Feeling Stuck In Life? What You Can do

Feeling stuck in life

It’s a common thing to hear people say that they feeling stuck in life and not sure what to do about it. After all in this day and age, we’re inundated with choices of industries, courses, paths, hobbies, careers, religions, social networking sites and even chocolates!

So often the biggest battle in life can be settling on WHAT choice to make rather than feeling as if there are a LACK of choices.

I get to meet and know people from a broad spectrum of the community and so I see people in all sorts of situations. This even includes successful people who, despite their success, still feel a sense of being lost. A very simple solution to this problem is getting a bit of variety in your life. It should come as no surprise that if you’re just going to work, coming home, eating, watching T.V., going to sleep and waking up the next morning for work, that you’re going to feel a lack of self worth and be in a place where you’re feeling stuck in life.

Feeling stuck in life – Try voluntary work

If the above described the you from yesterday, then be happy and accept that today is a new day and that you can make a fresh start! A good thing to do is start by trying out a few things. Voluntary work is a fantastic way to go. Even if it has nothing to do with what you’re interested in it will still help you to develop your power of perspective and give you stronger resolve to make decisions.

The reason I say this is because it will give you the amazing opportunity to break down many barriers that you may have built up in your mind over time. It’s like smashing the comfort zone. If you stay in comfort long enough it gets you to a point where you almost a sense of lethargy and disinterest with life. A place, I’m sure, where you don’t want to be.

Taking up a fresh challenge will smash through some of those walls that you’ve built up in your mind. From working with children, my confidence grew massively. Not only that but I was also given free training which was huge boost to my soft skills. It also allowed me to grow through having a different kind of experience.

Feeling stuck in life – Working with children

In the early days I was thrust into a situation where I was put into a class of about thirty students, and I had to give them a workshop on preparing for work experience. They provided me with all the materials, but there was no handbook on how I was supposed to do this. I wasn’t taught how to deal with the naughty and the noisy kids. They threw me in at the deep end and I loved every minute of it!

I also work one-to-one with children and I coach and mentor them to improve the quality of their lives. I can think of no bigger challenge than this. It takes a great amount of courage to sit down face to face with a child and get them to open up to you about the challenges they’re facing. However, getting them to open up is only the first challenge.

It gets easier but you somehow have to find a way to get the trust of that child. Then, through the rapport and trust that develops over time, you can gradually begin to guide them and help them to be better than they ever thought they could be and get them to leap over any barriers they had. Once you see the results of something like that, guess what? You start to realise that you have an immense amount of potential within you too and you slowly begin to manoeuvre your life to a place where you previously thought you couldn’t be.

Feeling stuck in life – Try something new

Experiences like the one mentioned above, will ignite a spark within you and may give you some clues as to which area you would like to pursue. Even if it doesn’t, what it will do is give you the opportunity of expanding yourself. It will increase your sharpness, mental clarity and also open up a universe of new possibilities. You will feel more open and alive and those previous feelings of being stuck and frustrated will slowly start to dissipate.

Another idea to try is hospital radio which is how many famous presenters began. What more noble thing can you think of thank helping sick people get better through entertainment? You can truly turn your life around and start by doing absolutely anything! Look on Facebook, or meetup.com go to the library and find out what things there are for you to participate in. A friend of mine was telling me recently that she joined a roller blading club. During the weekend they go to places like Hyde Park and explore. (She often comes back with cuts and bruises but she absolutely loves it!)

Take a course, learn how to play an instrument, take up dance classes, try Yoga, Tai Chi or some other Martial Art. Go hiking, bike riding, go carting, bowling, paint balling, read a book of a genre that you never even thought to try before. Start a website, join a club of some sort, start some charity work, do a fun run, etc! There is so much out there that the list could just go on and on and on!

Feeling stuck in life – Get active

My biggest tip in all of this though would be to take a regular sporting activity and make sure you keep it up! There is nothing worse then starting a job and realising that your gut is growing in inches at the same rate as your age. Keep yourself in good shape by taking up a sport such as badminton, squash, tennis, football, or anything along those lines.

Playing a sport will keep you sharp and help you increase your focus, clarity and give you the extra drive and enthusiasm to take your life in a new and fresh direction. (It will also increase your libido!) Not to mention that you’ll meet lots of new people, make some great friends and even maybe make some great contacts for the future that inspire you or give you that idea or that “something” that you’ve been looking for!

Feeling stuck in life – Keep a journal

I would also suggest keeping some sort of journal or diary. The reason for this is perusing your entries often helps bring further clarity and perspective on any given situation. It’s also a good way to gauge the progress in your life. It really hit home for me when I read some diary entries of mine from a about 5 years ago and some diary entries from about a year ago and they were almost identical and my goals were exactly the same. It showed me that I had made no progress whatsoever and that something needed to change.

At first, when I saw it I became a little depressed but afterwards I realised that it was great gift. Seeing those diary entries made me realise that life can be incredibly short. Unless I chose to make something of it for myself I would wake up one day and realise that my entire life had floated by and I missed out of almost every opportunity to be happy and live a fulfilled and enjoyable existence.

If you can begin to keep a journal, and update it regularly with your fresh desires and goals and monitor it regularly, ticking off your achievements and desires as you go along then you will find that over time you will l feel much happier at having reaching and surpassing these milestones that you set out for yourself.

So, if you’re feeling stuck in life, these are just a few starting points, but the key, is to become proactive! Switch off the T.V., turn off the computer and go out there and meet some new people and enjoy the entire universe outside your front door.

25 Responses

  1. Yoga says:

    All I want to say: THANK YOU! You’ve written a great post, I like it a lot.

  2. Frederick says:

    Great Article and it’s helped me so much getting through this time when I was stuck! 🙂

  3. amanda@choosing-life-my-way.com says:

    Nice article! You have some really good ideas on getting unstuck, and embracing the possibilities that always exist if we open our hearts and minds. 🙂
    .-= amanda@choosing-life-my-way.com´s last blog ..Live Life to the Fullest =-.

  4. Amit Sodha says:

    Hey Amanda.

    Thanks for the comments and I agree that all you need to do is try new things. You may not always like them or they may not always be right for you but sooner or later you’ll come across something you enjoy! Sometimes it’s the different view point that the activity gives you is all you need.

  5. Ashwin M.S says:

    Hey Amit,

    Very nice article..I had an epiphany when I read your post. Suddenly everything seems so clear dude. “Just try new things”…how simple yet so true. Thanks Bro..I hope your article serves as an impetus to me to do something that gets me out of my slump in my life…
    Cheers,
    Ashwin.

  6. Hey Amit,

    Now that I think about it, I think this is how I started salsa dancing. I was sort of stuck in my personal life, and I decided to try something new. I had this ‘be fit’ philosophy and I was getting bored of swimming, so I decided to move to dancing. And it was one of the best decision I ever made.

    We are often hesitant to experiment. Even when we feel stuck, we will sometimes stay like that and wait for something to happen, instead of acting. And just like a body in motion tends to stay in motion, the opposite is also true.

  7. Heloise says:

    LOL at that cow!!! Such an apt entry – I love how fresh you’ve made it – very good advice as well!

  8. Reena says:

    Hi Amit, really good article. it has helped in opening my mind to the number of possibilities out there. I have always found it abit daunting in trying out new things, but it can open up a range of possibilities! This article has come at the right time 🙂

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