We can all get stuck in life from time to time. Some of us can stay in a continuous loop of not moving forward! However, right now I see so many business owners struggling and feeling stuck. With all the chaos and uncertainty of the last few years, business owners are finding it hard to have clarity and move forward with their business.
Fair enough! It is incredibly hard to hold the responsibility of running a business, while trying to constantly stay upbeat with so much mess and chaos going on around the world. I get it.
Living in this space can leave us feeling completely helpless and totally dis-empowered. It is not a good feeling when we are stuck and not moving forward. As humans we feel fulfilled when we see progress in our lives. No progress can leave us feeling stagnant, unmotivated and uninspired which can compound the feeling of being stuck.
That’s why it is so important right now to be able to work through these feelings and get moving again. So that we can get on with streamlining and growing our business.
5 tips on how to get unstuck and get back on track
#1 Know That You DO Have Choices When You Are Stuck
Often when we feel dis-empowered or stuck, we forget that we do have choices. We always have a lot of choices in what we can do in any situation. But often we lose sight of that because we are focusing on all the problems that are around us, instead of the solutions. Start to look at the situation with a new perspective and ask…
- “What choices do I have here?”
- “What can I do to help the situation?”
Take a business that is stagnant for instance… we can just keep drifting through each day and essentially let what will happen, happen. Or we can look at the choices that we have. Because there are always more choices than we think.
We could…
- Walk away and close the business
- Look into options for selling the business
- Keep doing what we have been doing
- Up the marketing that we are doing to increase our visibility
- Call our current clients and see if we can help them further or if they need more products
- Get in touch with our past clients to see if they need our products or services again
- Follow up on outstanding enquires of people who were interested in our business
- Set up some promotional partnerships to help another business and increate our own visibility
- Hire a coach or consultant who can give some knowledgeable advice on how to move forward
- Get an accountability buddy to help follow through on the actions we want to take
- Actively ask clients for testimonials and referrals to grow the business
- Take a course that helps in a particular area we are not good in
- Up our customer service so we are more likely to have raving clients
- Go to networking events to meet more people
- Advertise in a place where your ideal clients hang out
… there are SO many choices!
Now, it isn’t necessarily going to be that you do one thing and that will fix everything. But knowing that you have more choices of what you could do to get things moving can help you to get unstuck. So, what choices do you have? What are 3 actions that you could take to get you moving forward again?
#2 Take Responsibility For Being Stuck
Now this is a biggie, but also the most confronting. This will usually get you unstuck the fastest.
You see, usually when we are feeling stuck, we are also feeling helpless and have given our power away. I’ve done this way too many times to count! We can blame and justify the situation that we are in on external factors. It’s our partner, the government, the pandemic, the recession, rising inflation, our clients, our family or friends, the system, other people…
We can feel like the situation is completely out of our control when we are blaming and justifying the situation on external factors.
Then, we give all our power and control over to those external factors. From that place it is hard to move forward and get unstuck! Now this doesn’t mean that we are at fault for the situation we are in. It also doesn’t mean that the external factors have not contributed to where we are now. But we can take responsibility for our part that we play in it and how we are going to get ourselves out.
Let me give you an example…
One of my clients had been having major challenges with their staff. There was a culture in the workplace of yelling, inappropriate language and putting other people down. This business owner came to me placing all the blame on the staff and the way the staff were behaving because they were causing all the problems. The business owner was feeling completely stuck and helpless and not able to move forward.
What he wasn’t doing was taking responsibility for his part in the situation. He was allowing his staff to have this unacceptable behaviour in the workplace. Every time it happened, he would just stand back in shock as the aggressive behaviour took place and would do nothing about it. Both in the moment, and afterwards. So he was allowing this to take place in the work environment where he is the leader.
Once he took responsibility for his part in the situation, he could do something about it and move the culture of the business forward to be a more respectful and calmer environment to work in.
So if you are feeling stuck right now, answer the question: “How can I take responsibility for moving myself forward?”
