Feeling Stuck?
Donโt Take Action. Do This Instead.
You Learn Best When Youโre Confused
So you feel 'stuck.' You want to take back control - of something in your life, your job, your career, or your business. Maybe you've upped the ante on yourself, raised the bar to new heights, and now you feel like you're losing momentum. You're likely feeling confused or frustrated in search of a solution. But the actions you've tried thus far haven't worked. You're wondering, 'What should I do?'ย
When humans feel stuck, it's our nature to look for actions we can take - usually steps outside of ourselves - to alleviate the discomfort. Sometimes, those actions work, sometimes they don't.
So, what if, instead of taking any more action, you try something different?ย
What if you get curious about the confusion? Take it on as a challenge to get to know yourself and the situation better? So that you then take more informed action?
What if the best action is to pause and sit with yourself in the confusion? To slow down to speed up and go smooth?
I hear you gasping at me! And I get it; this idea contradicts how most of us in the Western world have been educated, raised, and socialized. We've been taught to find quick answers to problems and praised for 'success,' not failure.ย
But neuroscience confirms: you learn best when you're confused, not when the learning comes easy. (Read that sentence again!)
No matter how much success you've achieved in your life, career, or business, the complexity typically increases as you raise the bar. Getting outside of your comfort zone brings at least a few implications, some of which are likely new experiences to high achievers:
You're likely to feel confused more often than not.
You're more likely to experience failure.
You'll need to continuously level up your skills, mindsets, habits, ways of being, and more aspects of yourself to keep moving forward.
This is why it is expected to feel lost or inept as you forge new ground, however, you've defined it. And, as if on cue, that annoying voice in your head that judges you most harshly because it wants to keep you safe starts to reinforce how you feel. Raise your hand if you've been there.ย ๐๏ธ
But those are just feelings and thoughts, and you have the power to change those.
During those moments, as you're sitting on the edge of your comfort zone, you're perfectly positioned to learn if you choose to lean in.
So, as you sit there feeling stuck, there are three learning strategies that, when combined, can help you to sit with the confusion a little longer so that you can then bust out and achieve your goals with greater clarity and success: curiousity, mindset, and desirable difficulties.1
A quick primer on a powerful trio
Curiosity + Mindset
Research shows that curiosity is a more significant driver and predictor of our ability to achieve our goals than intelligence because curious people are more motivated to learn.
Unfortunately, we're surrounded by curiosity killers: conformity, anxiety, rote learning, FOMO & social media, fear of failure, to name a few.
So, when you're stuck, step away from those killers, lean into your curiosity, and adopt a new mindset!
Reframe being stuck; instead of it being a problem, it is something to be discovered, unearthed, or questioned. Learning about yourself and this challenge can become a game you play as you move from feeling 'stuck' to 'unstuck.'ย
This is about valuing the learning process and agreeing that your current situation - and your knowledge about that situation - isn't fixed.2ย
As you raise the bar on yourself, you need to update your knowledge and understanding of yourself. So, before you reach for external solutions to scratch the itch of feeling stuck, focus your curiosity inward. What do you already know about yourself, and what questions do you want answered?
Taking an inquiry stance, the approach here is to slowly move yourself to a mental place where you can objectively look at yourself and the challenges at hand: Outside of the challenge, what else is happening, preferably with you? How do you feel? How would you prefer to feel? What unmet needs do you have at this time? What do you really want? Or, secretly want? What might it take to get there? Do you really need to take action? Is there really only one path?ย
Get bold as you raise your curiosity. If this is hard for you, try to bring in a trusted friend or seek the support of a coach.ย
When I first left corporate due to burnout and my mother's death, I expected to recover and pick up the pieces very quickly, given my many 'successful' experiences with personal reinvention. Instead, a prolonged period of confusion followed - a stage that is a part of all transitions, although its length varies.With support from a coach, a therapist, and select family and friends, I stopped fighting the urge to quickly solve the confusion and, instead, learned to get really curious about it.
It is through that process of getting curious that I realized my confusion had to do with who I wanted to be or become, how I wanted to feel as I lived my life, how I wanted to live, and other critical existential questions, none of which were readily answered under pressure.ย
In time, I learned new skills, mindsets, and habits to enhance my well-being, center myself, and cut through the noise so I could hear the answers to those questions, practices I still use daily.
+ Desirable Difficulties
Most of us have been trained to think that the easier something is to learn today, or the faster we can understand it, the better we will perform on that task then and in the future.
Unfortunately, this profoundly flawed notion is also deeply ingrained in Western schools, society, and workplaces; those who learn or demonstrate mastery faster typically reap the most rewards. (Or do they?)
Neuroscience confirms that the more challenging something is to learn, the better you'll perform in the future.ย
In fact, slowing down to consume challenging material is so critical to long-term success that experts suggest you intentionally introduce 'desirable difficulties' to make your learning more effective and long-term.
