When You Feel Stuck in Life: Why Moving Forward Isn’t Always as Simple as It Seems

Have you ever found yourself thinking, “I know I want something to change, but I don’t really know what to do about it?”

Perhaps you’ve been thinking about changing jobs for months, but can’t quite bring yourself to make a decision. Maybe there’s something you’ve always wanted to do, but you keep finding reasons to put it off. Or perhaps, on the face of it, your life is actually pretty good, but there’s a nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right anymore.

You might not even describe yourself as unhappy. You’re getting on with things, doing what needs to be done and, from the outside, everything probably looks perfectly fine. But somewhere in the background there’s this feeling that you’ve become a little stuck, and you’re not quite sure how to get yourself moving again.

It’s an interesting place to be because, when we find ourselves there, it’s very easy to assume that there’s something wrong with us. We might tell ourselves that we’re being indecisive, lacking motivation or simply procrastinating when we should be getting on with things.

But I’m not sure it’s always quite that simple.

There may be more going on than a lack of motivation

When we’re not taking action, we often assume that the answer is to try harder. If only we could motivate ourselves, stop overthinking and actually get on with it, everything would be fine.

But our behaviour usually makes more sense when we take a little time to understand what’s happening underneath it.

You might genuinely want to make a change, while at the same time, another part of you is worried about what that change might mean. Perhaps you want a new job, but you’re concerned that you’ll make the wrong decision. You might want to start something new, but worry that you won’t be good enough, or that other people will think you’ve made a mistake.

You might even know that a particular situation isn’t making you happy anymore, while still finding it incredibly difficult to walk away from something that has been familiar for a long time.

And that’s where things can become rather complicated. We can spend so much time thinking through all the possible outcomes, trying to make the “right” decision and imagining everything that could go wrong, that eventually the safest option seems to be to make no decision at all.

From the outside, that might look like procrastination or a lack of motivation. From the inside, it can feel much more like your mind is trying to protect you from getting something wrong.

Sometimes we can want change and be afraid of it at the same time

I think this is something we often overlook when we’re feeling stuck.

We tend to imagine that, if we really want something, we should simply be able to go for it. But our minds don’t necessarily work that way. It’s perfectly possible to want something and be frightened of it at the same time.

You can want a different career while worrying about giving up the security of the one you’ve got. You can want to be more confident while feeling very uncomfortable about putting yourself forward. You can want to change something about your life while also feeling grateful for the life you already have.

None of these things cancel each other out.

There can be a part of you looking towards what might be possible, while another part is remembering previous experiences and trying to make sure you don’t get hurt, rejected or disappointed again. Often, these patterns aren’t something we’re consciously choosing; they’re simply familiar ways of responding that have developed over time.

Recognising that can be quite helpful because, instead of asking yourself “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just do this?”, you can start asking a slightly different question:

“I wonder what is making this feel difficult?”

That small shift in perspective can change the conversation you’re having with yourself.

Sometimes the problem isn’t knowing what to do, but knowing what you want

There are also times when feeling stuck isn’t really about making a decision at all. It’s about not being sure what you want in the first place.

This can happen particularly easily when you’ve spent years doing what is expected of you. Perhaps you’ve built your career around what seemed sensible, spent a lot of time looking after your family or become very good at putting other people’s needs before your own.

Then, at some point, circumstances change.

Your children get older, your work changes, your relationships change, your priorities change and perhaps you change too. The things that once felt important may not feel quite as important anymore, but you’re not necessarily sure what should take their place.

That doesn’t mean you’ve made the wrong choices. In many cases, those choices were exactly right for the person you were and the circumstances you were in at the time.

It’s just that you may be a slightly different person now.

And perhaps that’s why asking “What do I actually want now?” can sometimes be more useful than immediately asking “What should I do?”

There’s quite a difference between the two.

When we ask what we should do, we tend to look outside ourselves for the answer. We think about what would be sensible, what other people might expect of us or what would look successful from the outside.

When we ask what we actually want, we’re giving ourselves permission to be curious about what matters to us now.

The stories we tell ourselves can make it harder to move forward

Another thing that can keep us stuck is the way we have come to think about ourselves.

