We all have periods of feeling stuck in life.
When we experience the feelings of “stuckness”, we are experiencing stress.
Having studied the biographies of at least 150 of the worlds greatest thinkers, producers and creative geniuses, I can assure you that even the people who seem the most successful on the “outside” have their fair share of challenges “inside”.
We often forget, as we watch someone deliver a beautiful song on stage, or give a speech at a meeting, or winning a race, that they are often confronting their own fears, insecurities, and dealing with untold number of expectations from others.
What Leads To Feeling Stuck In Life?
Having made a lifetime study of human behavior (including my own!), I have identified several individual, and contributing factors that lead to feeling stuck in life:
1. A lack of creative self-expression: Human beings are the most creative of beings on the planet (for better or for worse!). Many people don’t realize that our creative energies and impulses are actually expressions of our sex energy.
Our culture tends to think of “sex energy” only in relationship to copulation. Sex energy is life-force energy. Your greatest potential for creating with your sex energy is expressed in the creation of new human life, a child.
We are so use to wielding that kind of power, we often forget how profound an expression of our creative ability we are expressing.
Soon, we become like a little boy who’s father regularly takes him out shooting real guns (enjoying the amazing power to destroy), only to find himself (ourselves) disinterested when the other kids want to play cops and robbers with cap-guns!
Our sex (creative) energies are naturally distributed throughout our body-mind construct. We inherently want to use our sex energy to create safety, sexual engagement, express our individuality, love and connect with self and others, create outside of ourselves and communicate those creations to others, use our imagination, and access our intuitive creative abilities.
TIP: Often feeling stuck in life emerges from focusing primarily on “making money”. Many who feel stuck have chosen to work for a living, and have forgotten how to live while working. Money is a means to an end, and only we can decide how to create more juice in our lives by using our money in ways that nourish our self-expression.
We may have the urge for something wild, crazy, extravagant…We may also convince ourselves we’ll never have this experience because…, or because we don’t think we have the money…etc.
There are many things we can do that cost very little, and can be legitimate steps toward something more ultimate, or more “awesome” for you.
We can begin planning to actualize our Dreams, as I show in PPS Success Mastery Lesson 1. How To Find and Live Your Legacy.
Through planning you can “Surround The Dragon.” Surrounding the dragon in this instance means laying out all the tasks and “to do” items needed for each stage of development of your dream, and taking action on anything you can do now.
This process allows us to feel the joy of nurturing our dream in its gestation phase, much like a mother loves and nurtures her growing fetus within herself.
Artistic self-expression is amazingly healing, and requires very little expense, and even very little time. I have used a pencil, or a pen and a piece of paper to give myself a little love-healing countless times when on the road, feeling tired, and in need of doing something that has no value to anyone but me.
I find it very helpful too “paint my day” so-to-speak. If I’m feeling tired and I choose to feel more like the sun, I may draw a “sunny expression” of myself.
How the art looks is irrelevant. How it “feels” to express yourself “is relevant.”
2. A lack of Confidence: For a wide variety of reasons, many human beings lack self-confidence. Many have “big dreams”, but seem to be forever stuck with “small expressions” of those dreams.
People can become afraid of being successful, or even having more joy than those around them. People become afraid of expectations and responsibilities, particularly if their childhood was plagued with such issues.
TIP: Weight lifting is an excellent self-confidence builder; so is calisthenic exercises and I would also include yoga. Taking a class in martial arts or boxing can be very helpful to one’s self-confidence.
When we look at the necessity of “resistance” for “feeling” in life, we come to realize that without resistance, there would be no “experience”. It is overcoming resistance, or learning to work with resistance that ultimately equates to self-confidence.
If there was not gravity or wind resistance, it would mean nothing to be a fast runner. If there was no resistance in athleticism, there would be no sport. If there were no resistance in love making, there would be no feeling, no emotion.
The entire universe is created out of functional resistance. Any of the kinds of things I’ve suggested here help us master resistance. Tai-chi as a martial art is all about mastering resistance and using it in your favor, as are several other martial arts.
When we learn the basic principle of managing and creating with resistance in any area of our life, we can express that mastery in other areas.
3. Social Conditioning: We live in a culture of “vicarious living”. The greatest percentage of people are “watching the few express themselves fully”, while not expressing themselves fully.
Our airways are chalk-a-block with fear-based programming. Our culture is awash in fear-based religious programming.
These are all examples of “resistance”. The Universe apparently loves it all, as both the news, history books, and the fossil record shows.
Social conditioning is the equivalent of a birds nest. Many baby birds get too comfortable in the nest and don’t realize the discomfort they are expressing as feeling stuck in life is the natural urge to jump out of the nest and fly.
Until we jump out of the nest in our own way — find a way to express our individuality, our uniqueness – we know we have not become a bird yet – we have not learned to fly!
TIP: Take some time alone in a safe place to express yourself and get out of the box a little. I like to rattle and chant to plants and animals. I love to walk naked in my garden. My wife has gotten concerned a couple times and said, “Paul, what if the neighbors see you!” and I’ve replied, “Well, I hope they can see that I’m a fit man and maybe they will be inspired to play with stones!”
That’s what I mean about getting out of the box a little .
Each of us must deal with the natural resistance life offers as we find our way. Without it, there would be now joy in the process, nor the arrival.
Some resources I’ve created that will help you find more joy and novelty in your life are:
How To Eat Move and Be Healthy!
Are Your Memes Building Your Dreams – 6 hour MP3 audio program + pdf handout
Paint a Circle Around the Arrow of Life and Hit the Bullseye Every Time! – pdf ebook
The Complete Love as the Basis for Self-Healing 1-4 – MP3 Audio Program + pdf handouts
The Absolute Essentials of Rumi – 2 hour MP3
The Last 4 Doctors – How To Get Healthy Now! – Multimedia ebook
The Last 4 Doctors – MP3 Audio Companions
A New Awareness – pdf ebook
These programs are meant to provide you practical tips and strategies for creating happiness and to help you to actualize your Dreams when you feel stuck in life.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
