6 Tools To Push Through When You Feel Stuck
by
Beth Warren
June 4, 2021
I felt inspired by this article, so I wanted to share it with you. We all feel stuck sometimes but there is always a way to help yourself push through. Here's how:
Tool 1: Change the goal
A problem with massive goals is that, with “all that work” to do, and the enormous uncertainty around achieving your goal, it can be hard to get yourself to take action. If your brain perceives your huge and meaningful goal as an endless amount of “work” that requires a “ton of effort” and faces a high likelihood of failure, well, then it’s obvious why the brain might resist it.
Similarly, break down your goal into a series of small goals that you focus on sequentially. As you keep knocking down dominoes, you build that momentum of success that keeps pulling through your next actions.
Tool 2: Get a tool
If you’re building a house you need tools. And to get yourself to change you need the same.
HINT: dietitians at BWN like me can be your “tool” too.
Tool 3: Stop asking why
Why? The problem is that from the emotional state of being stuck, the why simply isn’t a strong enough “tool.” Instead, you want to come back to a much simpler why—why do I choose in this moment to become absorbed in doing what I have decided to do?
Put aside for a moment that big why, and simply come back to the feeling you get from getting something important done right now. That’s your strongest why.
Tool 4: Change your emotional state
A lot of the time when we’re trying to get ourselves to do something, we find ourselves stuck in a crappy internal dialogue.
Instead of thinking about how awful it feels to be stuck, you want to do everything you can to imagine how it feels when you are moving. And instead of sitting at the front-end of the task, thinking about what needs to get done, you want to bring forward the amazing feelings of what it’s like to be fully immersed and how it feels to have already gotten it done.
Thinking about this stuff in your head might get you moving, but the absolute best way to change how you feel is with your body.
Ask yourself, how great will it feel to get it done? Not just the words, but, really, how does it feel? Are you punching the air? Saying “Yeah?” Like a soccer player jumping into the arms of his team mates?
Tool 5: Mental rehearsal
Burnout is real, and he needs to be thoughtful about you limits, but, to be honest, we also know that if you have weight goals, a challenge like a weekend inevitably comes each week and is a challenge you have to push through in order to reach a weight goal for the week. he simply won’t win “only” working 5 days a week. But he does want to become as effective as he can be, by getting clear on the 20% of tasks that truly drive 80% of his results.
If you're stuck on these challenges, see if the brain had come to “generalize the problem” (e.g. “this always happens”), when instead of generalize the actual solution.
Every night before bed, and especially before a Fridays and Saturday, ahead of your old stuck days, run mental movies of diving into your goals and being exactly how your want to be.
Honestly, if you do this, and really get your emotions engaged, it’s near impossible to remain “stuck.” And, simply over time you will build a new map, where you’re naturally being as you choose to be.
