How To Deal With Feeling Stuck in Your Job or Your Life

When you are stuck and struggling with a big decision or a tough problem, the last thing you want is to stay stuck. You want out – fast.

When you are feeling stuck in your job or your life outside of work, your mind is continuously focused on the problem.

You focus on what’s wrong, what’s not working, what you hate about it.

You toss and you turn night after night weighing the alternatives and imagining possible outcomes.

You lament to your family and friends. You eat raw cookie dough for dinner. More than once. (Oh wait, that’s just me).

What if I told you that sometimes you need to stay stuck to get unstuck?

What if there is wisdom in the struggle?

What if maybe, just maybe, the best thing to do at the moment is…nothing. Na da. Zip. Zilch. Could you do it? Would you do it?

I have just finished reading three fabulous books on this concept. If you are experiencing a bout of indecision and unease I am sure they will help you gain an alternative perspective on your situation. I’ve highlighted them so much that there are now more colored lines than plain black words on their pages.

Here are the titles and authors along with a few of my favorite quotes from each.

The Deepest Acceptance by Jeff Foster

All human suffering is a variation on this theme – trying to control the waves, trying to control our present-moment experience so it conforms to our ideas and concepts of how it should be. If you want to suffer, compare this moment with your image of how it should be!

Acceptance is all about seeing reality, seeing things as they actually are, not as we hope or wish them to be. And from that place of total alignment with what is, all creative, loving, and intelligent action flows naturally.

Dropping the Struggle: Seven Ways to Love the Life You Have by Roger Housden

If we human beings have any ultimate purpose, surely it must be this: to let go of our resistance to life as it is showing up now, now in this very moment, whatever it looks like, rosy or dark.

You allow your full experience when you feel the space between your fear-based thoughts and let yourself rest there, where nothing ever is. Then a deeper knowing can move through you and emerge as needed into appropriate action.

What’s in the Way Is the Way: A Practical Guide for Waking Up to Life by Mary O’Malley

The more you are curious about what you are experiencing, rather than trying to change it, the more you discover an amazing truth: you naturally know how to partner with Life instead of always trying to change it.

Let go of the world of struggle and open to Life here and now…dip the finger of your attention into the river of your experience and let Life in.

I enjoyed each of these books for their various perspectives on embracing what shows up in our lives instead of moving blindly forward. To pause and reflect rather than leaping from the proverbial frying pan to the fire.

I hope that you enjoy them too. Here are the links.

But wait, before you go, take a minute to share your thoughts in the comment box below. I’d love to hear from you! Oh, and share this post with someone who could use the help!

The Deepest Acceptance

Dropping the Struggle

What’s In the Way is the Way

And, if you haven’t already got a copy, you’ll want to download my free e-book Balance for the Chronically Overwhelmed.