Overwhelmingly, the main reason people contact me looking for coaching is because they feet life has become stagnant in some way. They’ve often tried things in the past that haven’t helped and have no idea how to get out of the rut they’ve found themselves in. In this article, Online Life Coaching - How Claire Got Unstuck, I’ll share the coaching journey of my client, Claire, who went from feeling like she was a passenger in life to being able to identify how various thoughts and behaviours that were causing her to stagnate, as well as being able to define what she actually wanted in life and taking practical action to get there – putting her firmly back in life’s driving seat.
Where Claire was When She Reached Out
When Claire and I started to work together, she felt she was stuck in a rut. While things were “ok”, she’d realised how much her life had plateaued over a period of 3-4 years, and had reached the stage where “ok” just wasn’t enough anymore. She’d lost sight of the dreams and plans she had when she was a student and felt like she was coasting.
This feeling of being stuck extended to all areas of life – her career, her relationship with her partner, and longer term life goals. Claire felt this made things harder to tackle, as a change in one area of life would impact and influence the options she had in other areas – this had her going around in circles, making her feel even more stuck and unable to find a direction. She knew that learning how to get unstuck in her life would let her not only fulfil her potential, but also have a life that she enjoyed.
How to Get Unstuck in Life? The Process
The first thing I do with a client in Claire’s position – who know that they want more from life but don’t have a clear idea of what that actually looks like – is to get a general overview and then dig in from there. For example, while Claire couldn’t say what she wanted her future to look like, she could say that she wanted to find more direction with her life and feel like she was in the driving seat, regardless of what she ended up doing.
Although she didn’t have a clear idea of what she wanted to achieve, she had had lots of ideas of different ways forward. Each of these had pros and cons and Claire felt she had got herself in mental knots in trying to choose, causing her “analysis paralysis”. Through conversation and structured exercises, we looked at what was making the various decisions so difficult. This involved looking at Claire’s values, her styles of thinking and acting, identifying and challenging limiting beliefs, as well as getting to the root of fear around the decisions she was trying to make. Claire also felt a lot of conflict regarding identifying whether the changes she wanted were from her own wants or if she was “shoulding” herself due to society’s expectations.
Within a couple of sessions, we had identified that some of the fear Claire had was around how her decisions would impact on her sense of self as she had very strong values. We also identified that Claire’s thinking around her different potential futures was very ‘either/or’, and she looked to see where she could make room for more ‘and’ in her thinking as that would allow her to expand her options. Claire was also able to identify some unhelpful behaviours as a response to stress, which appeared to be productive on the surface but when dug into, she realised they were fuelling her stress and indecision. Once identified, she was able to come up with more helpful responses and practical steps to help her make choices. Part of this was a practical action plan we put together in a session to help with her research on career options.
Things Are Getting Less Sticky!
Towards the end of our coaching journey, a new job opportunity at Claire’s place of work came up. As this type of role had been one of the potential options she had been considering, she applied for it and was successful! This was this a huge win for Claire, and was a direct result of all the work she’d put in over the previous months, in and between our sessions together. She was learning how to get unstuck in life! As that took care of at least one important decision, we spent the remainder of our sessions focussing on her life outside work and the changes she wanted to make there.
Towards the end of our work together, Claire told me that her way of thinking had changed completely. She had moved away from the “either/or” thinking, letting her consider more possibilities. She also noticed that, while she was very pleased and excited about her new job, she wasn’t tying her identity to it as she would have done in the past. She was now seeing it as more of a practical success that would help lead to different things in the future, rather than an end destination that had any meaning about her as a person.
By the time we finished working together, Claire had just started her new role, had a practical vision for her future and had new ways of approaching life situations – she’d truly come unstuck – in a good way!
Feeling stuck can have a profound impact on our quality of life. Working on things like your thought patterns, behaviours, beliefs about yourself and those around you, as well as looking to what practical action you can take, will help you get out of that rut. These things are definitely much easier to tackle if you can get someone on your team to help you! Like Claire, you may start feeling stagnant with no idea how to get unstuck, and end up with a completely new way of thinking – and a new job to boot.
I LOVE helping people like Claire. To find out more about working with me, visit my website. For my latest, follow me on Instagram.
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