Perhaps you’ve always thought of yourself as someone who isn’t very confident, who finds decisions difficult or who tends to give up. Maybe you’ve spent years believing that you’re not particularly ambitious, that you’re too old to change direction, that you’re not the sort of person who takes risks or that putting yourself first is somehow selfish.

We don’t necessarily walk around consciously thinking these things. They can become so familiar that they feel like facts rather than beliefs.

But a belief that you’ve carried for a long time isn’t necessarily an accurate reflection of who you are now.

It may have developed from something that happened earlier in your life, perhaps at a time when it made sense. It may have been reinforced by experiences you’ve had since then, until eventually it became part of the way you understand yourself.

This is one reason I’m not particularly keen on simply telling people to “think positively”. If you genuinely believe you’re not capable of something, telling yourself “I can do anything!” isn’t going to make that belief disappear.

I think curiosity is much more useful.

Where did this belief come from? Is it still relevant? What evidence do I have that it’s true? And perhaps just as importantly, what evidence might I have been overlooking?

Sometimes looking at our familiar assumptions from a slightly different perspective can open up possibilities that weren’t there before.

You don’t have to work out the whole of the rest of your life

One of the things that can make feeling stuck even more difficult is the pressure we put on ourselves to have a complete plan before we’re willing to take the first step.

We want to know where a decision will lead, whether it will work out and whether we’ll be happy with it before we’re prepared to begin.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t tend to give us that sort of certainty.

Sometimes you only find out whether something is right for you by taking a small step towards it and seeing what happens. You might have a conversation, investigate an opportunity, try something you’ve been considering or simply allow yourself to explore an idea without committing to it.

You don’t necessarily need to decide what you’re going to do for the next ten years. You might just need to work out what the next small step could be.

And sometimes that step isn’t even about doing something. It might be giving yourself permission to stop and think about what you want, rather than continuing to follow a path simply because it’s the one you’ve always been on.

What if you’re not actually lacking motivation?

I think this is worth considering because we can be remarkably hard on ourselves when we feel stuck.

“Why can’t I make myself do it?”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Why am I wasting so much time?”

But what looks like a lack of motivation can have all sorts of things going on underneath it. It might be uncertainty, fear of failure, fear of getting it wrong, low confidence or perfectionism. It might be that you’re trying to make a decision where there isn’t actually a perfect answer.

Or perhaps you’ve simply spent so long dealing with everyone else’s responsibilities that you’ve had very little opportunity to think about what you want for yourself.

If that’s the case, telling yourself that you need to be more motivated probably isn’t going to help very much.

Understanding what’s underneath the feeling of being stuck may be a much more useful place to start.

Sometimes you don’t need someone to tell you what to do

When people are struggling to move forward, there can be an understandable temptation to look for someone who will give them the answer.

Tell me what I should do. Tell me whether I should stay or go. Tell me which decision is the right one.

But I’m not sure that someone else can really make those decisions for us. Even if they could, we’d still have to live with the consequences.

Often, what we need isn’t somebody to tell us what to do, but the space to understand ourselves a little better.

That might mean exploring the thoughts and beliefs that are influencing the way we’re approaching a situation, looking at patterns that have developed over time or simply having the opportunity to say things out loud that we’ve been going around in circles with in our own heads.

This is one of the things I value about therapeutic work. I don’t see my role as telling people how they should live their lives or giving them the answers. It’s much more about helping them explore what’s happening for them, perhaps see something from a different perspective and discover what feels right for them.

Sometimes, when we understand what’s keeping us stuck, moving forward becomes a little easier.

You don’t have to be unhappy to want something different

Perhaps the most important thing is that feeling stuck doesn’t necessarily mean that anything is wrong with you.

You can be grateful for your life and still want something different. You can be doing well and still wonder whether there’s something else you’d like to explore. You can love your family, enjoy your work and have a good life, while still feeling that you’re ready for something to change.

And you don’t have to wait until things become unbearable before you pay attention to that feeling.

Sometimes moving forward isn’t about making a dramatic change or suddenly becoming a completely different person. It might simply be about becoming a little clearer about what matters to you now, understanding what has been holding you back and giving yourself permission to consider that there might be another way of looking at things.

You don’t always need to know exactly where you’re going before you take the next step.

Sometimes, the first step is simply becoming curious about what’s keeping you where you are.