Are you stuck? Do you often feel stuck? Often stuckness is what contributes to not feeling well. We don’t become unstuck by thinking our way out of it. In fact, trying to think our way to freedom usually just makes us feel more stuck. Join me as we explore how the key to getting unstuck is found in acceptance.
Eric: Are you stuck? Have you been stuck? We become stuck thinking about who we are and how we fit in this world rather than acting and trying towards what's important to us. What creates that prison cell that makes us feel stuck? It comes down to one word, which I call resistance.
Welcome back, Cadre family. Are you stuck? Have you been stuck? When I say that phrase, that word stuck, what comes to mind? Maybe an experience, a situation you're in right now. A state of feeling, a state of being, as you can see, the title of this video, how to get unstuck. It's a big question, because often in our lives, when anxiety, depression, feeling dissatisfied with who you are, your life circumstances often comes with this immense feeling of stuckness. If you're new here, my name is Eric.
I'm a clinical mental health counselor to provide you affordable, effective mental health information, tools and resources to hopefully be a source of support for you wherever you may be today. When we get to this place of being stuck, it's good to acknowledge what that truly means. What does it mean to be stuck? I get the image of a prison cell, right? It's like you're stuck there. You don't really have a choice in opening that door and just walking out. And unfortunately, in our lives, we can feel like that prison cell is around us, despite the open air we truly live in.
And so what creates that prison cell, that jail cell, that makes us feel stuck? And it culminates. It comes down to one word, which I call resistance. Resistance rooted in our prioritization, our importance put on identity, the words and ideas we use to describe ourselves by. We become stuck thinking about who we are and how we fit in this world rather than acting and trying towards what's important to us. So if we want to get unstuck, we need to take away the power of words. For example, if I have this identity, this idea about who I am as not good enough, and maybe I feel not good enough because I failed before.
My attempts, my action, my choices, are going to reflect my feeling that I will fail again. And I don't want to be labeled as a failure. How do we unstuck that situation? How do we unstick ourselves from I am a failure. We recognize that part of being human failing. So when I fail, I say, all right, in this circumstance, in this context, I'm a failure, but I can still try. Now, we don't fear the possible labels that may come onto us, and we don't approach that in a self deprecating way, but rather, we accept that as an average human, I'm going to fail.
I don't know your identity. I don't know why you're stuck. But I know one thing for certain, without a doubt, that you, looking through the screen, are human, an average human at that. And me, looking back at you, through the screen is also an average human. And a part of the equation of what creates an average human is the inevitability of all the things we fear. And the only reason we fear things like being a failure, it's because we felt the pain of failing before. And yet here we are. What we allow to take our attention and grab us is the direction we will head.
And so if my whole decision making is based on resisting avoiding this idea that I'm either a or not a failure, everything that goes right is going to reinforce a false sense of who I am, and everything that goes wrong is going to reinforce another false sense of who I am. It's a change of direction by accepting that we exist on both ends of that spectrum at different times. And what's more important is what you choose to find important, and the attempt to pursue that thing. More on this next week.
It's good to see you all.
