What To Do When You’re Feeling Stuck
What you think affects how you feel. And how you feel affects your behavior. Your behavior is ultimately what influences the trajectory of your life.
When life feels mundane or it seems that nothing you do can change your circumstances, it’s safe to say you’re stuck. If you want to finally break free from this rut, keep reading.
Each step listed in this article is designed to break your normal thinking, feeling, and behavioral patterns. What you think affects how you feel. And how you feel affects your behavior. Your behavior is ultimately what influences the trajectory of your life.
When we live life the same way for weeks, months, or years on end, we get cemented in our thinking, feeling, and behavioral patterns. When our lives feel stalled, these patterns are like cars stuck in a rush hour, bumper to bumper traffic jam. It’s frustrating. And it’s hard to make any progress.
In order to avoid living your life permanently stuck in this traffic jam, you need to find alternative routes — ie: new thinking, feeling, and behavioral patterns. Changing your patterns will drastically change your trajectory in life. And you’ll begin to feel you are making progress again.
Here are eight new patterns you can use to help pull yourself out of this rut and stop feeling stuck.
1: Ditch Social Media and Read a Book
In order to start taking your life back, you need to be more active about the content you consume. Everything you read, watch, or listen to influences your thinking, feeling, and behavioral patterns. So take charge of the content that is influencing you.
Social media is likely where you spend a lot of your free time. When you scroll through your newsfeed, you are at the mercy of an algorithm designed to keep you on their site for as long as possible. You’re also frequently bombarded by ads that spent a lot of time and research learning how to best influence you to purchase their products. Take a break from your socials and their influences and read a book.
Reading is a great way to learn about new subjects, gain new insights and perspectives, increase your vocabulary, and reduce stress levels.
As you read new books about topics you’re interested in, you’ll experience new thoughts and feelings that lead to new behavioral patterns.
I recommend reading nonfiction books that discuss some of your struggles or interests. What’s holding you back? Is your marriage crumbling? Are you stuck in a dead-end job? Do you have low self-esteem? Start reading a book that dives into the major issues that are affecting your life. You’ll learn new ways of thinking and experience new feeling and behavioral patterns.
Some books I recommend reading if you’re feeling stuck are:
––Willpower Doesn’t Work by Benjamin Hardy, PhD
––The Defining Decade by Meg Jay, PhD
––Atomic Habits by James Clear
––Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
––Personality Isn’t Permanent by Benjamin Hardy, PhD
––Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
––How to Do the Work by Dr. Nicole LePera
Actively choosing the content you consume will help shift your life in the direction you’re hoping to go. Reading is especially effective because it doesn’t take a lot of time or resources. You can learn a lot just by reading 15 minutes a day and you can access books for free with a library card.
2: Switch Up Your Diet
You literally are what you eat. Everything you eat gets broken down into the building blocks that create or fuel your brain and body. Your inner chemistry affects how you think and feel. How you think and feel affects your behavior.
If you want to stop feeling stuck, switch up your diet. You don’t have to do anything drastic, but you need to do more than just adding a side salad to your meal or using a napkin to blot the grease off your pizza. The more long-lasting improvements you make to your diet, the more positive changes you’ll see in your thinking, feeling, and behavioral patterns.
Start by adding plenty of nutrient dense foods to your diet, like vegetables, fruit, nuts, legumes, and whole grains. It’s okay to indulge in a treat every now and then. But filling up on nutrient dense foods first is key for your physical and mental health.
In addition to adding good food to your diet, you should be drinking a lot more water. Studies show that most Americans are dehydrated. Aim to drink at least 75 ounces of plain water each day.
However, if you need big change in your life, try dropping junk food all together. High processed foods can have various negative effects on your health. In addition to having little nutritional value, these foods can cause inflammation, unwanted weight gain, or high blood sugar.
Again, you don’t need to follow any crazy, restrictive diet. But start thinking about what types of food you’re eating and try to give your body more of the nutrients that it needs.
3: Start a Hobby
Hobbies are a great way to develop your skills, learn more about yourself, and gain new experiences. You can sign up for a class, follow along with online tutorials, or work with a friend who also enjoys your hobby.
Starting a new hobby will force you to approach life differently. You’ll start to shift where you spend your time and resources as you attend classes or pay for new gear. You’ll begin to interact with new people you meet through your hobby. And these experiences will change how you think, feel, and behave.
If you are unsure about what hobby to try and need more ideas about what you’re passionate about, read this article.
