Showing all posts tagged healthy patterns

How to Compromise in Relationship

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How to Compromise in Relationship

Compromise: an agreement or a settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions.

Think about the idea of compromise for a minute. What role does it play in your relationships? Do you compromise more than another? Does someone else? Is it pretty balanced? Or does it fluctuate?

Sometimes people dig their heels in until the other person, cries, blows up, or storms out of the room. There is a myriad of choices available to us when we think about ways to compromise… and ways to avoid compromise.

Someone can give in to another out of fear or exhaustion (or both). Someone can try to dominate or intimidate or manipulate. Usually, we feel better in our relationships when we find a middle ground.

However you decide to effect your compromise, it is most successful (and feels best) when it doesn’t include sulking, withdrawing, or harboring resentment against the other. If these things are happening, it probably means someone is not being completely honest with themselves about how they feel. When you compromise, it’s not so that either of you has something over the other; that’s not a genuine compromise.

The art of compromise takes willingness, openness, and trust. Making situational concessions within a relationship feels safer when these things have been built into your foundation. Interesting- when we compromise in a relationship with willingness, trust, and openness, we also solidify and strengthen these characteristics. And the more they solidify and strengthen, the less the act of compromise is perceived as a threat.

Here are some questions to think about:

 

1) *Mostly, we make decisions using arguments and yelling. (Yes/N0)

2) Often, I am/we are satisfied with how we resolve our differences. (Yes/No)

3) *I am/ my partner is incredibly stubborn. (Yes/No)

4) I believe/we believe that it is important to share power in a relationship. (Yes/No)

5) I am/they can relinquish partial control when I/they feel strongly about a particular issue. (Yes/No)

6) When we talk through the issue, we can usually find our middle ground. (Yes/No)

7) *One of us usually gives in to the other. We call that compromise. (Yes/No)

8) *If I give in, they do, too. (Yes/No)

9) *After compromising, one or both of us is left holding resentments. (Yes/No)

10) Each of us believes in meeting the other person where they are when we are working toward compromise. (Yes/No)

So, anything come up? If you answered “yes” to one or two of the questions with asterisks, you could probably use some other strategies when reaching a compromise. If you answered “yes” to three or more of the questions with asterisks, you could use some more strategies. If you answered “no” to any of the questions without asterisks, I would love to talk with you about ways that we can fortify your compromise skills.

Compromising isn’t easy, and there are times when we just don’t see any concessions we are willing to make. It doesn’t mean that you’re ill-matched or that you’re headed for divorce. It does say that you need to examine important characteristics, dynamics and wounds in (and sometimes outside of) the relationship. Let’s see what we can do.

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

Take Control of Your Insecurity

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Take Control of Your Insecurity

I have some questions for you about humor. Just think about them. How much do you notice yourself laughing throughout the day? How easily does laughter come to you? How often do you think you’re able to see the humor in situations?

I’m talking about genuine humor- not sarcasm, sardonicism, or cynicism. Sure, these approaches might make you feel witty and powerful during times when you’d rather avoid feeling vulnerable, but they require you to be pretty critical which often comes from a place of contempt. It can be difficult to benefit from the positive effects of humor when you’re using it contemptuously. There are plenty of ways to use humor in a nondefensive way.

One of the curative properties in humor is its aptitude for finding the humanity in conflict, whether it’s between you and another person, a group of people, or between you and an event. Have you ever noticed that? A joke or some other kind of levity can diffuse tension, bridge a divide, and restore compassion. When you’re using it with regard, humor is an incredibly reparative tool.

Now think about this; how often are you able to laugh at yourself? It’s great to be able to find the humor in what someone else says or does, but what about in what you say or do? What about your mistakes, perceived shortcomings, or faults? Some people find the ability to laugh at themselves elusive. They’d rather their faults go undetected and, when noticed, defend them with some amount of hostility. Usually, this promotes an increased sense of discomfort as it widens the divide in conflict.

When you allow yourself to laugh at your missteps, you immediately begin to draw your brain out of aggression, defensive anger and depending on the situation, sadness. You tap into your resilience and resource. This encourages you to be more patient, clear-headed, and less frustrated. When you are resourced, you feel more curious about your own and others’ experiences, and you are better able to connect to empathy. You are driven to strengthen the connection to another person or yourself.

