When is the last time you remember being stuck?
Mentally stuck, perhaps emotionally stuck. Indecisive, uncertain, spinning your wheels. Not knowing what to do next. Stuck.
Maybe you’re feeling that way about something right now…
Do you know the most common reason for being stuck (in my totally unscientific, anecdotal evidence gleaned from countless conversations with clients, colleagues, and my own psyche)?
Needing to be perfect.
Yup. What often keeps us from making a decision is fear that we’ll make the wrong one. So instead we wait for someone to show up with a crystal ball and show us how each option will play out.
Which, of course, never happens. It can’t – and even if it did, wouldn’t that take the fun out of living?
While intellectually we might say, “Yes! Living, exploring, and making mistakes is fun!” – because that’s how we’re told we’re supposed to live, and it is truly what we want for ourselves – the secret reality is that our unconscious minds can be freaked out by the possibility of mistakes and surprises. And that fear can run paralyzingly deep.
Take for instance my client whom I’ll call “S.” She had entered an MBA program because she thought it might be a good step for her career, but she had no idea how she wanted to leverage her degree. There were several options before her, but all of them were either unappealing or downright scary to her. She was stuck.
During one of our healing sessions, S. was able to connect with a past life where she was an Army general. (A male incarnation, of course, because that’s who most generals in human history have been.) During a battle, one incorrect decision by the general caused thousands of soldiers to be ambushed and killed. The karmic imprint of this responsibility had come with her into this life, and her subconscious mind had been living that experience over and over, impacting her ability (willingness, really) to make new important decisions.
We worked with releasing the energy of that imprint, and by the end of that session S. was able to see a new ending for that story: The general retired to a cabin and lived peacefully until the end of that life. After that session, she was able to clearly envision how to leverage her MBA and move forward with her career in this life.
Clearing energetic imprints like this is a powerful way to move forward; however, you don’t have to wait to discover and clear all of your karma before you can get out of your stuck-ness. As much as I know how the application of energy healing can support your life journey, I also know the power – nay, the necessity – of taking action to make progress.
You can reclaim your power in any given moment by taking action. Action is stronger than any energetic imprint can be, because all that an energetic imprint can do is create thoughts. Strong and recurring as they may be, they are only thoughts nonetheless. Even a thought’s power to attract can’t outdo action.
Action, as the Angels have said it to me, is how we move energy in the physical plane.
When you’re stuck, your energy isn’t moving. Well really, it is moving, but in circles within you, rather than along a purposeful vector moving out from you.
Let’s say that you’re contemplating a big life change, like quitting corporate life to start your own healing or coaching practice. You might hold that dream but take years to do anything about it while you fret about how to go about it and what impact it’ll have on your life – all the while, getting zero done about it.
Taking action can change this. Any action, even the smallest one, will start to change how your energy moves. The tiniest action in any direction gets energy moving out from you again, instead of spinning endlessly within you.
So when you’re feeling stuck, like you don’t know what to do next, do something. Anything. Even if it’s the wrong thing.
Be stronger than those recurring, fearful thoughts in your mind. Tell them who’s boss. (You, in case that wasn’t clear.)
“Wait, back up. Did you say ‘Even if it’s the wrong thing’?”
Yup. The beauty of taking some kind of action is that you start to move, and once you’re moving you can start to course-correct.
If you’re not moving, there’s no course to correct. Think of it like driving: If the car’s not moving, you can turn the steering wheel back and forth, which will turn the wheels back and forth, but it won’t actually get you anywhere. You’re not going the wrong way or the right way – you’re not going any way.
It’s only once you step on the gas and start to move that you can tell if you’re headed in the right direction. And if you’re not, turn the wheel!
If you’ve been spinning your wheels about starting that new practice, a small action could be having coffee with someone else who already has a successful practice and could be a potential mentor. That’s enough to get some energy moving, without a major commitment and little threat of doing it wrong. And if your coffee conversation reveals that you don’t want start a practice after all, that “imperfect” action has cost you nothing but an hour and $5 for a latte.
If, on the other hand, your meeting leaves you feeling inspired, you might take another step of researching some business ideas that were discussed over coffee. When you keep taking one small step after another, they seem to small to be threatening even if done wrong, and yet they’re each enough to keep moving your energy forward.
Collectively, all of those small, potentially imperfect actions will get you to your goal.
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