7 Realistic and Effective Ways to Get Unstuck in Life

Are you ready to get unstuck in life emotionally? Whether you want to get unstuck or help someone get unstuck these 7 strategies will help.

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Raise your hand if you ever feel…

Unmotivated
Unfulfilled
Unhappy

And no matter how hard you try you can’t seem to get out of a funk. ??‍♀️

You’re not alone!

That’s been happening to me lately. I had a list of things to do yesterday, but I didn’t have the energy to do them.

I was completely unmotivated.

Do you ever have everything all planned out, you know exactly what to do…but executing the plan is difficult because you’re so…meh?

If you’re feeling unmotivated, unfulfilled with life, or unhappy, then you’ve come to the right place!

But before we talk about how to get unstuck, make sure you grab your free Productivity Power Pack. It’ll help you with…

Meal planning
Cleaning
Time blocking
And morning routines

It’s five pages of checklists to help you increase your productivity. So go ahead and grab your free Productivity Power Pack.

Okay, let’s dive into how to get unstuck when you’re feeling unmotivated, and you’re unhappy with where you’re at in life.

Table of Contents

What does it feel like to be unstuck?

Whenever you’re unstuck, it means you feel like your life has a purpose.

You know where you’re trying to go in life.
You feel fulfilled with life.
You’re happy with the way your life is going.

It feels like you’re going places. Like you’ve got good things ahead to look forward to.

And it also feels like you’re in control.

You’re in the driver’s seat of your life and you know what’s going to happen, therefore, you know how to be prepared.

So that’s what it feels like to be unstuck. It’s very empowering.

You’re a woman with a mission!

The real reasons why you’re feeling stuck

If you don’t quite feel like a woman with a mission don’t worry. You may be experiencing one or more of these common causes for feeling stuck.

1. Not having goals

Without goals, what are you trying to achieve?

Where are you going?

It’s like getting in a car and driving, but you have no idea where the end destination is.

You don’t know how to prepare, you don’t know what to pack, you don’t even know how much money you’ll need.

It’s scary to go through life without knowing your higher purpose.

So that’s why you may feel stuck because you don’t have any goals and you don’t know what your purpose is.

2. Not taking action

Another reason you may feel stuck is because you’re not taking action.

You may know your goals and what you’re trying to accomplish, but taking action on those goals is making you feel stuck.

That typically stems from fear.

Fear of failure…

Fear of success…

Those fears may hold you back from taking action on your goals.

When you take action on your goals, you get so much clarity in life.

You may be in such a planning phase, trying to plan everything out, trying to do everything perfectly, but you’re not taking any action on those plans to even see if they’ll work out.

You’re taking action in your head, but nothing is happening in real life.

3. Lack of self-confidence

The next reason you may be feeling stuck is because of a lack of self-confidence.

This may be in the form of you not believing in yourself. Not believing that you’re worthy of success or that you can achieve these goals you’ve set for yourself.

The only way to build that self-confidence is to prove to yourself that you can accomplish your goals.

The key to building self-confidence is to take action and prove to yourself that you’re stronger than you even think you are.

4. Doing the same things

You may be feeling stuck because you’re doing the same things over and over and over.

You’re stuck in your comfort zone which inhibits change and stops you from taking the action that would get you massive results in your life.

Those big changes are necessary for you to get some type of fulfillment in life.

5. Fear of failure

This often shows up in the form of perfectionism. When you hear people say, “Oh, I’m a perfectionist, I just want everything right,” that’s them being afraid of being judged.

That’s them being afraid of failing.

They’re afraid of showing up and not having the results they expected to have.

So fear of failure most commonly will show up as perfectionism. And that’s a defense mechanism to not be judged by other people.

6. Comparison

The last reason why you may be feeling stuck is because you’re comparing yourself to other people.

This may be scrolling through Instagram and seeing perfect family pictures and thinking your family isn’t even close to anything like that.

