Getting stuck
As I sat in my comfortable home, accompanied by my parents, pets, and the peaceful surroundings of my neighborhood, I somehow felt, I was getting stuck. Despite my relaxed life, I couldn’t help but compare myself and my life with what it might be.
I had a good life, but I couldn’t shake the idea that I was missing out on something bigger. The appeal of new and exciting opportunities became persistent and hard to ignore.
A negative feeling
A negative feeling started to emerge, along with negative thoughts. I began to wonder if I had made the wrong choices and if I should have taken on more challenges and risks. I had always been hesitant to take on the stress that came with more challenging paths and stepping outside of my comfort zone, but I was starting to question how far I wanted to go. Had I gone far enough? Was I truly happy with myself and my life?
Why I was feeling stuck in life
What was causing me to feel stuck? Could I try new things? I needed to assess myself and identify what was missing in my life and what I was already content with. I believed that if I felt I was getting stuck, it meant that I wanted to pursue something different. I began to ask myself questions such as, “Where did I want to be? What did I want to achieve? Did I want to achieve that now, or was it okay if it took one or ten years?” I was trying to gain a better understanding of what I hoped for and what becoming unstuck meant to me.
What was holding me back
I was torn between the comfort of my life and the change and opportunities I longed for. “Should I have taken a chance and pursued a more rewarding career or started a family, even if it meant sacrificing my life balance? Or should I continue with my comfortable daily routine, knowing that it would most likely impede my ability to gain the new and different experiences that I admired and wanted in life?”
What was my goal
Marriage, children, creating my own family, and becoming more prosperous – these ideas were circling in my mind. But what was it that I truly longed for and valued in them? Did I want to have more people around me to care for, or did I want others to care for me? Was I simply bored, or was there something deeper driving these desires? Did I need these things for biological reasons that I had to accept, or was there an external factor influencing my desires? Did I truly want these things for myself, or was it because I felt pressured by others to pursue them?
As I examined the potential rewards of these desires, I came to the realization that they weren’t solely my values. Family, prosperity, and enjoyment of life belonged to anyone who attained and held them. It was the same with ideas – they didn’t belong to me or anyone else; they simply formed inside one person’s head and then in another’s. It didn’t matter if others held the same ideas or values or if we came to them by similar or different means. The fact that others shared and needed the same idea, wish, or value didn’t diminish its worth, just as an apple didn’t lose its value because others wanted, needed, or ate them.
Were my new goals positive
Would pursuing these new goals make my life more aligned with what I truly wanted? Would they make my life feel fuller and richer? Did I crave a larger reach and more responsibility in my life, or was my current reach already sufficient? Did I genuinely want to make a change in my life?
I acknowledged that these goals had the potential to bring me greater well-being, so I decided to continue contemplating them. I would let them brew for a while and test their resilience, and hopefully, some prospects and clarity would emerge.
Growth of a getting stuck feeling
I found it impossible to answer my questions as the answers depended on future outcomes, which were unknown to me at the time. Would I have been able to start a family, or would my personal life have become worse? Would I have been able to find a better professional path, or could I have fallen back into my current situation as a backup plan? I realized that the unknown results were insufficient to make such a life-changing decision, and I was left feeling undecided with that lingering stuck feeling.
How could I get unstuck
I considered what would be sufficient to get unstuck and make such a life-changing decision, and I dug into the idea of described results. Although this idea was not originally mine, it was certainly a useful one that had served many before me. Simply put, it meant describing what I wanted and, from that description, identifying the necessary elements to attain it.
I replaced undetermined and unknown results with known ways to achieve specific results. I could learn how to produce different outcomes, and this was enough motivation. Luckily, I wasn’t the first person to feel stuck or to want to start a family or aim for a higher purpose. There were plenty of answers to be found, and I could try new things! Even if I were the first one, I could still give it a few swings. Trial and error might not have been particularly pleasant, but at least it had a measurable success rate.
Negative thoughts
Negative thoughts of “I can’t do this. This won’t work or change anything.” followed me around, but I came to understand that these negative thoughts stood on a lack of defined results and the lack of a plan to reach them, not on my inability to attain them. The key was the discovery of possible ways to achieve what I wanted and my willingness to follow the possibilities I identified.
