Do you ever feel stuck?

Not just unsure about what to do next, but so stuck and so lost that you don't even know which direction to take?

You've thought about the many options, you've tried different things, you've tried convincing yourself that it's ok, that it's all in your head... but the unease stays there, it keeps growing with time, leaving you more and more disoriented and lost.

In my experience, sometimes this happens when there is a jump waiting to happen...a jump between the Observer you have been and the Observer you need to become.

Because the way we see the world shapes the possibilities we are able to see in it, and when the way we have been observing ourselves, our work, or our relationships no longer fits where we are going, we can find ourselves in a weird jn-between.

This in-between Observer is looking for change, because the old way doesn't work anymore, but the new way hasn't been built yet. And we're so used to figuring things out in our minds that we think that we can solve it mentally too... we just forget how easy it is for our minds to change directions randomly.. and that's when we get stuck.

When the things that used to work stop working

From a coaching perspective, these patterns are not necessarily bad, quite the opposite! Most of them probably helped you get where you are, and were created for a reason.

Maybe you're used to living in urgency, and you learned to respond quickly, solve problems, push through, and get things done without taking the time to notice how you felt about them. Maybe for a long time this worked, until suddenly you're tired all the time and now you need to slow down, but you don't really know how.

Or maybe you've always been the person who is available for everyone, and you've built part of your identity around being the reliable person, the one people call when something goes wrong. Until one day you're the one who needs help, and no one is there to help you. You're struggling to ask for help, and you can't rely on anyone, and being taken care of feels uncomfortable.

Or maybe you learned the tools of your trade from a boss, mentor, or environment where working late, answering messages at all hours, and never really switching off were simply considered normal. And you became very good at doing things that way, until you realize that the habits that helped you become successful are now making it increasingly difficult to live the life you actually want.

This is where we get stuck in the in-between... because knowing that something doesn't work anymore doesn't automatically tell you what to do instead.

We don't always notice when we've outgrown an old way of being

Sometimes we keep going with the flow because it works, and so we adapt, we accomodate, we say yes, we put ourselves second, we work a little longer, we postpone rest, we become the person everyone needs us to be...

The problem comes when a strategy that was useful for one stage of our lives becomes the default strategy for every stage that follows. But after a while the circumstances, responsabilities or priorites change... we change... but our way of responding doesn't.

It's like your Observer hasn't been updated recently, and the skills they used to cope simply don't make sense anymore.

The jump

In ontological coaching, we often work with the idea of the Observer: the particular way in which we interpret ourselves, other people, and the situations we find ourselves in.

The Observer influences what we notice, what we interpret as possible, what we believe is expected of us, what we think we are capable of and, ultimately, the actions we take.

So sometimes the solution requires a deeper look at what's underneath it all: Who do I need to become in order to navigate this next stage of my life differently?

Maybe you need to become someone who can set boundaries without feeling guilty.

Someone who can ask for help without seeing it as weakness.

Someone who can rest without having to earn it first.

Someone who can lead without doing everything themselves.

Someone who can tolerate not being immediately available.

Someone who can define success according to their own values rather than the standards they inherited from someone else.

That is the, precisely, what I call the jump. And of course, jumping is uncomfortable because the old Observer is familiar, even when it isn't serving us anymore!

Thanks to being stuck... you can make the jump

Think of it this way: it's like you're on one side of the cliff, where all your Observer, past and current skills inhabit, and you can see the other side of the cliff... a place where another, better version of yourself lives, with all the future possibilites... but you're looking at the void and you don't know how to make the jump.

This, in itself, is key information... it's telling you that something that used to make sense no longer does, and that you can't keep doing things the way you've been doing them.

In the eyes of coaching, this a perfect place to pause. Because if you've already tried all the tricks, all the short term solutions and they haven't worked, so perhaps now we're way past putting in patches, and what we require is taking a deeper look at what's really missing.

This is what coaching does: it helps you make the jump.