How To Get Unstuck and Take Control Of Your Life

It’s easy to feel stuck. To feel like there’s no way out of your situation. That life is just something that happens to you, rather than for you, or by you. Have you ever felt that success and happiness were reserved for other people, and not you?

Taking control of your life may seem like an unfathomable mystery, but actually the steps to making it happen are simple and straightforward — if you’re prepared to have an open mind and do the work. And if you are, and you’re ready to let go of the things that are holding you back and step up to life, you’ll find that life will step up to meet you.

I like to write fluffy things on my blog — about how we all have a light shining inside us, and how we’re all connected to the universe. But I thought something a bit more practical might be more beneficial to people who feel like an unwilling passenger in life, just like I did.

So, here are some powerful tools to getting unstuck, taking ownership of your situation, and creating a better life for yourself. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and even the happiest people still have bad days, but if you adopt some of these ideas, you’ll be on a good footing to turning your world around.

Acknowledge Your Situation

When things get on top of you, sometimes all you want to do is hide under the duvet, and hope that all your problems will somehow go away. At the very least, you won’t have to face them. But hiding from your problems won’t solve anything, so you have to find the courage to acknowledge the situation.

Knowledge is power, and you can’t fix things if you don’t understand what’s going on. So, if you’re in debt, find out exactly how much debt. Open those bank statements instead of throwing them unopened on top of the other unopened bills and letters. Get a good picture of your income and your outgoings. This will form the foundation of being able to fix the problem.

And it doesn’t just apply to money. If you’re overweight, understand how much you’re eating, how much exercise you’re getting, and don’t pretend those chocolate bars ate themselves. If you’re stressed out about your health, find the strength to see a doctor and get checked out.

When you arm yourself with the information of where you are right now, you’re already one step closer to being somewhere better. It can be frightening at first, but you’ll find it liberating when you get to grips with exactly where you are — and it might not even be as bad as you feared.

Stop Putting Conditions on Your Happiness

We’ve been brought up to think that the outside world will somehow reward us, and that this will make us happy. We are convinced that happiness will rain down on us when… we have a new car, when we lose weight, when we get that promotion, when we become rich, when we get that holiday, when our lives closely resemble the lives of the people on the advertisements, or on Instagram, or who live down the street.

But this is all backwards. By adding conditions to our happiness, we are actually prolonging our unhappiness by holding on to notions of things that we don’t have, lives that aren’t ours and by comparing ourselves to people who aren’t us.

Rather than thinking that we’ll be “happy when” we should instead focus on being “happy, and then…”

What I mean by this is that we should work on our happiness first and then the rest of our lives will fall into place, rather than waiting for something unrealistic and beyond our reach to happen before we choose to be happy. And we can start this process by letting go of the things we can’t control, and instead focusing on the things we can control.

Some Things You Can Control

There are lots of things in life that are beyond our influence, yet we attach so much importance to trying to control these things that we become frustrated, bitter, angry and upset. We convince ourselves that bad things always happen to us, and that life is so unfair.

But we have to understand that how other people act, how they think and feel, how the world rewards us, how our clients behave, the passing of time, the national lottery, and pretty much everything else that is not us, are beyond our control.

But here’s the paradox. The more we work on things that we can control, the more those other things outside our sphere of influence will start to line up in our favour.

So, what can we control?

With a little bit of work, we can control what we think, how we act, how we feel, and how we interact and respond to the world around us. And we do this by looking after the holy trinity of mind, body and spirit.

These three things are all connected to each other, and if one is out of whack it will impact the others. For example, if we don’t look after our bodies by getting enough exercise, enough sleep, drinking enough water, and by only consuming nourishing stuff (as opposed to processed foods, cigarettes and alcohol) it will start to affect our mental acuity, decision-making and our mental sharpness (mind), we’ll become more prone to anxiety and depression (spirit).

Our ability to function in the world will be diminished. Our performance at work will suffer, our relationships will become strained, as will our ability to “get by”. And we’ll find ourselves back at square one, wondering why life is so unfair, engaged in a downward spiral of stuckness.

But if we nurture ourselves spiritually with tools such as meditation and journaling, physically with exercise, plenty of sleep, and by consuming less junk, and mentally by engaging our brain as much as possible, the opposite will start to happen. Our performance at work will start to improve, our relationships will get better, and all those things that we can’t directly control will start to improve.

Think about this metaphor. If we keep missing our train and we’re always late to work, we’ll miss out on that performance-related bonus, and we’ll find ourselves blaming life for being cruel and unfair. We can’t control the train, but we can control when we get to the station. If we get to the station ten minutes early every day, suddenly our story changes dramatically. It’s up to us.

Become Emotionally Independent

Ever find yourself seething with anger because someone you know has a nicer life than you do? Ever boil over with resentment because someone never sends you a birthday card, or they never call or want to go for a beer? Or they take so long to reply to your text messages? Or cursing someone else because they always seem to have all the luck?

Well, prepare yourself for a bombshell…. it’s not about you. Get over it.

Stop taking it personally when someone else achieves something that you haven’t. It’s not a reflection on your life, it’s a reflection of their life. There are a million reasons why someone might not send cards or want to go for drinks. People are busy… it’s their life… you can’t control it. Stop obsessing.

But here’s what you can do. Let it go. Stop caring. As long as you’re hanging your happiness on the lives and actions of other people, you’ll always be unhappy. So, learn to celebrate other people’s successes as you would hope they would celebrate yours, and get on with living your life. If you want to see someone, give them a call. What you do is about you — everything else, isn’t.