Finding the humor in your mistakes takes some pressure off and gives you a little bit of breathing room. In that space you create, you’re more aware of yourself, of your choices. You can see yourself and your situation more objectively. You have less need to defend yourself because you start to see that your vulnerabilities don’t make you worthless or terrible; they make you human. You don’t need to defend yourself for being human.

So, the next time you find yourself approaching an argument (or in one), feeling defensive about something, or in conflict give yourself a chance to practice this exercise. See what kind of levity can be found in your situation. Maybe you’ll be in conflict with your partner about sharing household responsibilities. Maybe it will be during a time when you are trying to prove a point about something, and you get your facts wrong. Maybe you’ll find yourself engaged in a heated conversation with a family member about who is doing more for whom. Whatever it is, take a minute to find the humor and get some perspective. You’ll feel more appreciation for yourself and your loved ones.

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

Understand and Manage Your Feelings

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Understand and Manage Your Feelings

We seem to be fascinated by emotions. We talk about them and try not to talk about them. We think about them and try not to think about them. We roll around in them and try to avoid them. We want to understand them if not release ourselves from their sometimes oppressive grip.

We separate them into categories: negative emotions and positive emotions. Feelings that we associate with pain like sadness, anger and embarrassment become negative emotions. Feelings we associate with pleasure like happiness, gratitude, and confidence becomes positive emotions. Pleasure seekers that we are, we begin to dread the emotions we value as negative and yearn for the emotions we value as positive.
And that brings us to the end of this post; feeling sad is bad and feeling happy is good… just kidding.
What if, instead of avoiding and vigorously fighting against certain feelings, we allowed ourselves to be curious about them? What if, instead of telling ourselves, “I shouldn’t be so sad about this…” we asked ourselves, “Why am I so sad about this?” (and “What do I mean by my attempt to quantify my feeling of sadness with the word ‘so’?”). What might we learn from empathically and curiously sitting with our feelings? All of them, not just the states we associate with pain and discomfort. “What’s happening right now that I feel confident?” “How am I interpreting this event which moves me to feel happy?”
Go on. Give it a try.
A lot of people report that they begin to feel an increased sense of ease in managing their emotional life. Eventually, some people begin to report a sense of gratitude for their feelings- all of their feelings. They learn things about their motivations, their resilience, and capabilities that they might not otherwise have accessed.
As we begin to understand ourselves, our emotions and their function, we feel less desperate to push out the “bad” and hold onto the “good.” We begin to see the connection between our different feelings, that the impermanence of happiness also means the impermanence of sadness. We aren’t chasing one thing while running from another.
I recommend starting with a feeling that gives you pleasure; a lot of people identify the emotions happiness and contentment as good places for them to start. Ok, so the next time you’re feeling happy or content, ask yourself some starter questions:
What’s happening right now that I feel happy?
Why do I connect that to happiness?
What does it mean about me?
Why is that important?
The more you do this, the insights that you get from this way of thinking will produce a shift in how you view your emotions, your control over your emotions, and your control over your thought process.
It can be pretty interesting to try this exercise when you’re at work, too. If you find yourself thinking, “Man, I would way rather be at the beach right now than sitting in this chair in the office.” That might be true for you, that you experience more pleasure at the beach than when you are working, but why is that? What is uncomfortable about being at work? Why? Why do you connect what is or is not happening at work to displeasure and or discomfort?
It’s pretty common for us to think we know why we’re uncomfortable only to find out we had it all wrong. This opens up pretty remarkable opportunities.
Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

 

 

Learn How to Be More Assertive

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Learn How to Be More Assertive

If you’ve ever enlisted the “disappearing act” method as a way to put some space between you and another person, I get it. When you feel like you might need some time away from someone, want to end a relationship, or change a relationship dynamic it can be anxiety producing; speaking up for yourself can feel tricky. Sometimes we’d all rather slink away to avoid conflict.

Now and then, everyone thinks that addressing a relationship issue might result in too many hurt feelings, a knock-down-drag-out argument, or something ambiguously scary. It can be tempting to stay silent and hope it resolves itself. It’s my experience, though, that problems tend not to fix themselves and that, the longer they’re left unmanaged, the more overwhelming they can seem.

There are some things you can do to effectively express what you need from a relationship without becoming invisible and without feeling like your only other alternative is to drape yourself in aggression and hostility. Putting these things to use will help you to feel more grounded as you organize your thoughts about your experience and think about what you’d like to convey. Eventually, while speaking up for yourself might feel slightly uncomfortable in certain situations, it won’t feel as unavailable to you.

