Feeling stuck? How to get out of it.

Are you feeling stuck in life? Or just stuck in a mental state? Having your mind play the same thoughts on loop? If you came reading this article, I think I can safely assume that these thoughts are not really positive and are leading you to desperation.

Why does our mind keep thinking about the same thing over and over? Why does our mind start working against us when we need it to cooperate with us the most?

We start feeling further away from ourselves. Everyday things stop making sense. And the smallest of incidents bring out irritable behaviour.

If you know what I’m talking about, you know how painful it is to be in this state. Almost feels like somebody is suffocating you and you’re not able to fight back because it’s you who is doing it to you.

In these moments, just try and treat your mind as a separate entity from yourself. Try and observe your thoughts and thought patterns as a third person. Understand what it is that your mind is trying to do to you.

Mostly, you will find that it is trying to keep you safe, and comfortable. 

Those of us who are growth oriented in life, who are constantly seeking new challenges, continuously looking to upgrade ourselves, our passion, our drive, our grit, our conviction is often led by our heart.

And that’s where the khichdi starts cooking. You know you have to set out chasing goals fiercely but the mind guiding you towards safety ultimately turns into an internal turmoil we are not able to comprehend. 

Just this understanding about the self will help you break your confusion a little more smoothly.

Once you are able to see your mind as a separate entity and look at it from a third person’s perspective.. Often enough, you will suddenly start untangling the knots in your head.

You will be able to separate out different issues cropping up from each other.. And then look at each one of them individually.. Slowly and steadily.. Start to make some sense of the various nodes.

As you start seeing bits and pieces of clarity, start writing. Write down everything that is in your head. Each problem as a headline and then all its knots under it as pointers. Do not filter your thoughts. Just keep writing and scribbling.

Once you have crossed this step, you would have successfully separated all the confusion and put it into different buckets. And now, just work on each one of them one by one.

By having an entangled mass of thoughts in our head, it is easy for us to keep moving in circles and loops.

But once you have separated out the confusion into smaller micro problems, and you deliberately try and think about only one problem at a time, you basically force your mind to think linear, to move forward, to either find a solution to the problem, or find your next actionable step that you need to take, which will get you closer to the solution. 

In times of feeling stuck, force yourself to think linearly. Do not leave a thought unfinished. Identify the solution, or identify the next step. And move forward.

Jai Jinendra