Stop Seeking Permission, Validation, Approval

Of course, we want everyone to like us. We want to get as many likes on our Facebook posts as possible. We want everyone to nod in approval when we wear our new jacket to work. But too often we find ourselves changing what we do, how we live our lives, or even refraining from making important decisions, in order to get the approval, validation and thumbs up from others. We being living according to what we perceive the values of other to be.

But here’s the thing. They’re not living your life. And as long as you’re living this according to what you think is important to them, you won’t be living your life either. And when you’re not living your own true life, you end up living inauthentically.

So stop caring what they thing, stop seeking their approval and validation before you act, learn how to make decisions without anyone else’s permission. And before long your confidence will grow, you’ll become more decisive, and you’ll have more power and ownership over your own situation.

Ironically, when you stop seeking approval, validation and permission from others, that’s when you’re most likely to get it. Stop trying to get other people to love you — it just pushes them away and makes you unhappy. Instead learn to love yourself, and you’ll get more love, admiration, validation than you can handle. But by then you might not even need it.

Count Your Blessings

By now you’re probably sick of hearing people going on and on about gratitude. Your life sucks, what have you got to be grateful for, right?

I mean, apart from the roof over your head and the clothes on your back. And that beautiful sunrise this morning. And that tasty dinner you just ate. And that first cup of coffee in the morning. And finding out your favourite program is on the TV. And the sense of satisfaction when you step casually on to the train just as the doors are closing. And that funny text you got from your best mate at lunchtime. And that parking space you found right next to the shops. And, and, and…

The problem with us humans is that we’re trained to focus on our problems, on everything that’s missing in our lives and everything that’s going wrong. This is further exacerbated by our 24/7 exposure to capitalism and the rolling news cycle. Not only are we constantly reminded that the world is on fire, everyone’s dying, and our leaders are terrible corrupt monsters, but we’ll also never be slim enough, tall enough, drive that lovely car, and go on that amazing beach holiday.

But with a gratitude practice, we can begin to reprogram ourselves to start shifting our perspective from everything that’s lacking in our lives, to the abundance of wealth in all areas of our day. From putting on our favourite socks in the morning, to the person who smiled at us when we held the door for them, to the birds singing in the trees, we can find ourselves surround by so much goodness it can be hard to believe we never noticed it before.

And what’s great about this, is that this shift in perspective actually leads to material abundance too. When we’re focused on the obstacles, and we’re holding on so tightly to the things that are holding us back, we completely miss the opportunities that surround us every day.

But when we shift our perspective, suddenly doors begin to open for us, and life starts smiling in our direction. Our change in perspective literally changes our world.

Stop Complaining, Blaming and Judging

You know how we spoke about gratitude, that it shifts your perspective towards all the good stuff in your life? Well these three things do exactly the opposite, and invite more negativity into your life. Ever notice how the people who complain the most have the most to complain about? That’s literally because they’re solely focused on all the bad stuff and the stuff they don’t like about their lives.

And you know what? It’s draining. People who complain all the time are not fun to be around. And you don’t want to be a drain, do you?

Blaming, too, is a terribly negative act. How can we move forward when we’re preoccupied with all the people, circumstances and bad luck that’s happened to us? But you know what? As long as you’re still holding on to blame, all that stuff is still happening to you. So, stop it.

And as for judging other people? Well that’s a great way for people who have achieved and who do nothing to feel better about themselves. Because, as judgemental people, we know what happens when you try to make something of your life — you get judged right? And who wants to be judged?

Quit these three things — make it a practice — and watch as the sun begins to shine, people start to enjoy your company more, and you find yourself flourishing and stepping out and trying new things.

To Be Interesting, Be Interested

If you want people to take an interest in you, be interested in them. Be with others as you would wish they were with you, and you’ll find that you get back what you put in. If you want people to talk to you, talk to them. Find out what makes them tick, and you’ll find people thriving off your energy. Just as nobody wants to hang around with a drain, everybody loves a radiator.

And while you’re at it, why not have something interesting going on in your life to make you even more attention-worthy? Take up an unusual hobby. Learn to speak Russian. Add colour to your life and watch that spread into the lives of those around you.

Happiness is a Lifestyle Choice

Remember when I talked about the holy trinity of mind, body and spirit, and how exercise is an important part of that? Well, you don’t go to the gym once and suddenly a six pack and massive biceps appear — it’s by making it a part of your life.

It’s the same with keeping on top of things and being happy. If it’s not something that you’re naturally blessed with, then it has to become a practice. It must be something you do daily, otherwise any benefits you will have enjoyed will be short lived and you’ll be back where you started. So, bring happiness into your life, and make it something you do, as well as something you are.

One final word…

The reason it seems so hard to get unstuck is because, believe it or not, it’s easy to take comfort in the familiarity of our unhappiness. We start to make excuses — “well I would do those things, but I can’t before I do this” or “I would but I don’t have time” or “meditation, really?”

But you have to ask yourself, how bad does it have to get before you start to take the first steps out of your situation, before you stop waiting for the sun to shine on you and step out of the shadows?

If you step up to life, life will step up to meet you. Sometimes that means facing difficult truths about your bad habits, or that perhaps you need to let go the dreams you’re so desperately holding on to, but which are holding you back and causing you unhappiness.

So, here’s the thing — nothing will happen until you make it happen. So, you can either carry on as you have done, and in six months’ time see where that’s got you, or you can make a change for the better.

Yes, it takes work and it takes time, but not as much of either as you think. You really have nothing to lose, other than that sense of being stuff. So, what’s stopping you?