'Desirable difficulties' include techniques such as:ย
Spacing out the time you spend learning, breaking it into smaller, less concentrated chunks.
Switching between related but different tasks as you learn.
Productive failure: try to solve a problem you haven't yet learned how to solve and experience the inability to solve it.ย
These practices run contrary to how most of us were taught to learn. They all mean that you endure a period of confusion as you learn, which continues until you master the learning and have clarity.ย
As an entrepreneur and coach, I love introducing these practices because they resonate with my experiences: itโs all about seeing our challenges with beginnerโs eyes. After all, when we raise the bar on ourselves, we effectively become beginners again, at least in some ways.ย ย
As a new entrepreneur, when I spent too much time addressing the business building and personal challenges I faced in the first six months, I started to feel burned out. The 'desirable difficulties' above were naturally present in that situation, but I wasn't giving myself permission or time to learn in a way that would lead to sustainable success - mine or that of the business.ย
The improvements came as I began to step back and allow myself time to 'space out' my learning, embraced the need to switch between challenges, and allowed myself to experience productive failure. The same can be said about my experience moving to Provence and learning to speak French; thereโs been a lot of productive failure, to say the least! Going slow to speed up is what this approach is all about.
But, I can tell you that sitting with confusion - going slow - it didn't feel good at first. I was used to the workplace where I was valued for moving quickly, making the 'right' calls, making it seem easy, and being as thoughtful as possible. I wasn't used to the feeling of failing or feeling stuck, and I didn't expect the low mood that would accompany some of those initial days as an entrepreneur; there were many moments I wanted to give up.ย
Like my experience with burnout, in hindsight, I am confident that some of the most critical learnings of my life took place as I slowed down inside the confusion of being a new business owner. I didn't just learn about the business; I learned about myself in the business context. Now, I routinely go slow to speed up and go smooth, and create space or 'desirable difficulties' to support my learning as I continue raising the bar on myself.
I've even started asking myself the question that Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, says that her father asked her every day at dinner, 'What did you fail at today?' because I am continuously learning that failing at something means I'm genuinely pushing my bounds and I'm guaranteed to learn something.ย
Reclaim Yourself To Truly Take Control
To achieve more, you must become more; of this, I am sure.ย
As you up the ante on yourself in your life, career, or business, you will face new demons; most lie inside you, and they will stand in the way of what you most want.ย ย
How will you break free?
Embrace a new mindset with curiosity, and update your knowledge about yourself. Youโve achieved a lot in the past, and, as the saying goes, โwhat got you here wonโt get you there.โ So, as you raise the bar on your life, career, or business, get curious about the journey.
Going slow to go fast and smooth feels unnatural (especially for those who love to move quickly), so adopt a long view. Put the time youโre taking to โslow downโ (which could be hours, days, weeks, or months, depending on your situation) into the context of a longer horizon.ย
What would your 90-year-old self say about this little time you took and the impact of it on your journey? This can put the โslowโ time into perspective and help you to give yourself permission to take time to grow as you stretch yourself in new ways..
Post-Script
Writing this post was challenging for me. Over the past two months, as I have coached people Iโve never met before during my 100 Days, 100 Breakthroughs challenge, Iโm seeing further patterns across high-achieving people who โfeel stuckโ in their lives, jobs, careers, and businesses theyโve created or led.ย
The world is noisy; our attention is our most precious resource, and it is pulled in a thousand directions. When intelligent, high-achieving people feel out of focus, they canโt always see how much control - and choice - they have over their lives. Iโve experienced this many times in my own life.
The suggestion to get back to basics can seem, well, basic! Yet, thatโs often precisely whatโs needed: to step back into yourself amidst the confusion to begin again and achieve more than you thought possible.
Thatโs what has worked for me and many others, and thereโs plenty of science behind it. This doesnโt mean I never take action, of course I do - and you should. This doesnโt mean that I never feel stuck or distracted - I felt stuck when writing this post! It means I have practices to help me get through, and as I grow and raise the bar on myself, Iโm embracing the journey and continuously seeking new approaches to sustain me.ย
The concepts Iโve shared here are just a starting point; after all, reimagining life and work is what this whole newsletter is about. Thanks for being here!
If youโve learned something today, please drop a comment below and share this article with others via your social media. That will help them to benefit from these ideas, and support me in getting my work out in front of more people.
Thank you!
In his book, The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes, author David Robson, dedicates an entire chapter to โThe Art of Successful Learning.โ This is one of my favorite chapters in the book, because Robson layers several critical learning theories to establish a framework for successful learning, anchored in neuroscience, which he argues should be applied in schools, but which can also support the continuous learning required of high-achieving adults.