holiday’, ‘that fancy new high-tech toy’ don’t motivate many people anymore, like it always did before. Is there something wrong with you? Why are you (we) feeling stuck in life?
What if I tell you that you may be just slowly starting to ‘wake up from a dream to a different reality’? A dream that you didn’t know you were right in it, for a significant portion of your life?
An unsurprising common (imaginary) first response:
“What? Dream? Is this a joke? I am telling you that I feel stuck in life and ask why, but you are talking about dreams! Are you messing up with me? What is this? A cheap Sci-fi article?”
Well, I have good news for you:
Your senses are waking up!
First and foremost, when you start seeing everything through a different perspective, don’t start blaming yourself. Self-bashing absolutely wouldn’t help you, even a slightest bit. Be gentle and compassionate with yourself.
Continuously circulating those self-smashing thoughts in your mind, such as “I’ve been a fool and blind all those years”, “How could I act all this time as if I was hypnotized?”, “I have wasted all my life”, is just a waste of time and nerves. It is precisely what ‘they’ want you to keep repeating to yourself. Are you going to continue to play this game of life, their way?
Start slowly. First weeks are crucially important. Increase your awareness, broaden your perspective, but don’t overwhelm yourself. Try to maintain a child-like curiosity accompanying your mood & your psyche, rediscovering all about your life. See it from the lighter side. You will need some good tools at this stage.
Self-compassion and Mindfulness
Self-compassion and mindfulness can create miracles. How about a ‘Mindful self-compassion’? Leading experts on mindful self-compassion movement Dr. Kristin Neff and Dr. Christopher Germer emphasize how self-kindness, recognition of our humanity, and mindfulness give us the strength to thrive. Their quote about mindfulness is so:
“When we are mindful of our struggles, and respond to ourselves with compassion, kindness, and support in times of difficulty, things start to change.”
Mindful.org provides a beautiful definition of self-compassion in plain English:
“Self-compassion involves treating yourself the way you would treat a friend who is having a hard time—even if your friend blew it or is feeling inadequate, or is just facing a tough life challenge.”
Things started to feel lighter. You can feel it. Your emotional state, your energy frequency level started to increase, toward the upper half of of the spectrum of all emotions that we humans perceive. You are slowly moving out of the field, in which ‘they’ used to control you. As a response, ‘they’ may try to manipulate your thoughts through disinformation. Discrediting self-compassion and mindfulness while hailing self-criticism is a very old and common one.
Self-Criticism vs. Self-Compassion
Fear vs. kindness… Speculation vs. truth… Myth vs. reality…
Let’s point out some common ones. Mindful.org offers a very good summary of them. The main ones are as below:
Fear: Self-compassion will make us weak and vulnerable.
Truth: In fact, self-compassion is a reliable source of inner strength that confers courage and enhances resilience when we’re faced with difficulties. Research shows self-compassionate people are better able to cope with tough situations like divorce, trauma, or chronic pain.
Fear: Self-compassion is really the same as being self-indulgent.
Truth: It’s actually just the opposite. Compassion inclines us toward long-term health and well-being, not short-term pleasure (just as a compassionate mother doesn’t let her child eat all the ice cream she wants, but says, “eat your vegetables”).
Fear: Self-compassion is really a form of making excuses for bad behavior.
truth: Actually, self-compassion provides the safety needed to admit mistakes rather than needing to blame someone else for them.
Fear: Self-criticism is an effective motivator.
Truth: It’s not. Our self-criticism tends to undermine self-confidence and leads to fear of failure. If we’re self-compassionate, we will still be motivated to reach our goals—not because we’re inadequate as we are, but because we care about ourselves and want to reach our full potential.
This one was good! Now we are becoming more aware, calmer and a little wiser 🙂 We are building good foundations here, and they will enable us to broaden our perspective, help us to ask the right questions.
Your inner wisdom started talking to you louder!
Since we feel calmer now, let’s focus to the original question: Why do you feel stuck in life? Why did you start thinking so, only lately? And who is that ‘voice’ you hear in your mind? Could it be someone who wants nothing, but the best for you?
Take a few deep but slow breaths, relax, and open up yourself to all the possibilities and perspectives.
Perhaps a different type of analogy here can also help us further:
When someone decides to spend long hours in the kitchen everyday, for the first time in their lives (a natural consequence of recent ‘Stay-At-Home & Stay-safe’ policies?), it could be a wise move to focus on the recipes you already knew and practiced before. This way, you will soon become confident and the end product of that recipe will become tastier and tastier every single time.
Now, let’s apply this approach to your life, and your new quest of ‘unclogging the tubes’ that somehow represent the (un)flow in your life. What do you remember from your childhood? Your teen years? Very early twenties? The code or the clue may very well be hiding there. What made you really forget about time? What was that one thing you loved to do, and every single time you found yourself ‘in the flow‘?
Don’t literally focus on the action itself? Focus on how it made you feel. Why was it so important for you? Focus on the positive feelings it triggered in you. And now ask yourself: “How can you replicate similar feelings, such as joy, a child-like curiosity, passion, being one with it, forgetting about the rest of the world etc.? Feel free to insert here your own authentic and sincere feelings form those times. Please don’t tell me that you are not interested in feeling the same way, as you used to feel before.
You have already taken the ‘Red Pill’. There is no return from this point!
Those questions you asked yourself were the equivalence of taking the ‘red pill’! Is that the good news or the bad one? ‘The ignorance is bliss’ idiom doesn’t apply well anymore to our 21st century world, already for a long time. And the fact that you’ve been swallowing the ‘Blue Pill’ sor far, didn’t help you much, anyway. Just be aware that you will need to contentiously work on yourself, preferably everyday, from this point on. Your will become aware of more and more of those limitations, blockages, illusions, and you will not be able to stand them, anymore. So your journey of ‘upward spiraling’ will take place of feeling stuck in life.
Back to the initial question: Why do you feel stuck in life? Because your inner intelligence wants you to start making positive changes in your life. Take this feeling of being stuck as a starting gun, and begin your journey by following your intuition on the path of empowering yourself. Celebrate it, don’t feel down because of it!
Sometime in the near future, you will realize what kind of a role this ‘feeling of being stuck’ played in your life, and how it kick-started your own inner journey. And when that time comes, you will feel a true gratitude in your heart, for feeling this way in the past. Celebrate it!
Kıvanç Öroglu
Transformative Coach & Healer
