If you don’t shift, life will shift you.
The push/pull has always fascinated me. In everything.
Work and family.
Freedom and structure.
Light and dark.
Science and magic.
Always trying to find the balance – the centre, the midpoint – whilst honouring both. And trying desperately not to take anything too far, whilst being terrified of not taking it far enough.
One of the greatest avoidance techniques for being stuck is to keep focussing on and going for what is next, but somehow in the avoidance you are stuck anyway. Once my problem was not addressing the problem right in front of me and nothing changing for a really long time. Now it seems my problem is not appreciating everything I already have and just being in that. Being still, but not stuck. And somehow I think maybe I still think they are the same thing.
If you are unhappy in your job why don’t you do something?
If you are unhappy in your marriage, why don’t you change it?
If life doesn’t feel the way you thought it should, what has to happen to feel something else?
Do we not shift because we don’t know how?
Or because there’s no certainty in the outcome?
Is it safer with what is known than with what in unknown? How will you know?
I can understand being stuck from doing it. For years. In a really busy way (my stuck was never still, and very rarely obvious). But I was into growth and somehow life didn’t put up with my stuckness forever. It shifted me, often by immobilising me so badly (with panic attacks) that to stay in it became so uncomfortable that I had to find a path out. If you’re into growth, you’ll have to move. How do you know if you’re into growth?? You read things like this. If you’re not into growth things like this don’t even enter your field. And that’s OK. But if you are into growth you’ll eventually get too uncomfortable and have to first, admit where you are and second, do something about it.
I’m stuck again right now, on a precipice between all that has been and all that is (notice I didn’t say all that can be – that place doesn’t even exist). And I can’t quite ground myself into all that is because all that has been seems too important. The stories. The how did I get here. The why I can’t do this now. The fears. The things that happened to move me.
If I just let all that go what on earth will I have to talk about? I love to honour the wound. And play around in the tragedy. I love the dramatics of my stories. And I wonder who I’d be without them, but also if perhaps they are the only thing keeping me stuck. On the precipice.
And to get out of being stuck? I have to be still.
Every time I’ve asked for guidance in the past month I’ve gotten versions of the same answer – “calm the f*ck down”. And then I got sick, just a cold but enough to pull me up. And then I had to stop. And so I started to write again in a journal (with my actual pen) and read, and pray and pull cards. And the next step?
“First, attend to the divine”.
So here I am. Attending. Honouring. Being as still and as quiet as possible. Tapping in to guidance. It’s right there.
The first step is always to be still. And then to tell the truth. About the thing you know that is keeping you immobilised because you only think there is one answer. Once you are still and turn to face the stuckness, you may be surprised at what you see. And if you don’t know how to do this or need support to face it, I’m a really great truth-teller. A 45 minute session with me brings so much clarity and a pathway forward. If it’s for you, here’s how.
If you don’t shift, life will shift you. Maybe it’s time to be the boss of this?