Or watching videos on YouTube where they’re cooking, cleaning, and organizing meanwhile your house is a mess.

And now you’re feeling less than because you feel like you’re not up to their level.

So comparing yourself to others can be very damaging for you mentally, because it makes you feel inferior.

Another way we compare ourselves to others is in business. When you feel like someone started their business around the same time you started and they’re having much more success than you are.

Now you feel like your efforts aren’t good enough, like what you’re doing isn’t working.

Then you start feeling bad for yourself and stop taking action because you don’t see the point anymore.

7 practical ways to get unstuck

Let’s dive into how to get unstuck. Here are seven strategies that’ll help you…

Start feeling more fulfilled.
Start taking action on those goals you’ve set for yourself.
Have more motivation.

You’ll know exactly where you’re trying to go and finally feel like you’re in control of your life.

1. Change your perspective

You have to believe in yourself if you’re going to make it anywhere in life.

There will be times when roadblocks come up and things don’t go as planned like you thought they would.

You’re going to be the only one that can pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try it again.

So believing in yourself is imperative.

An example of changing your perspective could be the thoughts you think first thing in the morning.

Instead of waking up in the morning thinking, “it’s going to be a bad day” and mentally preparing yourself to have a bad day, try telling yourself you’re going to have an amazing day.

This way, you’re already in the mindset that today is going to be great. Your energy levels will be boosted and your self-confidence because you are flooding your body with all of this positive energy instead of flooding it with negative energy and then wondering why things aren’t working out for you.

2. Determine your priorities

When thinking about your priorities, there are two important questions you need to ask yourself.

What is most important in your life right now?
Are you giving that priority enough time and energy?

So many things arise that we focus our time and energy on rather than what we want to achieve.

A typical default answer to the question of “what’s most important right now” is to say our family, but you can have multiple priorities.

If something isn’t a top priority right now that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter, it just means that it doesn’t require as much of your time and energy right now.

For example, being healthy is always a priority to me, but sometimes I put diet and exercise on the back burner because I need to focus on increasing my income so I won’t have to put my daughter in daycare (which is why I quit nursing).

I was prioritizing my business because we knew the consequences of what would happen if I didn’t.

That doesn’t mean that being healthy wasn’t important, it just means that I had to let go of something to focus on something else.

And when you’re focusing on your priorities your family may eat out a little bit more or the house may be messier than usual, but that’s okay because you know what you’re working towards.

So for the second question, which is, are you giving enough time and energy to that priority, If your answer is no, then you need to figure out how you can move things around in your schedule.

You have to make time for that priority because you’re not going to stop feeling unstuck until you’re working on things that you want to work on instead of working on things that you feel like you need to be doing.

3. Set goals

Goals let you know where you’re trying to go in life.

Breaking down your goals into small action steps will help you know if you’re on the right track for accomplishing those goals.

When you only focus on the big picture, it’s more likely that you’ll get overwhelmed and give up because you don’t think you’re making any progress.

What I like to focus on more than the goals is creating the systems because it’s one thing to say, “I want to do this.” But if you don’t know how you’re going to do it, then having that overall goal is pointless.

Your goal is the ‘what’ you’re trying to get to and your systems are the ‘how’ you’re going to get to it.

Learning to stay consistent with those goals and systems brings us into step number four.

4. Find your Why

If you don’t know why you’re doing something, the chances are higher that you’re not going to stay consistent.

Our brains are naturally designed to keep us safe. When you’re doing new things, your brain will push back, you’ll have resistance, you won’t want to do it.

That’s why so many people fail at things like meal planning or working out, it’s hard for them to stay consistent because their brain is naturally designed to keep them in a safe space.

So whenever you start seeing those results, whenever you start doing new things, your brain is like, “Whoa! Is this safe to do? I’m not sure. Let’s stop.”

For many of us, we don’t have the resources to overcome that resistance and keep pushing through.