The first step to take is to explore your experience. The idea here is to gain awareness of your feelings about the situation and how they connect to your thoughts and actions. This will help you to trust yourself.

For example, let’s say you want some space in a friendship. You love your friend very much and value the relationship, and you also feel overwhelmed by the various goings on in your life. Perhaps you’re afraid to tell the friend that you can’t help them as often as they ask or that you can’t spend as much time hanging out and talking on the phone with them. Because you’re afraid to communicate this, you might continue doing things that you don’t have a chance to do. By overextending yourself, you might begin to resent your friend’s requests and experience the friend as overbearing. Maybe you start to exert less effort in the help that you lend, continue to make plans with the friend but begin to break them.

Be curious about why you’re afraid to say that you need space; what are you afraid will happen? Why would you rather overextend yourself? What do these things mean to you? As you become more aware of your feelings, you will begin to trust your experience. You will feel more secure in creating a more desirable situation for yourself.

The second step is to take the information you’ve acquired and use it to clarify the choices available to you. Will you choose to talk to your friend? Will you choose to let your resentment grow? Gaining awareness of your choices helps you to feel more empowered. When you feel empowered, you feel less inclined to suffer silently, quietly disengage from the relationship, or engage in aggressive behavior. This sense of empowerment will give you comfort when you address the situation.

The third step is to show up in an authentic way. If you’re nervous to express how you’re feeling, let the person know. Be honest about what this experience is like for you, about your fear of what might happen. However they manifest, these feelings will surface at some point, and they are so much more manageable (and a lot less scary) when you address them as you become aware of them.

Standing up for yourself can be scary, but you can effectively say what you need to in an empathic and satisfying way.

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

Learn How to Change Your Thought Pattern

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Learn How to Change Your Thought Pattern

Think about what you know. How did you come to know this?

Now think about what you believe. Is it different from what you know? Why or why not?

What we believe and what we know (and what we think we know) organizes our philosophy on life- our paradigm, our mindset. It is why we behave the way we do, have the kinds of relationships we have, and it informs our level of satisfaction with our lives. Essentially, our mindset is… us. And we are our mindset.

Within our mindset each of us has a set of assumptions, which creates our operating system. We have methods to address, work within, and challenge these assumptions. This creates the impetus for us to make particular choices on every level- how we behave in our relationships, what we do for work, how we interact, how we manage conflict, everything. It provides us with a motivation to accept or not accept.

When I ask people how they’ve come to know or believe things about themselves, they often tell me stories of interactions they have had with others, gains and losses they have experienced, and how they’ve interpreted such experiences.

It’s easy to see how some of us create a particular meaning out of the information we receive. For instance, if I experience a lot of mismanaged conflict with my family, I might believe/”know” that they don’t appreciate me. If I believe or “know” this to be true, it will impact most of our interactions, and I might begin to feel defensive around them. This might cause me to behave in an aggressive, hostile, or otherwise distancing way during our interactions. Our relationship will start to feel unsatisfactory, and that experience will fuel my belief that my family doesn’t appreciate me. At this rate, I will feel increasingly alienated from my loved ones. That mismanaged conflict will have taken a stronghold on my beliefs, my relationships, and my life.

What would happen if I start to ask questions about the conflict I am experiencing, if I wonder about the information rather than ascribe meaning to it? What if I allow myself to be curious about this experience, allow myself to challenge beliefs that I have adopted? This complicated pain will begin to shift to transparent contributing factors. I will have a better grasp on the information and what it might mean. I will be able to reorganize what I believe is happening within my relationships. My perspective will begin to change.

What if you became more curious about what you know and believe? What would happen if you challenged how shy you think you are, how smart, how needy, how sensitive, or how mean you are?

Eventually, you will feel less dependent on what you have incorporated as part of your philosophy on life because you will have begun to trust yourself. You’ll start to feel safer challenging your beliefs, less defensive when others challenge you. You’ll equate these challenges with increased learning and development. You will find that failure is not a threatening statement about your capabilities, but a chance for refinement. Where you once felt a sense of safety in defining yourself with various restrictive proclamations (“I’m… smart stupid, bad/good at relationships, a good athlete, shy, Type A, mellow, easy/hard to please, socially inept, charming,“ – whatever.), you will realize how dangerously confining they are.

