Do you feel stuck? When you try to do the important stuff in your life, so you feel fatigued, unmotivated, easily distracted, or numb? Maybe you feel frustrated by your inability to move forward. Maybe you’ve been stuck so long you’ve resigned yourself to your stuckness. Please don’t give up!
According to Marcy Pusey in Overcoming Writer’s Block, we can become stuck from different root causes. That’s why one expert’s sure-fire way to get unstuck might not work for you. If the advice doesn’t address your root cause, it won’t be much help.
That being said, one of the most common obstacles that keeps us from making progress is our own thoughts.
When you feel stuck, the problem could be all in your head
Did you know your own brain might be sabotaging you? We have this whatzit in our brain (the Reticular Activating System or RAS) that decides which information our brain should process and what it should ignore. The problem is, your RAS filter doesn’t know which thoughts are helpful and which aren’t. Instead, it accepts the thoughts you allow to stay in your head, and assumes they are correct. Once it gloms onto a thought, it proceeds to filter out information that doesn’t agree with it.
I call these oft-played thoughts the soundtracks in my head. The RAS filter explains why listening to the wrong playlist of soundtracks can be such a big problem.
A simple example:
Let’s say you often think “I don’t like vegetables.” If your RAS filter decides this is true, it will allow your brain to process thoughts that reinforce anti-veggie sentiments while blocking pro-veggie information. Thus, no matter how many inspirational articles you read about veggies, your brain won’t listen, because your RAS filter wants to reinforce the belief that you don’t like them.
Worse, all of this is going on at the subconscious level, so we’re not even aware it’s happening.
How to overcome the unhelpful messages that keep you feeling stuck
We need to learn how to pay attention to what we are thinking, so when these unhelpful thoughts rear their ugly heads, we can question their truth. This involves two big challenges:
- Noticing the thought in the first place
- Looking at the thought objectively so we can identify what is not true
How do we do it?
Start by paying attention to your body.
Huh?
Yep. Consider the sensations in your body as check engine lights. Here are a few sensations that might indicate you’re suffering from a mental block.
- Feeling sluggish or too tired to think
- You have a sudden urge to take a nap
- Feeling numb, unable to think or feel at all
- When you think about your project, you can’t seem to finish a thought
- Every time you decide to work on this goal, you find some other (seemingly) critical task you need to do first. (Like cleaning out the freezer or alphabetizing the books on your bookshelf.)
When you notice any of these sensations, it’s time to look for unhelpful thoughts. Tune into what’s been playing in your head. Pay particular attention to what your inner critic is saying.
An example
I head to the kitchen, pondering what to make for dinner. I want to make something healthy, but suddenly I can’t seem to make a decision. My brain has gone sluggish, and I feel too weary to cook anything.
But wait! I think. Just because I feel weary at this moment does not necessarily mean I am actually tired. It may be a check engine light. So, begin to pay attention to the thoughts flitting around in my head. I hear myself think, “I should eat healthier, but I don’t like veggies so why bother? I’m never going to like them.”
Aha. Time to interrogate that unhelpful thought.
Do I actually hate every single veggie? (No.) Why do I think I hate veggies? (Images of canned peas from my youth.) Hmm. I agree canned peas are disgusting, but what about fresh green beans? Or salad? (I like salad.) You see? I don’t hate veggies. I may dislike some veggies, but others are OK…
Once I’ve uncovered this untrue, unhelpful belief, I can reprogram my RAS filter with a better belief, such as: I want to like veggies more. Given this new soundtrack, my RAS filter will allow pro-veggie ideas to enter the rest of my brain. With this new RAS program in place, cooking with veggies it will feel like the right thing to do instead of feeling like an exhausting, uphill battle.
Tweak your soundtracks and get unstuck
I hope this explanation will help you overcome your mental blocks. Will power alone won’t get us to our goals. Sometimes we need to weed out out an untrue soundtrack that’s been keeping us stuck.
Now that you know to pay attention to your check engine lights, I wish you success in identifying and reprograming the unhelpful beliefs that keep you stuck.
