Feeling like you are spinning your wheels? Perhaps you would benefit from a lesson in getting unstuck.
How often do you worry about things you can’t change? How frequently do you compare yourself to others who, in some cases, you don’t even intimately know?
The hardest choices are often between the good and the better.
Our society encourages us to watch what other people do, care about whom they date, and what they wear and eat. How often do you rubberneck? The heavy viewership of reality TV is a perfect example of how much society encourages us to watch others. Consciously or not, we then compare ourselves to others, creating fertile ground for envy, jealousy, and pride. It’s no surprise that by focusing on the lives of other people (whether they are celebrities, our neighbors, or our co-workers), we take the focus away from what we need to do to in our own lives. Rather than centering attention on making our own lives fuller and happier, it’s easier to sit and watch others. Is it any wonder that we then feel less energetic toward our own, sometimes messy but glorious, lives?
In my book The Working Woman’s GPS, there is an inventory exercise that helps you examine Dreams & Desires. Pick one thing that gives you energy. Then, pick one television show you always watch or one chore you always do. Instead of watching that show every week or doing that chore (which will always be there), engage one of your dreams instead.
Have you always wanted to join a book club, take a yoga class, study film culture, learn to make pots, begin your CPA, read a certain novel?
One way of getting unstuck is to pick a dream or desire and go for it. It isn’t that relaxing by watching television is bad; it’s that the hardest choices are often between the good and the better. You may be too busy every night and you need to relax one evening. But it’s also true that fulfilling one small part of a dream or desire will boost your spirits and your energy even more as you gain skills to make the leap to a more purpose-filled life. What energizes us is a clear indication of purpose.
Habits are hard to break; they are comfortable and manageable, and they often keep us from making choices we know are overdue, whether in a job, a marriage, or a friendship. We stick with what we know and let our fears keep us from risking what it might take to live an inspired life. We become so averse to change, that instead of soaring to the next level, we plod along well beyond the time the job, the marriage, or the friendship has stopped generating positive energy.
There were many times in my career when I knew it was time to move on, but I was comfortable. There were, after all, things about the job I liked, roles that enabled me to have time for other commitments. But it was time to move on.
Don’t put off getting unstuck. When we delay making the change, weeks become years, and we can’t get that time back.
Keep this in mind: 1 LIFE, 1 GOAL, 1 YOU
GOAL: Be the best you can be in this lifetime since there is only 1 of you that can make the difference you were brought here to make.