That’s why having an internal Why is very important.

The key to your why is that it has to be emotion-based. It has to be something you feel.

Another thing you want to keep in mind too is that you need to be worried about what you’ll lose if you don’t accomplish this goal.

An example of a life-changing why could be “if I keep gaining weight, my health problems will get worse and I won’t be around to see my kids grow up.”

The fear of missing out on watching your kids grow up is a very strong life-changing internal why that’ll make you get up and go to the gym or pop in that DVD video.

A simple reason such as “I want to be a size six” isn’t powerful enough to stay consistent.

That’s not telling you what you’ll lose if you don’t accomplish that goal.

So you need to…

Have a strong internal why as to your reasoning behind accomplishing this goal.
Be emotionally triggered by your why.
Know what you will lose if you don’t accomplish this goal.

That’ll help you stay consistent.

5. Create new habits

My favorite way to create a new habit is by using habit stacking.

This is simply when you stack a new habit onto an old habit.

An example of this would be if you need to start taking your prenatal vitamins in the morning. Every morning, you already have the habit of drinking a cup of coffee. What you could do is put your prenatal vitamins beside the coffee pot.

So every time you go in the kitchen to make your cup of coffee, you’ll see your vitamins and you’ll know to take your vitamins with your coffee.

That’s how you habit stack.

All you’re doing is stacking a new habit onto an old habit that you already do subconsciously.

That’ll make it easier for you to stick to the new habit.

6. Remove toxic people

Surround yourself with people who are trying to go where you’re trying to go.

If you’re building an online business from home, surround yourself with other people who are building online businesses.

If you’re trying to transition to a vegan diet, surround yourself with people who are also on this journey.

You’ll be more motivated to push through those tough times if you’re surrounded by ambitious people who understand the struggles you’re facing.

Surround yourself with people who are supportive of your goals and who understand or at least support where you’re trying to go.

This way whenever you do get stuck, you’ll have that support system in place and you won’t fall back into old habits.

On the flip side of having that support system in place, means you may have to remove toxic people or severely limit your contact with them.

If you’re trying to go somewhere and do great things but someone is holding you back, that’s when you’re going to feel stuck.

You can’t fulfill what you’re trying to accomplish because this person is bringing you down with their negative energy.

And a lot of times they’re projecting their own fear of failure onto you.

If you’ve tried talking to them multiple times, the next best option may be to limit the types of conversations you have with them.

7. Embrace failure

The last strategy, and probably the most important, is to embrace failure.

Failure doesn’t have anything to do with your self-worth.

It doesn’t mean that you’re less of a person, it doesn’t mean that you’re stupid, it doesn’t mean that you don’t know what you’re doing.

Failure is a sign of growth.

It means that you’re brave enough to take action even though you may not have the outcome you’d like.

Failure is a way to gather information.

Now you know what worked and what didn’t work. And that says nothing about you as a person.

So embrace failure, embrace having the strength and courage to do things.

And if it didn’t work out for you like you thought it would, at least you tried and now you know.

That doesn’t mean anything about you as a person.

Quick recap…

Those were the seven strategies to help you get unstuck so you can…

Start accomplishing your goals
Feel more fulfilled in life
Start doing the things that you know you’re destined to do.

Feeling stuck is common so don’t make it mean anything about you as a person.

It’s one of those things that happen in life and we have to push through and keep going.

If you need a little kickstart to help you push past this stuck feeling, grab your free Productivity Power Pack.

It’s a bundle of five checklists, cheat sheets, and templates. It has…

A time blocking template
A meal planning template
A speed cleaning checklist
A daily cleaning checklist
A morning routine checklist

Go ahead and grab yours HERE. It’s completely free and you can use the Power Pack to jumpstart your productivity so you can build your self-confidence back up and start getting more things done in baby steps.

And if you have any questions or want more support, hop on over to the Smart Productive Mom Facebook group so we can continue this conversation over there.