Introduction
Welcome to the Coaching Hive podcast. I am thrilled that you’re here with me today, and today is going to be all about feeling stuck. Now, I was on a coaching Hive Elite call this past week, and at 1.1 of our members looked at me across Zoom and said, you’re a squirrel wrangler. And we all kinda laughed because we talk about squirrels quite frequently in Elite as things that can get us off track,
or things that can keep us stuck or get us stuck because we are moving in all different directions instead of staying focused on the path forward. And today I want to spend some time talking with you about this concept of feeling stuck and what you can do to get unstuck so that you can keep moving forward.
Here we are nearly at the end of the year. Things are getting exciting. We’re heading into this new year with big plans, and you don’t wanna get stuck at this moment right now as you head into these new plans. So let’s spend today’s time together talking about how to get unstuck so that you can better wrangle your own squirrels. If you are ready to talk about this concept of getting unstuck, let’s jump in.
What does it mean to be stuck?
I already told you that today is all about getting unstuck, but what does it mean to be stuck? For a lot of us, it can feel like we’re stuck in a rut or we’re not sure how to move forward, maybe what to do next.
I’ll be honest. When I’m feeling stuck, I tend to sit down somewhere that’s not normal. Like I sit on the stairs and when Nate, my husband, comes out of his office and he sees me sitting on the stairs, he gives me that look like I know what’s going on, and he just says, you’re stuck, aren’t you? And I just have to look at him and say, yeah, I am.
We all get stuck. But the key is that being stuck in the moment is sometimes a sign that we need to make a change, that something has to shift a little bit in order for us to keep moving forward. Maybe we go over the obstacle, maybe we go around it, go under it, go through it. I don’t think it matters as long as we start to think about the fact that there’s a way to get unstuck.
Contributors to Feeling Stuck
And there are a few things that can really contribute to feeling in this place of stuckness. It might be that you’re not clear on your goals. Maybe you’ve got a lot of different things, so you’re not really focused in, maybe you have a lot of squirrels running around in your brain, you’ve got lots of different ideas and they’re pulling you in different directions.
Maybe you don’t necessarily have a plan to achieve your goals. Maybe the goals are crystal clear, but you don’t have a plan to achieve them. Or maybe what you’re doing, whether it’s in work or life or some combination isn’t fulfilling anymore, or maybe it just wasn’t fulfilling to begin with and you no longer have the patience for that. Perhaps you’re feeling a little bit uninspired, you’ve been feeling that grind, you’ve been getting things done. Maybe you feel like you’ve been on a hamster wheel of content creation or trying new things and nothing seems to work and you feel just stuck.
You know what?
No matter what the reason is, it’s frustrating, isn’t it? Have you ever been in that place of feeling stuck and you just felt frustrated or maybe, maybe discouraged?
Here’s what I want you to remember, this feeling of stuck being stuck. It’s not permanent. You can get unstuck, you can move forward with your business. You don’t have to stay in that place of stuckness. You don’t have to watch the squirrels run around and not have any kind of semblance of order. You can wrangle the squirrels so that you can get unstuck and start moving forward.
The key is to get up off the stair and just choose away. Either go up the stairs or down the stairs.
Getting Unstuck
You probably want something a little bit more specific to get unstuck, don’t you? Then, hey, just get up off the stairs because I can tell you it doesn’t just work like that. It doesn’t work to just say, “Hmm, I’ll get up off the stairs” and everything will be fine. Nor does it work to just say, “I’m gonna wrangle my squirrels”. You have to actually have a plan in place. You have to know what to do when you’re feeling stuck, and the first thing that I always recommend is to sit down and define your goals.
You might be thinking, I have my goals, Moira, I don’t need to do that. You might, but I would still encourage you to go back to those goals and make sure that they still fit. Revise them. Think about what you actually want to achieve, what kind of business do you want to build, and what does that business bring to your life as a whole?
And when you start thinking about these big-picture things, it gets a little bit easier. Take time to define your goals, and figure out what you need to do to achieve them.
- What has to happen?
- What resources do you need to make that goal of reality?
- What people do you need to work with?
- What collaborations do you need to create?
- What partnerships do you need to build?
- What time do you need to carve out in order to make those goals reality?
And then make a plan. Once you know your goals, you have to really create the plan to achieve them. You’ve already thought about what you need to define what defines those goals. What do you need to have happen? Go ahead and make the plan to achieve them.
It’s probably going to mean setting up monthly, quarterly, weekly, daily segments of those goals, of those plans so that you have milestones to reach, little spots to get to.
It’s almost like you are crossing a river, but we can’t cross the river in a single leap, right? Imagine that you’re on one bank, you and on the opposite bank of the river is the goal, and it’s met once you get there, but you can’t just cross that really wide river in one single leap, so you have to hop from stone to stone. Imagine someone has laid out beautiful stepping stones across the river. They’re secured their landing points that if you get to each one, you will get across the river. Imagine that your quarterly goals, your weekly goals, your daily goals, are you stepping on those stepping stones to get across the river safely with purpose. Now, this is where squirrel wrangling comes into play. You only have this one set of stepping stones. You can’t just run all off and all directions and still get across the river because there aren’t stepping stones that will help you to get there. You might get really wet, you might float downstream a little bit and have to swim back against the current, get back on the stepping stone and keep going. Staying on the path, knowing that if the path needs to change, those stepping stones will appear, but stay on the path that’s going to get you where you want to be. Small goals, and milestones that you can keep track of so that you can see the progress.
Almost like when you hop onto the stepping stone, it turns green. You can see, yes, I made it to the stepping stone, I hopped to the next one, take the next step in the plan and it turns green. Now, some of you might be thinking, great, that’s all I need. That’s awesome.
