by Haven Logan PH.D

        
Sometimes you are just merrily rowing down life’s stream, enjoying the scenery and feeling confident about the direction you’re taking. Suddenly up comes a thunder storm: the gentle river becomes a raging torrent. Before you know it your boat and your life have capsized.  You struggle for survival. Perhaps the storm calms down and you can get back into the boat and continue your journey. Or perhaps in your disorientation, you become stuck in a mud flat. Looking around, there is mud every where. You can’t move forward. You can’t move backwards. You are unquestionably stuck!

Personally, and as a therapist, I am very familiar with both the storms and the mud flats. No one seeks out counseling when they are merrily rowing along. They come when their boat has capsized with a job loss, a death, or relationship problems. Some are soon helped back into the boat by the supportive counseling relationship. Those who come because they find themselves stuck in the mud flats, however, often encounter a more complicated process, and it’s not always a storm that brought them to the mud flat. Sometimes they have drifted there by not paying attention to growing problems in their lives. Before those in the mud flat can get back into the river, they first need to explore the benefits they get from being stuck there and their fears of what will happen if they become unstuck.
    
In my book Choosing to Be Well, I interviewed people who had overcome their resistance to doing the things for their health that they knew they should do. The common element in all their stories was that there was something about their present circumstances or their past lives they had been unable to accept. Whatever this was, they were immobilized until they could reach a level of inner acceptance. If your weight is the area you are stuck in, for example, you might be resistant to accepting that your excess weight will result in serious health problems. A benefit of staying where you are is that you get to continue to eat whatever you want. The fear of getting out of this overweight mud flat could be related to drawing attention from the opposite sex or giving up the blame of all your problems on your weight. Only when you can look at the reality of your situation and accept it, can you get unstuck. Though you are not happy to have to give up some of your favorite treats, you accept that you will need to lose weight to be healthy. 
          
Is there an area in your life where you feel stuck? What is it?  Remind yourself that this fear is also the first stirring of what will turn into the excitement of new possibilities as you begin to move. There will always be some fear when you begin to look at your “stuckness” because you are starting to face the unknown.

Let’s explore strategies to help you get unstuck and back on the river.

1. Get Moving – The physical act of moving is the simplest approach to getting unstuck.  The house is a total mess, so just get up and start doing some thing. You can’t decide about a problem at work, so go for a short walk. Endorphins will kick in and you just may come up with new ways to look at the situation.
2. Complete Something – Take a small task like doing the dishes or writing a letter and complete it. You will feel satisfaction and it may help energize you for the larger challenge you are facing.
3. Talk It Out – Ask someone you trust to listen to you without initially offering advice. Often in this process we become conscious of things we hadn’t thought of before.
4. What Do You Want to Feel? – Focusing on how you want to feel can give you a goal to move towards. Find pictures that represent how you want to feel. Paste up words describing this feeling.
5. Self-Care – What do you need to feel better? Take a nap or a bath. Eat a delicious healthy meal. Exercise daily. Stop beating up on yourself for being stuck. Focusing on basic self-care often gives our unconscious mind the space to come up with creative ideas.
6. Get Away – One of the best ways I’ve found to get a fresh perspective is to get away from my everyday environment. A trip to the ocean or mountains can free you up to look at your life from a new vantage point.
7. Meditate or Pray – Both of these enable you to tune into higher wisdom. Ask what you are afraid might happen and look at how you might be able to deal with this.
8. Brainstorm – Take out a pencil and paper and come up with as many ideas as you can for getting out of the mud flat. Don’t reject any ideas, however crazy they may sound initially. Get friends or family members involved as well.
9. Break It Down – With a large problem, list the individual components. Then begin to work with the one that seems the most doable.
10. Make a Plan – At a certain point in this process you will have enough understanding of the situation to begin making a plan for how you are going to become unstuck. Start with simple steps, and add to your plan as the path becomes clearer.
11. Give Yourself Rewards – Rather than watching a movie to procrastinate, grant this treat to yourself when you have reached a goal. Make sure to recognize your accomplishments rather than focusing on all that needs to be done.
12. Be Patient/Push Yourself– There is a time to be patient with your self. You or the universe may not be quite ready for you to move. There is also a time when you need to push yourself. You have been stuck for too long or there are urgent reasons why you need to begin moving. When this happens give yourself a loving push!
    
    

It is important to remember that the calm river, the storm, and the mud flats are all normal parts of life. Neither is better nor worse than the other. We might wish that the river were always tranquil, allowing for easy rowing down stream, but it never is. Usually dealing with the storms enables us to grow the most. And it is in the mud flats that we have time to rest and recuperate. It is also in the mud flats where we can take time to select our direction for when we get back into the stream. Each of us has our own idea about what life’s journey is all about. Staying true to that, whatever the weather is, usually brings us the greatest fulfillment.