Different things I could do right away
I decided to take action beyond just thinking. I asked myself, “Could making a small change lead me to the big change I was looking for? What was blocking me from reaching my goal? Was there something I needed to let go of, such as my need for a calm and relaxed life?” What needed to happen for me to reach my goal? Well, I ended up meeting my wife by going and talking to her. I did that very rarely until that moment, and I was 32 years old when I met her. Before then, I tended to lose the battle of thoughts. Discouraging and negative thoughts overpowered encouraging and positive ones that told me nothing terrible would happen if I talked to that person.
As I pondered positive change, I identified the elements of my life that I valued the most: my peaceful environment, my parents, another family member, and a trusted friend. At the same time, I recognized that a more challenging occupation and growing my family were important aspirations. Pursuing these goals helped alleviate my fear of getting stuck.
I realized that the evolution of my situation depended on what I valued in life and that these values were things I could choose to pursue or not. I saw my existing situation as the foundation of my personality, my family, my stability, and my peace. Therefore, I asked myself if these values were what I wanted to pursue in life. Ultimately, I decided that they were, and I was not willing to sacrifice these cornerstone values, at least not to a significant extent.
How could I make it easier for myself
I considered how to make attaining the things I wanted easier for myself. I knew very well that the reason why I had failed many times in previous attempts was that I found them too difficult. I knew I had to do this incrementally. I was going to increase my capability with small and manageable tasks first.
What would a failure look like
The worst thing that could have happened if I took a chance was some embarrassment. However, I realized that embarrassment couldn’t do much to me. After a day, two days, a week, two weeks, or a few months, I wouldn’t remember it anymore. Instead, I viewed it as a gain of knowledge about what did and didn’t work.
What would a successful path look like
The feeling of something missing and being stuck in life was constructive. It allowed me to assess my personal life and choose what to build on top of it. I could consider what I longed for and decide if I wanted to add that new purpose to my life.
I found that I didn’t need to break away far from my current life to take on more challenges. I came to realize that there were ways to make small changes that led to the values I sought. I didn’t need to move to a bigger city to grow my family and pursue a more rewarding professional path. I just needed to talk to a person I liked and increase my ability to serve an exponentially growing number of people to attain my goals.
Because of my journey, I developed whatastep.com to share lessons I learned and help others surpass this challenge.
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#I chose the wrong career #wrong career #wrong career path #changing careers #right career
Related post
I chose the wrong career
How I got into the wrong career.
It all started with a blinding lack of knowledge, experience, and ZERO wisdom.
Without other reasons, except I have to choose something, and architecture sounds good. I ended up choosing the wrong major and career.
Why was it the wrong major?
Simply put, it had little to do with my skills, and I didn’t care much for the results. Envisioning built spaces and designing big objects meant nothing to me. I didn’t care or feel anything for it.
Unfortunately, I had to come into contact with the field of architecture to realize that it had no connection with what I valued in life.
I realize that how my university approached teaching architecture and its price tag had a negative impact, too.
How did my university let me down?
After high school, I didn’t want to pursue higher education, but through a combination of false ideas, I became convinced it was the most likely way to succeed in life. And that I should do it right away otherwise, I’d be left behind, ideas marketed throughout the education and labor systems.
The truth is that higher education is over-marketed. Most professional paths do not require the amount of information, finances, and time that the education market tries to sell.
The primary goal of universities is not to facilitate our pursuit of the right career path nor to gain a proper education. The amount of people pursuing professional paths unrelated to their college degree is too high for it to be so. The amount of people holding a degree and feeling unprepared is too high.
Universities charge an absurd amount of resources. They hinder and cripple many people’s lives, not just mine.
The pursuit of the wrong career path
After my pursuit of a necessary certificate but an unnecessary education, I pressed on, convinced of the necessity and urgency of pursuing a straight line from an architecture degree to internships, and an architect’s license.
Why would I think otherwise? If it wasn’t so, why did everyone say I needed a degree?
It took me years to realize and finally decide I didn’t want to spend my days looking for solutions to problems I didn’t care for.
I won’t describe how a wrong career choice that didn’t match my strengths affected my ability to produce good work or made me feel inadequate and unhappy. I will only say that it did.
#Feeling stuck in life #Stuck in life #Get unstuck #Feel stuck #Stuck feeling
