Feeling stuck? Not sure what to do?
When you don’t have a good idea, how about taking one from someone else instead of making yourself crazy, beating yourself up, or staying in your funk?
Did you know how many people have amazing ideas?
Tons, that’s how many.
The good news is, you don’t have to be one of those people.
Just borrow someone else’s idea and try it on for size.
Maybe this sounds familiar. You have things you want to do, or have, or feel, but you don’t always know how to get there. Sometimes you just feel stuck or hopeless.
But here’s the secret, the only thing holding us back AND the only thing moving us forward is what we are thinking.
(No, I’m not talking about the law of attraction.)
If we are stuck thinking things like,
Nothing will change
I don’t see how anything can get better
I can’t stick with my plans
I have so much to do
Or
I don’t know where to start
then we don’t take action. We stay stuck. Because those thoughts are paralyzing.
Full disclosure, I was stuck in “I don’t know where to start” this morning. I was literally sitting here nurturing the thought, “I don’t have any ideas.”
The obvious result was that I didn’t take any action. I just sat here looking at my computer thinking about my headache and watching the time pass by with no words on the page.
I contemplated resting. I do feel like I need some rest, and of course am a proponent of taking care of your needs on a day to day basis, but I WANTED to write this article.
So I did what I often do when I feel stuck, I asked myself what would I tell my clients to do in this situation.
And it occurred to me that I would help them find other, more empowering thoughts, something better than “I don’t know where to start”.
If they struggled with this, I would offer them some of my own.
From there, I realized that I often borrow thoughts from other people if they are ones that help me take the actions I want. This sounds tricky but it is really easy.
I love reading self-help books (yes, I take notes- it’s ok if you mock me). I try on the author’s thoughts and see how they work in my life.
I talk to other coaches and see how they frame things and try it out myself.
I scroll social, watch Ted Talks, and read motivational quotes and then picture how my life would be different if I actually incorporated those thoughts into my life.
I surround myself with positive people who support the ideas of challenging yourself in new ways.
All of these things offer me other people’s thoughts.
Some of them are REALLY, REALLY good.
Or I could sit here with the depressing thoughts of the mean girl in my head, telling myself that I have to figure it out on my own or I will stay stuck, telling myself I shouldn’t even bother.
We don’t have to figure anything out on our own.
We can 100% have amazing change in our lives just by challenging our disempowering thoughts and replacing them with nicer ones, ones that we borrow.
And the best news? It doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing to work. We can just try on one new thought, 60% of the time, and see 60% improvement toward the changes we want in our lives.
OR
Our return on investment may even be more than that, after all, this article is going to be 100% done (and 40% of me is still vying for rest).
We don’t always have to know HOW.
We don’t always have to fully believe it will work.
We just have to think of a thought that will get us to take action, and that thought doesn’t have to start out as an original one.
I know it sounds too good to be true. I dare you to try it.
P.S. Can you brainstorm where you get empowering thoughts from and share them with me in the comments? I am always open to more ideas. Coming up blank? Let’s get on a call so you can start seeing the changes you want. Click here to schedule or send me a message.