You don’t need them.

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

Motivate Yourself from Stuck to Successful

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Motivate Yourself from Stuck to Successful

There are a lot of different aspects of our lives in which we can feel that we have fallen into a rut. We can go through periods during which time we feel like a relationship is in a ditch, our job is humdrum, we can’t budge a project we’ve been working on, or we feel like we’re in a general funk.

We start to say things like, “I’m stuck,” “I don’t know what I can do,” and “I’m running out of options.” We feel desperate, frustrated, and anxious. This can be a bit of a rabbit hole, and we find ourselves in the dark without a light.

So, what do we do next? How can we step out of this rut and get back on track?

First, clarify your goals. Write down what you want your outcome to look like. This can be anything from “I want to like my job,” to “I want to have a satisfying relationship,” to “I want to produce a product of which I’m proud”. The goal can start out abstract or concrete.

Second, ask yourself a few questions:
a) Why is this goal important to you?
b) What will be made possible for you if you achieve your goal?
c) What is at stake if you don’t achieve your goal?
d) What will you have to give up to achieve your goal?
e) What would have to be true for you to achieve your goal?

Here is an example of how to use these questions. Let’s say you have identified a goal to run a marathon. It is important to you because you want to feel that sense of accomplishment and because you want to see how far you can push yourself. What will be made possible by running a marathon is a new sense of your abilities and a deeper understanding of how you work. What’s at stake if you don’t achieve this goal is the feeling of a lack of discipline, inexperience of your abilities, and reinforcing the belief that you can’t accomplish a goal you set for yourself. What you will have to give up to achieve your goal is some of your free time which you will spend training and the freedom to eat whatever you want whenever you want because you will need to take excellent care of your body. What will have to be true for you to achieve this goal is that you are committed to your goal and yourself, that you are going to train even when you don’t feel like it, and that you are going to eat a healthy diet.

Third, break down your starting goal into smaller goals to be met within shorter time periods. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by a goal. The more intimidated you are, the less likely you are to feel confident about achieving your goal. Figure out smaller versions of achievement within the same big picture. About the marathon example, you might set a smaller goal of eating one healthy meal today/ running two miles today after work- something that you need to do to help get you achieve your goal, practice your self-discipline, and that feels doable.

Fourth, anticipate obstacles so that you don’t use them as excuses. Every path to a goal contains obstacles. There will be times when you have to be more flexible within the parameters you have set. There will be times when the person who wants to run a marathon gets sick, has to take a few days off from training, and must motivate to get back on track. You know that accomplishing something can be hard- you’ve been in a rut! You also know that there will be days when you’ll feel less motivated, experience discouragement by something that doesn’t go your way, and doubt yourself in various ways. None of this means that you’re on the wrong path or that you won’t/can’t achieve your goal. It means that you have to build up to it, be persistent for yourself, and think of the obstacles as valuable lessons.

Fifth, remind yourself of accomplishments past and present. You have faced obstacles and hardship on your way to these accomplishments. You can do it again. Remind yourself of what it took for you to achieve prior goals.

Sixth, keep yourself on track by regularly reviewing your goal. Orient yourself to your current progress, where it needs to be, and what else you can do to improve your progress. This will also help to validate how far you’ve come.

Try out these steps with a small goal and see how rewarding your effectiveness feels. This will whet your appetite to apply it to more complex goals. Now, go out and conquer!

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

Falling in Love- Again

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Falling in Love- Again

Feel like you need to reconnect? With the responsibility to work, family, chores, and any other commitments you have, it can be easy to find yourself spending less and less quality time with your partner. You feel tired, stressed, and stretched thin. You start to feel like you’re energy level allows you to merely flip on the T.V. and fall asleep in front of it. With this kind of pattern, your relationship can start to feel less rewarding. You want to feel closer, but you can’t seem to find the time.

While it’s great to share stories about your day, catch each other up on the latest who-did-what and your experiences, there are other, more intimate ways to ground your relationship than the standard “how was your day?” approach. Here are a few simple strategies that can yield increased positivity between you and yours.

After your long day, when you get home and see one another, initiate intentional physical contact with one another. Sometimes it might be in the form of a sustained hug and a kiss. Maybe other days it will be something more playful and light-hearted. Experiencing one another’s touch, smell, and physical proximity in this way is a powerful catalyst for reconnection.

