The Good News About Being Stuck

​Wait a minute - Is that even possible? How could being stuck be a good thing?

Well, let’s start here: there’s a difference between a concept and an actual situation. For instance, nobody would confuse a menu with actual food. Or a map with the territory. 

We often come up with a label that we think describes our situation so that we can identify what’s going on and come up with a relevant solution for what to do about it.

But coming up with a label - a concept - can make it worse. The first thing to realize is that by labelling our situation, we limit our choice of actions. 

The second thing is that our label is made up - it’s just an educated guess, an opinion, that we have about what’s going on in that moment.

And the third thing - really important - is that whatever interpretation we've assigned to where we are, we can just as easily re-interpret - especially if we want better outcomes.

What’s behind the curtain of our labelling and our consequent behavior? We live in a world created by our thinking, and our thoughts follow suit. That makes basic sense, right? So our interpretations are based on our moods. Moods come and go, which means thoughts come and go with them. And so do those pesky labels.

What we don’t often realize is that we don’t have to be victims of our thoughts and that we can choose different thoughts - and different labels. Or no labels at all. No, really!

It’s totally and completely up to us. Thoughts are actually about as solid as tissue paper but we can feel as though they’re as solid as cement. But as soon as we realize our labels or our thoughts are just not useful and make us feel badly, we have the option to think differently. We are the screenwriters for our lives. Think of all the rewrites we could do to make the our lives happy and fulfilling! 

Most times when we think we’re stuck, we’re not. We’re just telling ourselves we are because we aren’t in action. It may be that our idea needs time to percolate, or we need to look in a different direction. Or we may have underestimated how long it will take to complete a project or fulfill a dream.

So the good news is that simply by stepping back and noticing we’re telling ourselves a story that has specific implications, we can check whether those implications are ones we can and want to live with.