The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

July 27Getting Unstuck

When, in the progress of a life, a person swerves, though only by an angle infinitely small, from their proper and allotted path (and this is never done quite unconsciously even at first; in fact, that was their broad and scarlet sin,—ah, they knew of it more than they can tell), then the drama of their life turns to tragedy, and makes haste to its fifth act … These departures,—who have not made them?—for they are as faint as the parallax of a fixed star, and at the commencement we say they are nothing,—that is, they originate in a kind of sleep and forgetfulness of the soul when it is naught.

Henry David Thoreau—Familiar Letters (1894)

Do you ever have a sense of “stuckness”? While feeling stuck can imply non-movement, it's equally available to the person who “swerves, though only by an angle infinitely small, from their proper and allotted path.”

Quite often we feel stuck when we don't seem to be moving in the direction of our desires, but for the most part stuckness lives in our past. We get stuck when we stick to worn habits, patterns, and routines from our past.

Even as we realize that this past sediment doesn't serve, we cling to it rather than learn from it so as to remain firmly rooted in the present.

If you ever get frustrated with something that doesn't work, that always goes a certain way, that turned out just about like you thought it would, there's a good chance the past is powering your reality and keeping you stuck.

Close your eyes right ...