When you’re stuck, let your wins be your guide

When you’re stuck, you need wins more than anything else.

1. Wins show you what’s working now.

Even if they seem small or trivial, wins are clues that give you direction.

2. Wins generate a sense of ‘you’ve got this’, which fuels forward motion.

Hope, my friends, is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

It’s far more tempting to wait around for miraculous answers to the big questions. We’ve all given into that temptation at times, waiting for perfection, waiting to be rescued. I know I have.

But that’s what keeps us stuck.

Getting unstuck means forward motion, not paralysis or ruminating in circles. Yes, it can be emotionally and psychologically challenging, but it works.

Forward motion carries you through trials and errors till the dots become clearer and connecting them becomes more obvious.

3. Acknowledging wins keeps your mind open and tuned into your inner voice—your intuition—that shuts down when we get stuck and start sinking into the pit of despair.

The pit of despair is where we make our most desperate, fear-based decisions. Eventually, however, those decisions tend to bring us right back to stuck.

Yuck.

Our intuition is there to serve us, but we have to be willing to listen.

4. Wins keep you afloat, and signal where you need to course correct.

Keep building on what succeeds and avoiding what doesn’t work, even if it feels familiar and comfortable, and makes you feel you’re “doing something”.

5. Wins balance out the failures, even if they seem smaller in comparison.

They also help you feel more secure so you can analyze the fails and respond to them appropriately without the crushing blows of self-judgement and criticism.

When you’re stuck, go in another direction. Don’t worry about the ultimate grand plan, your soul’s purpose, how to make sense of the universe.

Maybe you don’t believe in an ultimate anything (I respect your choice), a soul’s purpose (I get it), or a universe that impacts us in any way (too woo woo? But what if? WHAT IF . . .).

It doesn’t matter.

Focus instead on winning at the next step, and then the next one, and the one after that.

In other words, focus on the now. The big questions have been around for millennia; they aren’t going anywhere.

Every time I’ve crossed the stuck barrier and lived to tell the tale, these elements have shown up, consistently, helping me make my way through, no matter how stubbornly I dug in my heels or how reluctantly I moved forward.

Eventually, things will turn around as an organic consequence of doing the hard work and your persistence.

That’s the wins adding up, shining bright, and showing you the way.

When you’re stuck, let your wins be your guide.