COMING UNSTUCK

COMING UNSTUCK

“Imagine what it would be like to live in a world where you are more concerned about what you have to offer than what you have to hide.” ~Unknown

As “What-If's” go, this one is a power-keg! It invites us to imagine a world very different from the one most of we Westerners live in. The current state of the world is better described by the poster I once spied in the office of a political advisor I once met – “protect, defend, and resist”. I could hardly be more opposed; I far prefer this quote from “The Seventh Secret”, which suggests, “Connect, understand and accept…”

Why is this secret so important, at least to me? Well, it isn't, unless you feel you're stuck in some kind of rut that's limiting your freedom to play around in the playground. That has been me at several times in my earlier life – I was paddling like hell and getting nowhere.

Do you feel stuck? Or is it possible you're stuck and you don't know it – you just have this feeling that there has to be more to life than what you've been experiencing lately?

Dr.Phil McGraw has come up with some neat questions that may help you clarify if you're stuck or not. Would you like to know? Well have a look at each of these and give yourself a rating out of 10, where 0 = Never, and 10 = A helluva lot.

Here goes:

• Do you spend a high percentage of your time each day (more than 3 hours) on a couch or in a chair with your attention lost to what's on some kind of screen? 
• When you're at home, do you find yourself wearing the same house-dress, T-shirt and baggy pants, shorts or pyjamas that have become some kind of “indoor uniform” for you? 
• Do you stand staring into the refrigerator, looking for something that wasn't there when you last looked a few minutes ago? 
• Do you feel like you're a cheap-seats spectator to other people's lives? 
• Do you live vicariously through characters on TV, and discuss what happens on “reality” shows as if they actually are real? 
• Do you actually count and recount the items in your shopping trolley before you decide whether to dive into the Express Checkout Lane? 
• Is your job or your kids all you ever talk about for more than 3 minutes at a stretch? 
• On the rare occasions you do go out “for fun”, do you spend more than 3 minutes debating with yourself where to go? 
• When you do eat out, are they at places where you have to look up, or look down to read the menu? 
• Do you have sex quarterly and within a time frame that lets you get on with something else? 
• Do you fantasise about things you never actually do? 
• Are you suspicious of the genuineness of people who look really happy? Is there a lurking thought that “they're faking it”? 
• Do you have a lesser standard of conduct when you are alone than when you are in the company of others? 
• Is the most exciting thing that has ever happened in your life something that has already happened? 
• In that twilight zone while you are awakening, is there a moment of dread at the start of another day before you tuck it away out of sight? 
• Do you ever feel alone, even while other people are around? 
• Do you ever feel “bored with....”? 
• Do your appearance and standards of grooming and personal hygiene appear to be on the decline? 
• Is your main goal in life mainly focussed on how to get through the coming week or month? 
• Do you say “No” to a high percentage of questions, regardless of what the question is? 
• In order for you to meet someone new, do they have to throw themselves under your bus, or pull up a chair between you and something you're lost in? 

How are you doing now? Got a clearer picture?

To get ourselves unstuck from thought, feeling and habit patterns that prevent us from spreading our wings and soaring to a life we were born to live, we must also remember that our world is changing rapidly. Although there have always been dangers and threats, they have been heightened with the advent of the information age and its instant forms of digital communication. Our sense of safety is also impacted by the major life transitions we all experience: job security, financial challenges, illnesses, loss of a loved one, aging, etc.

In the face of this, I think it is no wonder we find ourselves a little breathless, bewildered and sometimes averse to change. We reach a point where we silently protest “Please just back off for a minute – gimme a break!!” Very understandable, and yet, if we want to get unstuck, live lives of quality and dignity, accomplish our dreams, celebrate our talents, and pass on our gifts and wisdom to others, we would be wise to take The Secret to heart: Let go of protecting, defending and resisting; consciously and deliberately replace those reactions with proactive habits of Accepting, Exploring and Engaging-With.

Such transformation requires clear intention, courage and persistence, but taking on such a challenge empowers you to transform where you may feel stuck. I use the word “transform” very deliberately. The actual circumstances of your stuckness may not change. You've probably already tried that, to no real effect.

The good news is that circumstances do not have to change in order for you to get unstuck. Your Circumstances and being stuck are not connected anywhere other than in your mind. Other people are confronted with the same circumstances as you, and rather than get stuck they seem to be able to rise above the situation and use it for a launching pad to something bigger and brighter. So what's the difference? Others are transformed when they stop seeing their circumstances as “the problem”, and begin looking at them instead as opportunities in disguise for them to completely change direction. I used to be a victim, until I made a conscious choice to become one of the “others” I've just cited. I did some research and found out how they made the switch. Then I did it. Again and again and again until Life got the message – “Barrie has changed his mind”. That's when reality flipped over and I discovered that, where there is a perceived threat, there can be a new sense of openness and curiosity, empathy, accord and, dare I say, gratitude! Where there used to be distrust, there can now be greater receptivity, balance and the ability to stay in the present more often.

All you have to change is your mind.

This new approach will give you a new sense of freedom, new levels of energy and passion and a greater understanding of the role your temperament, your personality, your identities and your beliefs play in determining the quality of your life. It will also give you the insights and power to rewrite your past without changing the facts, your present as the time and opportunity to break with your conditioning, and your future as a consequence of your transforming.

In the end, it all comes down to a matter of choice. Each of us can choose to be reactive and at the mercy of a world that appears threatening, or we can choose to be open to life and its remarkable possibilities. We can plod on being defensive and protective, or we can live with a new spring in our step and spirit, eyes that truly see, ears that really hear, and a heart that can feel the wonder and celebrate the magnificent mystery that is life.

In every now moment you become open to possibility, rather than reliant on defence against threats. Are those threats real? Yes, they are. But only in your mind. An imagined threat is just as real to the sufferer as an actual threat; emotional memory does not discriminate.

What matters now, though, is how you respond to what's “real” for you. It may help to know that your fears are imagined rather than actual, but that knowledge isn't going to fix them. Your fears – none of them, were ever reasoned into in the first place, so reason is not going to cleanse you of them. I've tried that over and over – it never, ever worked for more than 30 seconds.

Change is one of life’s true constants. But transitions like changing jobs, moving homes, losing loved ones, and getting divorced can be trying, not to mention scary. Even when change is positive, it’s usually not without fear and at least a little bit of trepidation.

Because of fear, the first step is possibly the most difficult – to open yourself kindly and willingly, in the face of panic at becoming vulnerable, to the present you have brought yourself to. Later steps will still be accompanied by varying degrees of trepidation and uncertainty, but as you get more practiced at embracing fear and going ahead anyway, you’ll get better at it and, hopefully, reach a place similar to mine where the presence of raw anxiety is a sign to me that “that's where I need to go.” It's a sign that has never misled me. Instead of defensive and protective, you can live with your eyes and ears fully open. It’s amazing what just a slight shift in perspective can do…it can make all the difference in the world. 

Three final things that I've noticed -- firstly, life never misses an opportunity to offer us new chances and fresh starts. Secondly, that we are never thrown a challenge that is so great that we can't keep our balance even when we feel like we are on the shakiest ground. Life knows when we're ready, often some time before we do. Sometimes I've been right through a crisis before I realised “Shit, I was ready for that!”

Thirdly and finally, if we keep embracing challenges and changes as they are delivered to us, reconnecting with ourselves to become more enlightened and empowered is not only possible, not even probable, but actually one of life's few certainties.