Moving On, Moving Forward: How to Unstick Yourself

[David Baxter PhD]

Moving On, Moving Forward ? How to Un-stick Yourself
by Dr. Marks
Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Is your life on a standstill? Assess yourself. Venture outside your comfort zone. Find out which areas you need to change and improve. People don?t get stuck in life for no particular reason at all.

You will have to create an action plan to overcome the status quo and move on. Good organization will push you forward and bring you closer to your goals.

Consider taking the following courses of action:

1. Hold yourself accountable for reaching your goals. Whenever progress seems out of sight from your life, first ask yourself why you feel so. Then, try to identify which part of goal reaching is holding you back.
   
2. Set personal deadlines. Procrastination upsets time scales. Is a pile of unfinished business keeping you from moving forward? Anticipate working within a personally set timeframe and stick to your schedule.
   
3. Conquer your fears. If you fear change, you?ll really struggle with looking for new opportunities. Learn to deal with the things you are afraid of. You can do this by exposing yourself to the situation in bite-sized, digestible pieces. If you jump into radical changes that are too disruptive, you may reinforce your fear by proving to yourself that change is painful.
   
4. Select a good role model. Find others who have followed before you in a particular situation. Ask questions and get useful advice. Use the person?s story to inspire you to move on with your life.
   
5. Invest in positive thinking. Thoughts function as the basis of actions. Think positively about your life. Imagine how you can brave through anticipated challenges. Allow your upbeat mentality to drive you to action.
   
6. Allocate time for self-reflection. Retreat to a quiet and solitary place where you can think freely. Distance yourself from noise and other forms of distractions. Just let your thoughts flow. Perhaps they hold the key to your present dilemma.

Why It?s Easy to Stay Stuck
You may find it difficult to move forward because the situation that you?re in is familiar and predictable. There is inherent security with familiarity. In the long run though, you will start to feel discontent. The negative feelings of discontentment will outweigh the positive feelings of security.

How to Embrace Change
After you have decided to embrace changes within a certain period, begin to transform your life by breaking down the changes into specific step-by-step sub-tasks. Slowly incorporate them into your routine. Monitor your progress. The small changes must bring some newness into your life.

Take your relationship as an example. Could it be on a standstill because of poor communication? Give yourself and your partner about three months to work out the issue.

Your action plan may consist of reading communication books, having a dialogue with your partner and seeking professional counseling services. Observe what kind of impact the corrective strategies will have in the relationship.

As you get a clear view of what?s happening to the relationship, you will feel less immobile as you and your partner move in a different direction.

You can apply the same strategies to various standstill scenarios. Big or small, many or few ? there will always be things you can do to break the status quo.

 

[Daniel E.]

Relatedly:

One way to conceptualize therapy is that people come into therapy because they are stuck. They can?t move on.

They may be stuck on a marriage, a death, an obsessive thought, a repetitive behavior, a feeling that they can?t seem to get rid of.

She is stuck and unhappy. She talks about how depressed and unappreciated she feels in her relationship.

She knows all this.

What she doesn?t know is why she holds on and won?t move on.

She says to me ?I don?t know what to do?.

I am tempted to tell her, but I won?t.

I am more interested in the question then the answer.

Sometimes, questioning and searching for an answer, is just a way to avoid moving on.

The eternal search for the ?why?, which can become a way to retreat from the bridge to the other side.

Moving On - Dr. Barry Brody