Have you ever felt stuck but didn’t know why? Or worse, didn’t know how to get unstuck?

Photo Credit: Chris Beckett via Compfight

Recently I had a stuck experience with marketing my book Paid To Be You. I want to market my book more effectively to get the word out but I felt like I needed to do some research on how to market it strategically. So I found some great resources and started to devour the topic of book marketing.

The problem is I love to research things to death. Give me a topic I’m interested in or are struggling with and I’ll hit every book, blog, and seminar available on the topic.

Long story short, I’ve decided to give my book away for free on Amazon as the next step of marketing my book. I made that decision and guess how long it took me to take action on it?

About three weeks.

I’m not kidding. Giving. The. Book. Away. For. Free. You’re probably thinking, uh, that sounds pretty easy Adam.  

You’re right, it’s easy. However, there are many experienced people out there who say not to do it. There are also a lot of experienced people who say to do it. How do I choose? I know…more research to find the “right” answer.

Wrong.

Last week I decided I had enough information. What I need is action.

The Real Story

So why was I so stuck and not taking action? Although my cover story was needing more information I think it runs deeper.

I was stuck because I knew taking action meant the potential for rejection existed. Yes, giving the book away for free is easy, but what if no one downloads it? Or worse, they download it, hate it and I get twenty-five 1 star reviews?

This was the real reason I was stuck and I imagine I’m not alone.

How About You?

Have you ever experienced this? Have you stalled on taking action toward a goal because you weren’t sure you could handle it if your wish didn’t come true?

Are you staying in your current job because you might regret leaving for something new?

Have you delayed on starting a business because you may find out you don’t have what it takes to be successful in that industry?

Does your debt keep piling up because you’re afraid you won’t be able to make any headway on paying it down?

This issue can crop up in any area of our lives.

So How Do We Deal With This?

Here are three ways to effectively deal with getting stuck:

1. Pre-determine how much information you need before you’ll take action. Decide in advance what your minimum level of research is going to be. Either by a time limit or amount of information.

2. Imagine the worst case scenario. Can you live with it? What’s your back-up plan? If you can answer those questions sufficiently then you’re ready to go.

3. Do the work. There comes a time when you have to move forward in faith. If you know in your heart this is something you want and the research agrees, then get moving.

Getting stuck is a natural part of life and it can actually help us grow and learn if we navigate the experience well. If you can deal with the root cause of why you’re stuck you’ll free yourself to get where you want to go.

Question: What has helped you to get unstuck?

[box type=”info”] I’ll be giving my book Paid To Be You away for free on Amazon on May 28 – 29th. If you want to be notified when it’s available for free sign up to receive my blog posts in your email. [/box]

Maybe you’ve had a string of bad days at work and at some point begin thinking you’re unhappy.

Miguel Angel via Compfight

Here’s what I’ve found to be the secret to solving this problem.

Unhinge your mood from your career.

Yes, there are jobs and careers that are a poor fit for you and you can do something about that.

Yes, your work is important and it’s often one of the best ways to use your gifts and talents. 

However, your career is just one component of a life well lived. 

Instead, be sure to make deposits into each of the areas of your life:

1. Spiritual
2. Personal Development (knowledge, education, self-improvement)
3. Physical Fitness
4. Family
5. Career
6. Financial
7. Friend Relationships

View your life from a holistic standpoint so when one area is not going well you’re not completely devastated. 

Careers, like our lives, have their ups and downs. When you’ve invested in multiple areas of life you can weather the inevitable storms.

Question: What has helped you weather the ups and downs of your career (and life)?

Rest.

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We weren’t designed to constantly be on the go and constantly work.

This past week I gutted the kitchen of our new house to get ready for a kitchen remodel (more to say about that later) and, I must say, I’m tired.

I need to rest, so I’m taking this week off from blogging.

Rest up and I’ll see you here next week.

The “experts” told everyone the human body just wasn’t capable of doing it.

Bart via Compfight

Then on May 6, 1954 Roger Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes.

Only 46 days later an Australian runner broke Bannister’s record.

Since that time numerous people have run a mile in under four minutes.

So what happened?

Did the physical abilities of human beings suddenly change?

No, but the belief and expectations of what could be possible changed.

How This Relates To Finding Your Passion

Often we don’t believe we can find our passion.

The “experts” in our lives tell us that finding your passion and loving your work is just not possible.

No one likes their work, they say.

They set the expectation that you’ll never be in a position to love what you do for work.

As a result, many people live their lives with the artificial barriers they’ve placed in their minds.

What You Can Do About It

Your level of belief determines the outcome you experience.

What beliefs in your life are holding you back?