Similar to a hobby, you can also spend time earning certifications and degrees. These experiences will also change your thinking, feeling, and behavioral patterns.
4: Marie Kondo Your Life
Marie Kondo, a successful author and organizing consultant, encourages you to ask the question, “Does this spark joy?”
Take some time to evaluate your life. Does it spark joy? There are plenty of areas in your life that you can Marie Kondo.
Environments: One of the quickest ways to interrupt the traffic jam of your thinking, feeling, and behavioral patterns is to change your environment. Our environments have a powerful impact on the way we live our lives. Environments that may need change include your home, your place of work, your car, garage, yard, or storage shed.
Think of all your environments: do they spark joy? If one (or more) does not spark joy, will a few changes fix that? Or is it time to move on to a different home, job, car, etc.?
If your environments are fixable, some ways you can bring more joy to them include:
––getting rid of items you don’t use or no longer need (ie: toys, clothes, tools, books, electronics, papers, etc.)
––rearranging or getting new furniture (chairs, couches, beds, pillows, blankets, ottomans, curtains, rugs, baskets, tables, book shelves, etc.)
––painting walls
––adding plants
––adding art or photos
––using candles or essential oils
––cleaning or tidying up more frequently
Commitments: Marie Kondo’s motto also applies to activities and commitments in your life. Does being a volunteer soccer coach spark joy? Does working with the PTA spark joy? Does staying long hours after work to help a coworker spark joy? If there are activities in your life that don’t spark joy, it’s okay to move on from them.
Relationships: What about the relationships in your life? Do they spark joy? Though we disagree with each other from time to time, our relationships should be supportive and loving. They should actually spark joy. If not, you may need to take charge of your relationship and set important boundaries, work on healthy conflict resolution skills, or end these relationships all together.
5: Process Your Emotions
Let’s face it: we did not grow up in a society with a healthy outlook on emotions. If you ever heard the phrase, “boys don’t cry,” “stop being so dramatic,” or “I’ll give you something to cry about,” you know what I mean.
However, your emotions are important. Positive emotions tell you when your goals and needs are being met. Negative emotions tell you that something is wrong, that your needs and goals are being threatened.
If you are feeling stuck, it’s likely that you are also suppressing your emotions. Important emotions that could actually be signs pointing you in the right direction to go.
Try to be better at experiencing and processing your emotions. They could be telling you exactly what you need to hear. Try using healthy emotional outlets such as:
––journaling
––making art, like painting or drawing
––meditation/prayer
––yoga
––running
––sports/exercise
––listening to or playing music
––dancing
If you need more help learning how to process your emotions, check out this article.
6: Go On a Trip
Experiencing new sights and sounds in a new place forces you to abandon most of your thinking, feeling, and behavior patterns. These patterns don’t function well in a new place.
If you’re feeling stuck, plan a trip. It can be a weekend getaway or your dream vacation. But either way, spending some time in a new place will shake up the patterns that are keeping you stuck. On your trip away from your normal patterns, you may be exposed to the inspiration or answers you’ve been looking for.
7: Keep a Journal
There are plenty of mental health benefits connected to keeping a regular journal. Journaling provides a safe outlet for your thoughts and feelings, reduces stress, and boosts your mood.
In addition to the mental health benefits, journaling can be a great way to start becoming aware of your thinking, feeling, and behavior patterns. If you aren’t aware of these patterns and how they’re affecting you, it will be difficult to change them.
You can journal any way you like: write lots of paragraphs or jot down quick bullet points. Either way, journaling is a great tool to help you navigate your way out of a rut.
8: Work With a Therapist
When you feel stuck, you may find it helpful to work with a licensed therapist. There may be some past traumas or current coping mechanisms that are limiting your potential and keeping you stuck. These can include self sabotage, perfectionism, people pleasing, emotional eating, violence, self harm, projecting, numbing, and more.
A therapist’s job is to help you question, challenge, and change your current thinking, feeling, and behavioral patterns. Working with a licensed therapist gives you the opportunity to have someone point out your blind spots and be an empathetic witness to your struggles. They can help you navigate your traumas and overcome unhealthy coping mechanisms that are keeping you stuck.
If you’re new to therapy, read this article.
Conclusion
Navigating a rut can be difficult. But if you’re going through a hard time, the key is to find ways to switch up your thinking, feeling, and behavioral patterns. And we’ve discussed a lot of great ways to do just that in this article. But finding any way that switches up your patterns and creates novelty will help you stop feeling stuck and make progress again.
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