My minimum coaching call goes for 2 hours. I spend an average of one-hour preparing and two hours reflecting and researching.

Why?

Because I care a lot about people, I’m a curious scientist and thrive at creating new processes.

Working with people isn’t a joke, and I take it seriously. Especially after my coach said to me, “If you want to be a good coach, you have to coach your a** off.” 

I did!

After conducting over 100 coaching calls, I found three main reasons that cause people to feel stuck and stop making progress.

I don’t think anyone should feel bad or ashamed of feeling stuck. I describe it as “You are probably up-leveling, you are faced with new blocks, and it requires new skills and new ways of thinking.”  

That is the beauty of being a human. We are here to expand by facing new challenges. We grow by feeling stuck first, it creates the desire for a change, and we do enjoy the progress.

The scientific luminary Alber Einstein said: If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

Following Einstein’s strategy, I’m a firm believer in spending time defining the problem. An efficient way to get an accurate description is by asking the right questions.

These are my top three questions to get unstuck today; answering each one of them has the potential to give birth to a strategy.

Question #1: Are You Doing Something About It Now?

“Ideas alone will not change the world, but deeds will.”― Dax Bamania

The amount of available information is overwhelming today. I’ve met clients who read most of the books on the planet. They know all the famous self-help gurus but never made progress.

Knowing is one thing doing something with it is another.

They formed a habit of reading and watching content to the extent it became a form of “entertainment.”

They want to move forward. But, the task of wanting isn’t equal to the task of creating.

While you are wanting, life will get in the way. While you’re passively waiting, your car will brake, and your daughter will get sick. Put simply, you will have more on your plate.

What gets you unstuck is finding the best practical set of actions to do now.

Stuckness means nothing is happing — An absence of movement or an organism with low to zero energy.

In physics, Work is equal to a system’s energy change. If the net “Work” is positive, the system moves. Otherwise, it stays stuck.

A baseball pitcher does positive Work on the ball by applying a force to it over the distance it moves while in his grip.

The pitcher has to do a powerful action to defy gravitation. Otherwise, the ball fall stuck on the floor.

What keeps us stuck isn’t the challenges that come our way, but rather because we haven’t taken positive action towards them immediately.

What set of powerful actions I can take today?

Question #2: Do you have a clear Purpose/ Goal?

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The opposite of doing nothing isn’t doing too much. It’s doing too much of the wrong thing.

Picture a dog running on the kitchen floor without going anywhere- As described by the Godfather of Coaching, Steve Chandler. The dog puts in a lot of effort while staying stuck in the same spot.

One of the significant differences between humans and animals is consciousness. We have the ability to reason and the possibility of getting self-actualized.

You have the power to choose a specific goal.

A powerful strategy to getting unstuck today is to stop taking chaotic actions and define a clear purpose.

A purpose, a clear goal, will focus all of your actions in one direction. The compounding of small and steady steps toward one central goal will produce results.

A purpose will solve time management issues and serve as a filter to select actions with a high return on your time and effort.

I’ve met many busy people, but they weren’t productive. We start by defining a purpose and get accountable for the purpose.

Who am I? and What Do I want to Create?

Question #3: What Are You Avoiding?

“ Are you running towards life or away from death” — Steve Hardison

Let’s face it! Confrontation is uncomfortable —  Whatever it might be a conversation with a business partner, a tough decision, or facing our inner daemons.

My business was stuck because I was avoiding inviting people for a conversation. My writing was stuck because I avoided sharing my thoughts out of fear of judgment.

If you want to get unstuck by simplifying your life, confront your fears, blocks, or challenges.

Once you address things, they will appear more straightforward than you imagined them in your head.

What keeps us stuck is trying to solve problems in our heads countless times instead of facing them, making a choice, and stopping avoidance.

Getting unstuck is possible for everyone as long as we shift our focus from the outside circumstances and events to our inner world. “When we change the things we look at change”- Wayne Dayer.