Are you telling yourself you don’t deserve to get a better job, find a spouse, have more money, have meaningful friendships, or find your passion?

Are these things really out of reach for you or does your level of belief that you can attain them determine your outcome?

Sometimes you have to believe in the outcome before you know how you’re going to get there.

How To Change Your Thinking

If you want to change your current reality the best thing you can do is spend time with people who already have what you want.

If you want to have more money take a millionaire out to lunch and ask them questions.

If you want to know how to have an extraordinary marriage find a couple who’s been married for 30 years and spend time with them.

If you want to find your passion spend time with people who are living and working in their passions.

Jim Rohn said you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

Who are you spending time with?

Are they influencing your thinking positively or negatively?

If you don’t believe you’re the best candidate for a new job, the company won’t either.

If you don’t believe you can pay off your debt then you won’t.

If you can’t envision yourself achieving a new goal you never will.

You have to believe you can achieve a new reality first and then you’ll figure out how you’re going to get there.

Think of how you can change the beliefs of everyone around you if you find your passion and do work you love.

Maybe you’ll be the Roger Bannister of your personal circle when it comes to work and careers.

Who knows, maybe you’ll change the course of history too.

Question: What negative beliefs have held you back in the past? How did you overcome them?

It tends to color everything else in our lives.

Rishi Bandopadhay via Compfight 

However, sometimes the problem isn’t the job.

Sometimes the problem is us.

When I was working in a job that drained me both emotionally and mentally I would come home with, what my mom used to call, a B.A.

I know what you’re thinking.

Why were you carpooling with B.A. Baracus?

Although it would have been cool to ride share with Mr. T, I’m afraid it’s something worse.

A bad attitude.

I knew I had to make a change but I couldn’t figure out what to do or how to do it.

At the time I blamed my dislike for my job on the job. Certainly it was a stressful and emotionally draining job.

However, looking back I realize I was allowing my circumstances to dictate my level of happiness and enjoyment of life.

Since then I’ve gone on to discover, as Dan Miller says, “happiness is very much an inner game.”

When we allow circumstances to control our level of happiness we’re very vulnerable.

If our happiness and contentment is based on the sun being out we’ll find ourselves in trouble on a cloudy day.

When we decide in advance we’re going to be happy we have taken control of our mood and only we can decide if we’re going to be happy or not.

Now I’m not saying we can all just put a smile on our face and everything’s cool.

That seems a bit naive.

What I am saying is that we have control over how we look at our circumstances and where we focus our thinking.

So how do we change our thinking in order to handle the inevitable ups and downs of life?

Ask Better Questions

One of the best things we can do is begin to ask better questions.

A really great question we can ask ourselves when something negative happens is this (hat tip to Michael Hyatt):

“What does this experience make possible?”

Do you see the benefit of this question?

Asking this question moves you from thinking about the past – which you can’t do anything about- to thinking about the future.

Most times there are positive things you would never have experienced if you didn’t have the negative circumstance.

The challenge lies in being able to see those positive benefits even when you’re hurting inside.

Keep A Gratitude Journal

When you start writing down what you’re grateful for it shifts your thinking.

Changing your focus from what you don’t have to what you already have changes everything.

My wife recently wrote a children’s’ book and designed accompanying gratitude journals. As a result my family and I have started keeping a family gratitude journal.

I can tell you since we started this process I have felt more happy than I ever have in my life.

The same can happen for you.

Keep a gratitude journal for 21 days and see if you’re not more happy, productive, and moving closer to your career goals than you were before.

If you’re struggling with being able to enjoy your work it will be a life changing shift to move the problem from “out there” to “in here.”

You may still need to make a move to change careers if you’re work isn’t an authentic fit for you.

However, the good news is when it’s “in here” you’re the one who decides when the sun comes out.

Question: What’s another way we can focus our thinking on the positive?

In high school Gary was always in the auto shop classroom and never in the library. He was that guy.

Yasser Alghofily via Compfight

However, when the time came he thought he needed to go to college in order to get a good job.

He went through college hating every minute of it, wishing he could spend more time refurbishing the 1969 Chevy pickup waiting in the garage at home.

After graduating from college with a low GPA and a headache, Gary went looking for a job.

With no real direction, Gary took the first job he could get because he knew somebody who worked there and they got him the job.

Gary was pretty miserable most days. Working in a cubicle, sitting in front of a computer screen, and doing work that he was not designed to do well.

The trouble was Gary couldn’t see a way out. He thought he was on a career path for life and there were no exit doors.

Sound familiar?

Unfortunately, this is an all too common way to choose the type of work we do.

For those who don’t like what they do I’ve noticed three typical factors in how they chose their work.

