Often our stuckness equates to procrastination. And at the heart of procrastination lies fear and inertia. So the answer can be simple: do something, do anything. Walk, run, dance, stand on your head, hang a picture; go to a museum, skating rink, climbing wall or a swimming pool. Why? Physical movement literally increases the amount of oxygen to your brain. As often as we ignore this fact, our mind and body are directly, physically and energetically connected. Sensory stimulation, input from the external environment can unlock stale thinking and the prison of logic and make you more alive to the world. Finding the metaphor in the movement can be salutary. Not to be too heady about it, but let the metaphor emerge, watch out for it, notice it: ask the question, “how is this like … my work, my attitude to life.”
Learn philosophy: go rock climbing
Especially when you are out of your comfort zone look for how you are there compared to ‘normal’ life.
Rock climbing has been an incredible teacher of philosophy. Out there on the edge of my own fear, I have an intimate and intense relationship with the environment and myself. It is a no bullshit place.
What to do when you are stuck:
1. Breathe. Breath is life. Just notice when you are stressed whether you tend to hold your breath. Brain and body need oxygen!
2. Look around not just up. Look sideways, look down: your next move might not be in the straight line upward that you see in your minds eye. When we panic our scope of options tends to narrow.
As a short woman I am shorter that most of the men who have written up the climbs so my shorter arms and legs mean I am often in the position of having to find my own route. Just like life. I can think “it’s not fair” and that may be true, but how far I actually go relies on my focus being entirely, positively forward.
3. Don’t hang around thinking. You will exhaust your muscles and any move will get exponentially harder the longer you hang around thinking about it. Do something!
4. Make a small move rather than a big one. Make an inconsequential move rather than the big one you want to make. A slight change of perspective may show you an opportunity for movement that you couldn’t see before. A small move is less tiring than a big one. Many small subtle moves may take you where you are going with much less effort and more elegance than a few large ones.
5. Commit. “Committing moves” in climbing are ones that will be much harder to come down from than to go forward, eg there is no going back. Equivocating is death. Well perhaps a little melodramatic there. But still: if you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you can’t. This is a constant lesson in climbing. Trust yourself.
6. Talk to your support person: ask for the kind of support you need. Assuming you are not lead climbing, let your support (belay) person know what is going on so they can give you some slack if you need it or prepare to brake if you fall. So many times in business and work and personal life I have seen people get all secretive when they are having a bad time and leave it up to the people around them to notice or guess what is happening and intuit how to support them. Or just try to muscle through in misery.
And on climbing in general…
No excuses: persistence is magic.
When you are doing something hard, you have to focus, you have to keep asking HOW can I do it, not thinking about why you can’t do it. We all have ways and times where we are disadvantaged and we all always have damned good reasons to excuse ourselves from effort.
“Discipline is freedom” BKS Iyengar
Of course if you spend your daily life eating too much, drinking too much and so on you can’t expect to head up that rock face with grace and agility. Rock climbers stay fit. Rock climbers practice. Just like anybody who is good at anything. You become what you practice. Practice means doing it even when you don’t feel like it. Doing “the donkey work” means that some day or moment you will get to the state of grace you desire.