#3 You Are More Amazing Than You Think
It is true! When we are feeling stuck we can also get unmotivated and feel like we are useless and not good enough. Our self esteem and self worth takes a battering and we fall into a downward spiral of self pity and self loathing.
Know that you are more amazing than you think you are during these times. For a start you are still alive today! Which means that you have survived the harsh and cruel realities of life… you have overcome challenges, you have been through nasty situations, dealt with difficult people, and you survived! You at least have more strength, courage, and resilience than you will give yourself credit for and those are valuable qualities to have in a world that can be so rough and unfair at times.
What else have you done in your life? What have you achieved? What have you overcome? What qualities have got you through? What skills do you have? What are you proud of yourself for?
I can tell you that most people I talk to feel insecure and unworthy inside… not good enough to actually thrive in life which causes feelings of hopelessness and feeling stuck. But everyone is capable of getting unstuck, moving their life forward and thriving. You are so much more capable and amazing than you are giving yourself credit for.
You have great skills, you have great attributes, you have greatness inside of you; start to see it, own it and appreciate it so that you can let yourself shine and move forward.
#4 Be Grateful For What You Do Have
You know we all have some much more to be grateful for than we acknowledge. Yes, life is hard sometimes. I’ve been to the darkest depths of life many times, but even in those darkest moments, I truthfully still had so much to be grateful for.
When my 15 month old daughter was in hospital fighting for her life in intensive care, I still had things to be grateful for… she was in a modern hospital with doctors and nurses that knew what they were doing, I had my husband by my side, I had concerned family members caring about us and what was going on, I lived in a country where they had the capability and resources to save her, I lived in a country where the hospital system was free so I wouldn’t have massive medical bills to pay at the end of the ordeal, and in the end of all of it I still had my daughter alive because the doctors and nurses saved her life … the list could go on for ages of what I was grateful for.
Because, yes, even in that deepest darkest period of my life, I still had things that I could be grateful for, and gratitude lifts your spirits and helps you to get unstuck. Gratitude helps you to move forward, to see the gems in even the darkest of situations.
When we were in massive financial debt and it felt impossible to go on, and the weight of the world was on my shoulders, however, I could be grateful that I had a house to live in (only just, but none the less I had one!) I could be grateful that I lived in a country with fresh, clean air, that I had people that loved me, that I had running water…
It can be easy to feel stuck and not think that there is much to be grateful for in your life, but have you really taken the time to look around and appreciate all that is there? If you are reading this it means you have a phone or computer or laptop, or are borrowing one, with internet access, even that is something to be grateful for!
Embrace an outlook of gratitude, not just when things are going good, but every single day. Yes, even when things are really challenging, because gratitude will help to move you forward again.
#5 Take Action and Get Unstuck!
Lastly, take action. Action moves you forward. Actions gets momentum. Action gets forward motion. Action is a really important part of getting unstuck!
Sometimes we just need to get off our butts and take some action! Because it is easy to sit on the couch and feel sorry for ourselves and not take the action that we need to take. If we need more clients, do marketing and sales for your business, go meet people and increase your network, contact people you know directly to see if your business can help them. It isn’t going to happen sitting on the couch feeling sorry for yourself.
Make sure also that the actions that you are taking are in alignment with what you want to create. If you want to grow your business, are the actions you are taking going to lead to that result?
So what actions could you take today? What actions could you take this week to get you moving forward again? Get clear on the actions and then get up and go and do it.
Those are 5 powerful ways to get unstuck and moving forward again but it can be hard to keep going when things are tough. This is why having a coach or support network can be so valuable to keep you on track and moving forward on a consistent and long term basis.
I would like to leave you with one last powerful strategy that will help you the most… the biggest thing is to work on your Inner Game – your internal world (beliefs, habits, mindset, energy) because your Inner Game is creating the outside world around you. It plays a massive part in what shows up in your life (and what doesn’t).
If you want help getting unstuck and working on your Inner Game,
check out the Awaken Your Inner Game program.
Click here to join the VIP notification list