• They chose work that just pays the bills and didn’t think about whether or not they liked it.  
• They chose work they thought they might be good at or other people told them they were good at doing. 
• They chose work based on the kinds of work models and industries they were exposed to and were easily available to them (i.e. corporate employee, government, manufacturing, agricultural, self-employment, etc.) 

The problem is we often choose a career based on short term needs and overlook our ability to be intentional about our careers. Trust me, I know supporting ourselves and/or a family are absolutely important needs – short term or not.

However, when it’s time to make decisions about the type of work we want, we have the pressure of short term needs combined with the lack of personal insight needed to be intentional about our career.

Like Gary, we can feel stuck in a job or career path with no hope of something better. So what do we do?

If you’re in this situation I encourage you to look at your current work as a stepping stone to something greater.

The work you hate now could be planting a seed that will blossom into enjoyable work in the future.

Take this time to look inward at who you are and pay attention to what you’ve learned about yourself with your current work situation.

You may have only discovered what you don’t like, but that is part of the process of finding your passion and ultimately finding work you love.

Gary’s now working toward moving into a career he will love. He’s grown a lot and he is more sure of what he wants to do every day. And yes you guessed it, he’ll be working with cars.

Question: How do you think most people choose their careers?

[box type=”shadow”] If You Feel Like Gary Try This Exercise: 

Write down ten things you’ve learned about yourself as a result of doing the work you’re doing now? Then go through your career history and do this for each job you’ve held.

• What types of activities energized you?
• Which activities drained you?
• What is something you’re really proud of accomplishing in your work thus far?
• Was there a time when you failed in your work? What lessons did you learn from that? [/box]

Receive my free ebook 5 Essential Steps to Landing Your Dream Job when you join the Work You Enjoy newsletter list. Sign up here.

Fernando Valenzuela via Compfight

In one case the person seems to want to have friends and relationships but has great difficulty navigating the sometimes delicate intricacies of maintaining a friendship.

Another person has lost significant connections to business contacts and forfeited potentially thousands of dollars of income as a result.

In my own life I have said and done things I know have cost me in different ways.

On the flip side, I’ve witnessed people consistently handle relationships and stressful situations with grace and poise.

So what was the difference between these successful people and the others?

It may be several factors, but one I continually notice is the high level of self-awareness the successful people appear to have.

In order to be successful in your career it will eventually come down to how you handle your relationships with those you interact with.

Self-awareness is essential to navigating those relationships successfully.

Here are six ways to become a more self-aware person:

1. Self monitoring. Ask yourself what impact your behavior has on the people you interact with.

2. Getting Feedback. It can be scary, but asking for feedback from friends and family about how they see you show up in certain situations can be invaluable. We all have blind spots and there is just no way we’ll know the full impact we have on others unless we ask them.

3. Reading. You can learn how to be more self-aware by reading books like “How to Win Friends and Influence People” or “The Magic of Thinking Big”. These books act as a road map to provide principles you can apply to every situation.

4. Put yourself in others’ shoes. Empathy comes more naturally for certain personality types but having the ability to switch your viewpoint to how others may think is the secret sauce of self-awareness. Equivalent to writing upside down, if you can envision how someone else may be perceiving your actions and speech you will be able to self-monitor accordingly.

5. Observing others. Find a role model to pattern your behavior after, or maybe a combination of role models. It helps to be able to watch a self-aware person in action. Just look for someone in your life who seem to have the respect of everyone you know and who treats everyone graciously and with kindness.

6. Get a mentor. This is easier said than done, but if you can find someone to help guide you through your life and career you will achieve more than you thought you could. Preferably someone with great wisdom and tact who has led a successful life thus far.

Becoming self-aware is a gradual process, and not necessarily an easy one, but it will reward you abundantly in all areas of your life if you strive for continual improvement in this discipline.

Question: Have you noticed others who are self-aware? What impact does it have on their careers and lives?

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(Note:Some of the links in the post are affiliate links)

You gave it everything you had and then some?

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Whether your area of performance is business, athletics, music, or art eventually there is a line you won’t be able to cross.

But have you been there?

Like a high jumper who knocks the bar off, do you know how high you can go?

Bob Fisher is pretty amazing but he says he knows he can go further.

Who is Bob Fisher you ask?

Bob Fisher is an every day guy who lives in Centralia, KS (town of 500) who designs farm drainage for a living.

In his small town Bob was an average basketball player in high school. The fourth of 10 children, Bob has held the same job for 24 years, has coached local boys basketball teams and has never had a winning record.

Yet Bob can do one thing better than anyone on the planet.

He can shoot free throws like nobody’s business.

He has made 33 free throws in 30 seconds, 50 in a minute, 92 in two minutes, 448 in 10 minutes, and 2,371 in an hour – nearly 40 a minute.

