Why am I stuck?

This is something I have seen on FaceBook and Instagram posts and heard in response to the commentary of others on social media. Someone will ask "Why am I stuck?" after a monologue about how they are burned out and the job they loved so much is now the bane of their existence. The joy they once found in the pursuit of their new career has plummeted and all there is left is the doldrum of the day to day and the nagging question of whether or not they should move on or if their job can be saved.

I see so many posts about the laziness of coworkers, the frustration with management at all levels, the lack of money and respect, and a sudden urge to move in a different direction with their career/life. I see people confused as to how they got there. When I question them, they have a hard time pinpointing when this pivot in their feelings occurred. Like all things in our lives, I am relatively sure that this is not "new" and sudden, but crept in like an insidious disease.

We take little insults to our emotional well-being, our values, and our self-esteem and tuck them away, day-in and day-out. The things we label as "one-offs" turn into every day. We dread discussing or confronting it. It will "get better eventually". But eventually turns into every day. And we start at some point to dread the way we feel about our lives and careers... and this even bleeds into our lives at home. We even start to question our identify altogether and wonder if it is time to bail on our work that meant so much to us that we scraped and sacrificed to get there.

The problem is, we are down in it. We are unable to see a forrest for the trees. We may feel like we are drowning and need someone to reach down into the shallow pool we are face-down in and pull us up to see that we can indeed swim - even stand - in the current we are in. If any of this sounds familiar, this is where personal coaching and - maybe even therapy - come into play. We have to stand back and look at the timeline and the pieces. We have to decide what matters and what we can let go of... what we can fix and what we can't... what is ours to own and what is really out of our control.

In the end, it is a lot easier and faster to have a teammate on your side to help you pull yourself up to the surface and unstick your well-treaded wheels out of the mud. You can move forward, and maybe you just need a little help getting traction under the wheels. You can also decide to stay where you are, feeling the feelings and building the stress response....