Welcome to Episode #243 of the Own Your Best Life Podcast

I’ve been thinking a lot about being stuck lately, because some of the best moments of my life were the ones where I was stuck and then became unstuck. It is so satisfying to look back at the things that used to be problems and realize they aren’t problems anymore.

So let’s talk about why you feel stuck even though nothing is wrong.

You’ve been climbing a ladder that stopped appealing to you

A lot of us hit a point in our work where we’re just bored. You’ve been in your field for a decade, maybe two, maybe three, and you realize you might have been playing the wrong game, or climbing a ladder toward something that doesn’t appeal to you anymore.

It helps to think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In the beginning, we’re just trying to make ends meet. Financial security. Providing for ourselves. That’s the bottom of the pyramid, the physiological and safety needs. And once we have that, we start seeking. There’s that feeling of, what’s next.

Next comes love and belonging. Then esteem, achievement, self-worth, competence. And at the very top is self-actualization, where you want to feel joy and wonder again, be more authentic, solve problems that matter in the world, express yourself creatively, and have more stillness and reflection in your life.

The women I work with are usually right at that intersection of esteem and self-actualization. They’ve built the self-worth and the confidence, and now they’re reaching for that next thing. They want to experience life more intentionally, with more meaning and more fun. They’re spiritually achieving.

What being stuck actually is

Here’s what stuck really means. You’ve achieved the confidence you were seeking, but it may have come at the expense of your authentic self. You’re not sure the life you have now is the life you want to keep.

You’re asking, where’s the room for the things that make it meaningful? Am I contributing the way I want to? Can I keep doing this kind of work and still have my family and my health?

That feeling comes from sensing we’re not growing anymore. Like we hit the ceiling. The trajectory that once felt new and purposeful has ended. The honeymoon is over. I made partner. I got the license, the certification, the education. I had the family, I bought the house. And no matter where we are or what we’ve achieved, that stuck feeling can come back. It runs through every area of our lives.

The cost of staying there

The cost of being stuck is real, and you feel it day to day. Maybe you sense you’re about to get surpassed at work, that you can’t keep up with the pace, and yet the pace already feels like too much to handle. Maybe you feel sick from holding so much stress, the shifting deadlines, the priorities that keep moving, the emails from well-meaning but equally stressed coworkers and managers who are also trying to figure it all out.

And then there’s everything you feel you should be doing. See your friends. Eat all the protein. Exercise. The skincare, the meditation, the water. All of it. It’s hard to feel like you’re making real progress when your attention is spread that thin.

The hardest part is that it feels impossible to share with anyone, because nothing is actually wrong. Your needs are met. So there’s no reason to feel stuck.

But here’s the problem with that thought. When you tell yourself you should feel different than you do, you fundamentally stop your own growth. You stop learning, because you’ve decided you should feel better than you actually feel. You deny reality. And anytime we deny reality, we create stress and resistance to our own lives.

Stuck is the bridge to what’s next

The real reason you feel stuck is that there’s untapped potential inside you. And reaching it isn’t going to cost you everything you’ve already built. It’s asking you to make the leap from meeting your esteem needs to also meeting your self-actualization needs. Your joy, your authenticity, your being-the-real-you needs.

So feeling stuck is the bridge to self-actualization. And that is a beautiful thing. It means you’re fully alive. It means something is about to happen.

When I work with clients, we have to name it. This is the pivot point. This is the time. You’re on the bridge, and you’re about to stretch into a version of yourself that feels more like you. Claiming your unique genius. Getting comfortable in your skin. Saying the things you’ve always wanted to say. Finally doing the things you’ve always wanted to do.

It also helps to see it as a season. I’ve worked with clients through so many seasons of their lives. Divorces, job losses, moves across the country and across continents, babies, new homes, new businesses, dream jobs. And we get to look back together and say, remember when you told me this is what you wanted? Now this is your life. And here we are again, in a different area. It’s so hard to believe when you’re stuck that there’s a good reason for feeling that way. But that’s the work. To answer the questions and cross the bridge.

Holding the duality

There’s one more piece, which is holding the duality. Understanding from a needs perspective that nothing is wrong, and also that you haven’t met all your needs yet. Both can be true at the same time.

I was thinking about this the other day, because we’ve been working through freedom numbers in our June Work Optional Challenge. What people would need to feel they can stop working, the calculations, the assumptions behind those numbers, the discomfort of seeing real figures and timelines. And it made me think about how big a deal retirement is in our lives.

And yet when my own dad retired, there was no fanfare. I don’t think I was even officially told. He was in his fifties and he just stopped working. I was heading off to college. He started sleeping on a normal schedule and doing what he wanted.

When he was working, he drove black cars at night, the limousine service. Monday through Thursday or Friday in the city, then home to New Jersey on the weekends, flipping his hours to the daytime. He did that for years. And all the while he was building freedom for himself and our family, investing in rental properties, in income-generating assets.

His plan when he was younger wasn’t to drive cars. He studied civil engineering at one of the best universities in Taiwan. He and my mom immigrated to the US, they’d met in college there, and they both had to create new opportunities from wherever they were. He might have felt stuck because he couldn’t use his degree. But he moved forward anyway. He created the financial security that let him retire early and play ping pong most days at the local community center, travel, and just be around.

It was unconventional, but it worked for him. And that’s the thing about unconventional. It’s not about trying to be different on purpose. If you want to be unconventional too, it’s probably because you want to experience self-actualization and live more authentically. My mom is still working, and I think she’d work forever if she could. Every person has their own path.

My dad passed at 64, suddenly and unexpectedly, from liver cancer. And if he hadn’t retired in his fifties, he would have missed those years of enjoying what he worked so hard to create. So it worked for him. And my encouragement is to find what works for you.

A rite of passage

We don’t know when our time will come, or what’s in store for us. But it is my firm belief that our intuition nudges us with that feeling of stuckness, and sometimes it throws us right out of the nest, because it knows there’s something more waiting in the next chapter of our lives.

So what if that stuck feeling, from here on out, is an initiation? A rite of passage. What if you can feel stuck even though nothing is wrong, and it’s the doorway out of the malaise of the daily grind and into more love, more joy, more connection, whatever it is you want in this next chapter?

Let’s not let that untapped potential of living go to waste. It’s time to design this next chapter.

This is exactly the work we do inside Spiritual Achiever® Coaching, our year-long program where we figure out what you actually want, what your unique zone of genius is, and how to bring it into the world in a way that doesn’t burn you out, with some fun along the way. And over the next few weeks I’m continuing to build toward something to help you think this all the way through, into that next chapter. So stay tuned.

When you’re ready, head to mayempson.com/contact to reach out, learn more, and talk to me about what’s next for you. I look forward to hearing from you.

If you join Spiritual Achiever coaching now, you can join the Work Optional challenge in June and have access to join us in the work. This isn’t about quitting your job right now. This is about creating options, freedom and doing better than you’ve ever done in your work in the process. 

Spiritual Achiever coaching is my year-long transformational coaching experience for professionals who want clarity and capacity while being coached at the highest level.

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www.mayempson.com/contact

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