He holds numerous Guinness world records for free throw shooting and says he still hasn’t reached his potential.

If you’re familiar with basketball you know this is an amazing feat of human physical performance. (Just ask Shaq)

Bob starts shooting free throws at 6:30am every day before work and then shoots for two hours after work.

He reads books on shooting technique and the physics of basketball.

He puts his pants on just like you and me – one leg at a time.

Except once his pants are on he makes an unbelievable number of free throws.

So how does this relate to you?

What are you working toward right now?

A promotion? Increasing your sales? Getting a better job? Running a faster mile?

How hard are you working on it?

Are you working as hard as Bob Fisher?

Have you achieved the sort of results Bob Fisher has achieved with free throws?

Only you know the answers to those questions.

Keep working hard to achieve your goal and maybe someday you will do something extraordinary and be able to say you still haven’t reached your potential.

Question: Have you ever met someone like Bob Fisher who is extraordinary at something? Was there anything different about them?

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If you had it, you know you’d be a happy and well adjusted person.

Photo Credit: Alex via Compfight

You just know you’ll be happy when…

You get that job, find that spouse, have a child, get that car, that purse, fill in the blank.

It’s a dangerous game we all play.

The game of looking to things outside ourselves to make us happy.

What if we could be happy without even having to do anything, buy anything or go anywhere?

What’s the solution?

Stop looking for happiness.

Start looking for gratitude.

We all want something. That something changes as we grow and develop, but our desire to fulfill our needs and wants remains.

The key is to never lose sight of what is already good in your life. You can be content while you improve your life and your career.

Here are five ways to stop looking for happiness and start looking for gratitude:

1. Ask yourself, what am I grateful for right now? As part of that, ask yourself to Whom am I grateful? You may have some real difficulties in your life. Things that stifle any sort of positive outlook on life. However, my guess is you have at least one thing you are grateful for in your life right now.

2. Exercise. Don’t you hate it when people (me) say this? But it’s so true. If you exercise, even minimally, you will elevate your mood. The way you frame your life and your struggles changes when you exercise. You will have more energy to work through your struggles.

3. Embrace your struggles. Ask yourself, what do your current struggles make possible? Is there something you would not have been exposed to or learned if you had not struggled with a particular thing?

4. Create a gratitude journal. Research has shown that people who write down what they are grateful for will be happier as a result. You’ll be amazed at what happens when you write down that first item you’re grateful for. Most people experience a flood of items they are grateful for when they stop and write them down.

5. Look to the future. If you’re feeling down it is likely because you’re thinking about the present or the past. When we look towards the future we can see possibilities and have hope that our current reality will be changed for the better. We can get through anything when we have hope.

So the next time you find yourself thinking you’ll be happy when you get _____, start thinking about what you’re thankful for right now.

You’ll thank yourself later.

Question: What are you grateful for right now?

(If you liked the post [or not] leave a comment below.)

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I had just finished reading The Flinch by Julien Smith.

Photo Credit: Ibrahim Iujaz (Creative Commons)

The Flinch is a book about doing things you’re scared of doing to get what you want in life. This book reminded me that sometimes avoiding pain can be costly.

A couple of years ago I had an opportunity to facilitate a two day time management training for an organization. Everything was great except I had never provided a formal training at this level before.

I was scared out of my mind.

Every self-defeating thought I’ve ever had reared its ugly head as I tried to prepare for this training.

What if I completely forget how to explain the material? What if I don’t pace the class correctly and we’re done for the day at lunch time? What if? You get the picture.

All of these irrational thoughts ran through my head.

However, I committed to doing the training and I knew there was no way out. So I prepared as well as I could and I put my heart into it.

I’ve noticed this repeatedly in my life and in the lives of others. When you do things that scare you:

• You will find out how far you can go. A high jumper can only know when they are performing at their highest ability when they knock the bar off. The same goes for you and I. We can only know our highest potential when we stretch ourselves.

• You will be less fearful in your life. You will find that there are fewer things to fear in life when you do something you were initially afraid of. Your response to life changes from being cautious to welcoming new challenges.

• You will increase your confidence. Guess what happens when you do something you weren’t sure you were capable of? Your confidence skyrockets. Achieving success in one part of our lives often transfers to other parts of our lives as we become more confident.

So how did the training turn out? It went fine. I received positive feedback and high scores from all participants. My fears turned out to be nothing but an illusion.

Also, why did I step into an ice cold shower after reading The Flinch? You’ll have to read the book to find out. (It’s a free download)

Question: Do you know someone who has done something “scary” in their life? How did it turn out for them?

(If you liked the post [or not] leave a comment below. You’ll get a response.)

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