Discover why progress feels stalled in work, health, money, and love (and how to shift it now)
If you have long term goals that are not much closer to being realized today than when you first had them, here’s a question for you: Why?
It’s easy to go through the motions and miss the chance to ask ourselves, with heartfelt honesty:
“What is standing between me and the life I long for? Why is it that year after year, I set the same goals…only to spin my wheels and stay put? Why am I struggling in life?”
I know what it’s like to feel like something’s blocking you. Something you can’t quite name, but that nevertheless keeps pulling you back into the same patterns.
Maybe you’re thinking: “I did what I was told to do, and nothing changed.” Or even: “I took the advice I was given…but did I do it right? Am I the problem?”
If you’re ready to look beyond common explanations about not having enough money or time –– and beyond simplistic how-to instructions –– then what I’m about to share can unlock that clarity.
At Brave Thinking Institute, we focus on four quadrants, or life areas, where we create results. Whether those results are wanted or unwanted, we are creating them all the time.
What’s fascinating is, when we consistently receive unwanted results in one or more of these quadrants, it’s usually NOT because we’re doing something wrong.
The problem is usually that we aren’t anywhere near as clear on the results we do want as we think.
So, let’s look more closely at what keeps us from clarity in these life areas and the way to unlock more of what you’d love.
Life Area #1: Vocation
Vocation, or what we do for a living, is one of the most common life areas to feel stuck in.
For many people, unfulfilling jobs or careers play a significant role in their lives feeling less “alive” than they could. There’s often somel resentment about the work we do. And it typically exists along with an even more constrictive feeling. The feeling that we can’t leave, because we need the money to survive.
Now, it’s one thing to occasionally have a day, week, or even a month of work that isn’t especially life-giving. It’s another thing to trudge through life feeling chained to work that siphons the joy from your soul.
Interestingly, though, what truly keeps us stuck is not disliking our work. The true barrier is how this can numb us from discovering what we would love to do instead.
If we’re not careful, the disdain we have for our work can calcify into a feeling of being condemned to continue.
So ask yourself, honestly and objectively: is that what’s going on with you? Have you become so resigned to the way things are that you’ve stopped considering what kind of work would bring a sense of meaning and fulfillment to your life?
Does the very thought of asking that question feel like a pointless daydream rather than something that could lead to personal growth?
While this realization won’t instantly catapult you into a better work situation, it will focus your attention. It can reveal the ways in which you might be blocking yourself from finding a career you’d love.
Life Area #2: Time & Money Freedom
Time and money freedom plays an enormous role in our ability to create a fulfilling life.
Do you start each day feeling like your time is essentially spoken for? Are your hours carved into pre-decided blocks on a calendar? Are you dictated by to-do lists or passing your time focused on financial return alone? If so, that can definitely lead to a situation of feeling stuck in your life as a whole!
Or, maybe you have plenty of time, but you feel like you’re always struggling to make ends meet financially.
You may remember earlier years when it felt like life was a wide-open road that you could fill with whatever felt interesting. If your life today is the total opposite, no amount of affirmations will force you to feel good about it.
Instead of trying to manufacture a positive outlook, it may be more effective to confront just how stuck and unhappy you feel about your current struggles in life.
Consider journaling about how the lack of time and money freedom makes you feel. But, don’t just detail the current dissatisfactions.
Go a step further and explore, on paper, what a life of abundant time and money would actually look like for you. Would you spend the extra time engaging in creative activities? Would you have a more robust social life, or focus on community involvement?
You’ll be surprised what untangling the knot of your dissatisfactions can do to jumpstart your imagination about ways to change it.
Life Area #3: Health & Wellbeing
Health and wellbeing is a major struggle in life for many of us.
As we get older, the body that once seemed capable of bouncing back from anything starts getting a little slower. Taking more time to recover. Protesting a little more loudly about daily activities.
Whether it’s from unhealthy decisions in the past or damage from the stressful lives we live now, it’s easy to wake up one day with a sobering realiztion. “I have not felt great for a long time. And I’ve just sort of accepted it!”
It’s very easy to lapse into a passive acceptance of not liking where you are with your physical health.
Especially if you don’t feel like you have much (if any) free time to devote to exercise, cooking healthier meals, or anything you’ve been told might practically improve your health.
But think back to the beginning of this article. As tempting as it may be to ask for more advice or action steps, the lack of those usually isn’t the problem.
What keeps us stuck is that we don’t really know the results we would love. All we know is that we don’t love the results we have now!
So ask yourself: how would you love to look and feel? What would loving your health and wellbeing actually consist of? Is it feeling light and flexible? Strong and muscular? Being able to run a marathon? Or just not feeling sore when you get in and out of your car anymore?
The more specific you can get about what you want, the more you’ll find yourself naturally pulled to creating those outcomes.
Life Area #4: Love & Relationships
Love and relationships might be the life area where struggle can feel most painful of all.
How many times does a relationship that starts out full of passion devolve into little more than a “roommates” type of dynamic focused on effective household management?
Or maybe the love is still alive, but it still feels like something is missing from the relationship. It could be an intellectual spark, a sense of adventure, or something on the physical side.
Whatever the case may be, the key is to remember that you have an active say in how fulfilling your relationships are (be they with lovers, friends family, or coworkers).
If you sense that some of your relationships are “fine” but not all that they could be, ask yourself: what truly is missing?
Do you find yourself mostly liking your relationships, except for one or two things they don’t quite provide you?
Or is it more that those relationships are fundamentally lacking in some major way that you’ll never feel fully satisfied without?
As you can see, getting unstuck goes way beyond goal setting, stress reduction, or juggling the details of your domestic life.
It’s about getting specific on what it would truly take to love your life instead of just tolerating it!
Want to get unstuck even faster?
I’d love to guide you through the little-known formula that’s responsible for ALL of the results you have in your life. The state of your love life, where you are in your career, your financial earning power, your physical health, even your creative output…
All of it is governed by the simple yet profound formula that I share in my new, free (and short!) masterclass: The Hidden Cause of Your Results.
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