Another impactful technique you can use is to let your loved one know how much you’ve missed them, thought about them, or how glad you are to see them. Saying the words, “You’re home! I missed you today,” or “ Oh my gosh, I’m so glad to see you,” can express to your partner the appreciation you have for them, the warmth you feel, and your desire to feel close. What they can experience after hearing those words is powerful- an experience of being nurtured, wanted and held. (And who doesn’t love feeling that?!)

Eye contact is another simple way to reground yourselves in your relationship. During an embrace, gazing into one another’s eyes can heighten the feeling of intimacy at that moment. Talking with one another about your day, how glad you are to be home with one another while making eye contact engages more of your whole self. So much can be communicated through eye contact- their appreciation for you, your need for support, mutual admiration, and so many other feelings. This can strengthen the connection between you and allow both of you to feel more held in the relationship.

Set aside technology at some point during the evening. Agree to an amount of time if you wish 20, 45, 60 minutes- whatever seems feasible, and turn off your T.V.; silence your phones, tablets, computers, and other devices you have. Turn them over or put them in the next room and focus on one another. We compromise our connection and ability to be present with one another when we split our attention. Sure, multitasking has its place, and that place is not between you and your partner as you spend quality time together.

These are just a few strategies that you can put toward reigniting the intimate connection between you and your partner. Maybe you can’t find more time, but with a few tweaks here and there, you’ll see that you can make some. And a little quality time can go a long way.

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

Are You Sex Positive… Or Sex Reckless?

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Are You Sex Positive… Or Sex Reckless?

People ask me a lot of questions about sex positivity, what it is, why it’s important, and how they can begin to lead a sex positive lifestyle. I like to make the distinction about what sex positivity is and is not. A lot of people have made and live by decisions about sexuality based on misinformation. They have experienced a lack of critical information.

On another hand, sometimes people believe that they’re already living a sex positive lifestyle when they’re living a sex reckless lifestyle. They have difficulty acknowledging that boundaries, limits, awareness, and safety play an essential role in sex positivity. So, what is the difference between sex positivity and sex recklessness? Let’s cover some of the important basics.

At its foundation, sex positivity is a desire for awareness of and an authentic respect for sexuality. It expands to said respect for and awareness of your sexuality and others’. The ability to be sex positive is informed by an ability to acknowledge your fear and the judgments, inhibitions, and missteps that can come from fear.

Being sex positive means discovering your sexual needs and wishes, gaining awareness of your sexual boundaries and limits, and using this information to enrich your sexual life and relationships. Sex positivity also means engaging in healthy and safe behavior including (but not limited to) getting tested regularly for STIs, using proper barriers such as condoms and dental dams, being honest with partners about any STI status, engaging in consensual sex with people after trust and safety measures have been established, and respecting everyone’s boundaries including your own. Honesty is a mainstay when it comes to sex positivity. Whether it’s planning a vacation during which you know, you will be using substances that alter your judgment and planning accordingly or attending to responsibilities after the fact, the more honest you are with yourself, the better your outcome.

Being sex positive means abstaining from slut and sex shaming others whose desires, activity, and behaviors are different from your own or those whose desires, activity, and behavior you believe to be different from your own.

Sex recklessness is engaging in unsafe sex (not using barriers with those whose STI status you don’t know or with those who are positive for STIs, engaging in sexual activity with others where trust has not been established, using substances while engaging in sex without established trust, and not exercising respect for your own and others’ boundaries, just to name some basics). Sex reckless behavior is manifested in the unexamined fear that you hold about aspects of sexuality which you use to avoid the conversations, precautions, and awareness that are needed to establish and maintain a safe and healthy lifestyle. The more you talk about sexuality in a way that puts you in touch with your insight and reflection, the less likely you are to put yourself (and others) at risk.

Not everyone uses the best methods for safety and makes the optimal choices in every single sexual encounter. If you are sex positive, you will be honest with yourself about these occasions, take responsibility for your part in them, and allow yourself to learn from them.

If you would like to know more or discuss this with me, please feel free to email me natalie@nataliemillsmft.com or call me (415) 794-5243.

Go on. Your sex-positive life is waiting for you!

The Benefits of Sex Education

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The Benefits of Sex Education

Sex Education wasn’t great when I was in school. I was taught that sex is dangerous and that everything, even flirtatious glances, leads to sex. I have a clear memory of adults coming into the class to tell cautionary tales of how sexual experiences emotionally destroyed their young lives.