For some of you, you might be thinking, okay, I’ve done that. It doesn’t necessarily get me where I want to go, that it may be the stepping stones don’t appear in the right places, or it doesn’t seem to get me to the part of the river bank that I really wanted to get to. Okay, the next thing to try is to get outside your comfort zone.
This one’s tough. If you are feeling stuck and you aren’t sure how to make progress, it might be because you are firmly wrapped in the bubble wrap of your comfort zone. So challenge yourself. Get outside the norm of what you do, what you’re willing to do, and that can really get you out of a rut. One of the things that I recently did is I offered the Entrepreneur Resource Bundle, and this was a collaboration of 10 other entrepreneurs. We came together, this was the first time I had ever done something like that. It was definitely outside my comfort zone, but it helped me to get unstuck in my business and also helped them to take steps forward in their business as well. We all got outside our comfort zone, tried something new, and the results were wonderful.
Get outside your comfort zone first, and make a plan.
The next thing that I highly recommend is finding a mentor. Finding a mentor is one of those things that you think, I’ll do it later, but a mentor can provide guidance and support as you’re working toward the goals.
You don’t have to wait until later to find someone who has achieved what you’ve already, what you’re trying to do or can help you wrangle the squirrels or can help you look through what you’ve got going on and help you decide on the next right step. How you’re going to get to that goal can be absolutely priceless. I was on a coworking call earlier this week and one of the colleagues that I was with said, you’ve gotta make sure you’re in the right room. And I read an email this morning that said, much the same thing. You have to make sure you’re in the right room, get into the room. So have the relationships, the conversations where you are not the furthest person along where you are going to be told all of the things that you need to change in order to get to where you want to be.
Is that really difficult to hear? 100% yes. But when you do that, when you get into the right room with people who are ahead of you, who have figured these things out, who are better at XYZ than you are at this current moment, what happens if you decide to listen and implement what they’re saying, you are going to move forward and you are going to be at their level.
You are all going to find the next room where you are not the furthest person along. This is what having a mentor can do for you. It’s helping you get into the right room. It’s helping you have someone that is ahead of you in the process. It doesn’t mean they have everything figured out. It means they’re a little bit ahead, 10% ahead of where you are because they’re still gonna understand what you’re going through.
They are going to be able to help you see that stepping stone path forward and they’re going to help you figure out the next right step. And that brings me to the last thing I want to encourage you to do if you’re feeling stuck, and that is, is to take action. You’ll notice that I said toward the beginning of this podcast that my husband finds me on the stairs.
I’m sitting down, and at that moment I have to choose to either go up the stairs or down the stairs to go somewhere so that we can have a conversation that’s taking action. Just take action. Choose to go up the stairs or down the stairs. The best way to get unstuck is to take action, to do something, anything inside your business, whether it’s big or it’s teeny tiny because you know what happens. An object in motion stays in motion. A business in motion stays in motion. When you as a business owner can take action, you are breeding action in your business. When you start to move forward, the rest will follow. The path will become clear. It’s okay if you can’t see the path ahead of you right now.
That’s alright. The path will become clear as you take each step forward. Getting stuck is normal, staying stuck doesn’t have to be the norm.
Action Item
What is your action item for this week? How about you take action? It can be that you are going to come up with your goals to find your goals a little bit more, and figure out what you need to achieve your goals.
Maybe it’s making a plan. Maybe that is what resonated with you today. You think I have the goals I need to make a plan to get there. Fantastic. Maybe it’s getting outside your comfort zone. Maybe it’s reaching out. Maybe it’s leaving a review, offering a testimonial for someone, or even something little that’s outside your comfort zone to get your brain in that space of doing something new.
Maybe it is finding a mentor. Maybe it’s helping wrangle those squirrels. Perhaps it is someone who can help you find the next right step in the options that are in front of you. Just take action. I want you to take action on something this week in your business. The best way to get unstuck is to take action. So that is your action item for the week.
Do something. It doesn’t matter how big it is, doesn’t matter how important it is inside your business. Do something, send an email, send a message, or make a post. Look at what you are offering to your clients, and if they can be tweaked at all or if you just need to get it out there, do something. Okay?
Conclusions
Let’s summarize quickly before we wrap up for today, because getting unstuck can feel big, and I want you to know it’s normal, but doesn’t have to be the norm.
Once more, what can you do when you’re feeling stuck? Well, first of all, you might be feeling like you’re in a rut. It might be that you’re not sure what to do to move forward or what to do next.
All of these things are feeling stuck. They lead to you sitting on the stairs with that look on your face. When someone comes in and finds you and they say you’re stuck and you say, I am okay. All of these things can contribute to feeling stuck. What can you do to get unstuck?
- Define your goals.
- Make a plan.
- Get outside your comfort zone.
- Find a mentor.
- Take action.
This is the perfect time in your business right now, this moment to take action, big or small, it doesn’t matter. An action is an action, and that will breed the momentum you need to get unstuck. I hope this was helpful. I trust that you are going to go right now and take some kind of action in your business so that if you are feeling stuck, or even if you’re not, you are going to make progress today in your business. And if you are thinking that you need some more accountability, you need some help wrangling your squirrels, you need a mentor, you need some help getting things going in your business, please reach out. I’m always happy to chat.
And of course, if you are interested in more, we can certainly talk about Coaching Hive Elite, which is our implementation group that meets multiple times a week so that you don’t get stuck. Or if you do, you’re not stuck for very long.
I am excited to hear what happens inside your business this week as you take action. So go out and take action, and I look forward to seeing you back here next week for another episode of The Coaching Hive Podcast, where a focus on mentoring and community and implementation removes the overwhelm of building your successful and profitable business and adds in a dose of momentum.
Until next time, have a healthy, safe and happy week.
