The best thing about my professional career is that I get to meet a lot of great people. If you are even a little bit into any business, you probably understand that business is all about people and the relationships between them. My job in a corporate environment and my job as a coach are exactly the same in the sense that they are all about people.
Usually in-between meetings we get to chat and the thing that always comes up is – what troubles most of us aged 30 to 50 is the feeling of being stuck. Feeling that we can probably do better than we are currently doing or that we should be doing something different altogether. Of course, this is never the first thing you hear having coffee with someone (unless you are really close with this person). But if you start asking questions about someones job, life, career, more often than not, you will hear the famous: “I think I feel stuck.”
This feeling usually comes in phases. Phase one is, every time you think about this, you redirect your thinking to something else. Almost nobody gives this thought any serious attention in the beginning, rather we try to “shush it”- maybe we just had a bad day, maybe this is just a passing thought, etc. Phase two starts with more serious contemplation on the topic, reasoning on what could be done to improve the conditions, what are the risks, options, etc – but all of this “mental activity” still stops in the thinking phase. Some people stay in the “thinking phase” for years because the “action” makes them fearful or because they just do not feel stuck enough to do something about it. And this phase is what is the most troubling, because your thinking can make you feel you are doing something about it when you are actually NOT.
In martial arts, when we attempt to do a technique and it is not working, there is only one thing that remains to do – change a technique. If you feel stuck in the middle of someone punching you in the face, there is only one solution – keep moving! Not saying “hey, I was thinking of moving”, not asking other people “do you think I should move away from this punch?”. No, you simply take action. I love the simplicity of it, because the situation on tatami will make your decisions fast and committed (we are usually very committed not to get punched in the face).
What we teach in Thinking Into Results (phenomenal program by Bob Proctor himself) is really not different. If you want to get unstuck, you have to start and keep moving in a new direction, even if the first few steps are wrong. The only way you will know it is wrong is if you actually MOVE. And the information you get from it will help you get closer to where you want to be. Remember that no decision is still a decision. And it is one of the worst you can make.
Photography by Lousy Auber