The state of sex education in our schools is getting increasingly worse. Our youth have little to no idea about navigating their new sexual relationships, how to shield themselves against infectious diseases (or much about infectious diseases at all), the broad spectrum of “normal” which is quite different from the misnomer propelled by the mainstream that there is a handful of behaviors, feelings, and thoughts that are “normal”.

Since there are few avenues for guidance, our youth look to porn for their sex education, which isn’t always ideal, depending on which company’s films they’re consuming.

Although many young viewers know these films are made for fantasy, they continue to look to porn for any narrative on a subject that is often vehemently avoided in school and at home. Watching certain types of porn, though, most of our youth need extra guidance just for what they’re seeing so that they can differentiate between the fantasy of porn that has been provided and what they can expect with consensual partners.

Our youth are busy thinking about ways they can participate in whatever they are watching, not thinking about what goes into porn making- editing, makeup, technological touch-ups.

While porn does teach them that it is perfectly ok to express their sexuality, if youth are depending only on watching porn for their sex education, they miss learning about the communication that goes on between partners to connect, to make sex better, to learn about themselves and one another. They don’t know that they can ask for what they want or that their partner can ask for what they want and that it’s not synonymous with rejection, but that the opposite is true; as they ask for what they want, they can find more acceptance.

If we provided comprehensive sexual education for our youth, they would begin to see that sex isn’t a shameful, disgusting subject and thus, those who have sex are not shameful and disgusting, and to think about it, talk about STI protection, carry condoms, birth control, etc. is not shameful or disgusting. To have sexual knowledge, any remote sexual experience, or be sexually savvy would not be cause for slut shaming because more people would feel empowered with awareness, not afraid and unable to see their choices.

Sex is so much more than just something we do. It’s something we think. It’s something we feel.  A lot of adults are confused by this idea; we write books for them, provide therapists for them, and invite them to conferences. It is important that we approach sex education with our youth with as much compassion, intention, and awareness to help guide them so that they can explore and understand themselves without being afraid.

 

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

What to Do When You Feel Stuck

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I hear the words “I feel stuck,” multiple times a day. This phrase is uttered by clients, friends, family, and by people, I don’t know who are simply passing by. Sometimes these words are accompanied by fear and anxiety, other times by hopelessness and desperation, and sometimes, mild frustration. It’s clear that people are experiencing at least some portion of their lives as being lived under duress.

Most of us don’t readily see the choices available to us. (If we did, we probably wouldn’t feel stuck quite so often.) We feel confused by our feelings, and we begin to take long detours down the road of overwhelming despair. Feelings of guilt and shame make a lot of appearances here.

Feeling stuck can manifest in any aspect of our lives. The top categories most of us report a feeling of being stuck are in their jobs, relationships, in various behavioral patterns, in a feeling, financially, and in particular thought processes. We no longer experience as much enjoyment and whatever it was that drew us to these things in the first place, and we become preoccupied with our discomfort and unhappiness. And then, from there, it just feels like things get worse.

So, how do we regain sight of our choices? Well, we’ve lost site of our awareness. We’ll have to take some steps to reconnect ourselves to it so that we can move beyond knowing the feelings of “I feel stuck,” toward why we feel this and start strategizing solutions.

The first step toward reconnecting ourselves to this basic awareness is establishing our objective. What do we want? The objective can begin as something as broad as “to feel better” or “to feel unstuck,” though this is not where we will leave it. Gather as much information about the situation as possible and organize it. Find out the components that make up what we are dealing with, why, the roles of said components, and their importance. Prioritize these components.

The second step is to come up with actions, which meet our objectives. How will we get there? What will need to happen first, second, third, etc.? Taking what the first step produced; things like, what we want our situation to eventually look like, what we can control versus what we can’t. This will help us to gain perspective about the best way to achieve what we want.

The third step is to evaluate our chosen actions for potential consequences, both positive and negative. By taking this step, we can allow ourselves to become more aware of our motivations, the intricacies of our situation, and think critically about the strategies best suited for us. It provides forethought.

Once we see the choices available and the steps we can take toward making a change, we start to feel less stuck. We begin to experience our power. Sometimes we realize we don’t want to make the change at all. Other times, we recognize patterns never-before-seen patterns, and we begin to address those. We stop seeing ourselves as helpless and start to move into our capability.

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie