Have you ever felt stuck? Like there’s something more, but you don’t know what it is? You might feel tongue-tied, indecisive and paralyzed. When something stops working, we are pulled in two different directions: one is to hold onto and fix the broken and familiar, the other is to make a fresh start.
We’ve all been there one time or another.
Often this feeling of paralysis is spurred by a natural life transition (like graduation, marriage, a new baby or a new job), an unanticipated change (the sudden loss of a loved one, a divorce, a job loss or move), or simply an inner drive for self-fulfillment and a need to shake things up.
Whatever put you in this current state of mind, you’re probably feeling a combination of three different emotions: there is specter of some better future in your mind, you don’t know if you’ll be able to do “it”, and there is something weighing you down, preventing you from making forward progress.
When confronted with the uncertainty of a new situation, everyone has a tendency to cling to what’s familiar. We follow the old adage, “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t” out of a very human desire to grab onto something new, before letting go of the old. But if your brain is full and your hands are tied by the very thing that’s made you feel paralyzed in the first place, hanging on will only continue to bog you down and hold you back. Getting dislodged requires you to let go just a little bit – to take a tiny leap of faith.
I wouldn’t ask you drop everything and freefall into the void, because in reality, no one lets go into a vacuum. The first step on the road to getting unstuck is to name a “theme” for your future. A “theme” in this context is a vision, a focal point or topic – it’s a simple statement summarizing the feeling you seek. It’s the big picture view from 20,000 feet. There is a great sense of relief in knowing that you are moving in the right direction, but are not yet required to make any specific, binding decisions. A theme changes your mindset from overwhelmed to energized, defeated to excited, paralysis to motion. You’ll hold tight to that feeling until the exact details of your future fall into place.
Some readers might jump at the opportunity to develop a theme; others might not feel as confident. People less excited about the prospect of a theme might feel like they can’t want what they want, only know what they don’t want, or really want what they had. Keep these three things in mind as you name your theme.
· Your theme should be broad enough to impact all the different areas of your life. Ideally, it should be the lens through which you see every interaction.
· At this point your theme should only be an expression of how you want to “feel”, not exactly what you want to “do”. Keep it simple. You can always refine the particular language of your theme, for now just pick something that makes you feel energized.
· Give yourself permission to say what you actually want, not what you should want. Don’t self-censor and don’t impose external expectations (from friends, family, co-workers, society at-large, etc.) on what the next phase of your life should be about.
Now, how do you actually come up with your theme? Naming a theme requires a certain spirit of open-mindedness and an effort on your part not to self-censor. These three techniques will help get you started.
Listen for the quiet knock. Choices we make over the course of a lifetime bring out certain aspects of our personalities and ignore others. We often edit ourselves as we get older, forgetting past interests in order to make easier sense of our current lives – it’s hard to develop our intellectual, social, artistic, athletic selves all at the same time. Answer the following questions and see what you come up with. What interests did you used to enjoy, but haven’t had a chance to do for years? What activities challenge you in a joyful way? What dreams have you been unable to pursue because of life choices and circumstances? Find the courage to listen to your conscience. What unexpressed aspects of your personality are you ready to give a voice?
Look to the past for clues. Steal away to your attic or basement and take a couple of hours to look through old photos, scrapbooks, your high school yearbook and college term papers. Memorabilia of any kind is a “theme” treasure-trove. What used to interest you? What clubs did you used to belong to? What aspect of your old self would like to reconnect to? What do you miss? Remember, you are looking for the “feeling”, not necessarily a specific activity (like the glee club, anthropological study of Indonesian craftswomen, etc.) Maybe in high school and college you were a star musician – first chair in the orchestra. You loved music, but really, you loved to perform. Perhaps “performance” is a missing piece of the puzzle in your current situation.
Connect the current dots. If a search through the past doesn’t work for you (plenty of people are happy to leave high school memories in high school!), see if you can find a pattern between recent changes in your schedule (or space) and your current activities. You might be unwittingly leading yourself in a new direction. I once had a client who worked in IT for a pharmaceutical company. For years, she did system-design and advised her company on 21st century technology challenges. Then, one day, she was abruptly laid off during a company-wide downsizing. Today she’ll tell you being fired was best thing that ever happened to her (even though that’s not how she felt at the time!). After a few months of collecting her severance package, she started looking for a new job. In the interim, she’d started teaching an intro level computer science course at her local community college and had also become a certified spin (cycling) instructor at her healthclub. As she networked with her old IT colleagues, she found herself migrating away from the “research” component of systems-design and towards “training” and more personal interaction. If her old theme had been about “developing my intellect”; her new theme was all about “connecting on an intuitive level.”
You’ll know your theme first time you hear it. It’s like hitting the sweet spot on a baseball bat, being in perfect harmony with your favorite song on the radio, or making the perfect tomato sauce. It just feels right. Exciting and a little nerve-wracking, yet undeniable in it’s ability to lend a focus to your future, your theme will help you keep the big picture in mind, but keep you tethered to your daily life, helping you decide what belongs and what doesn’t. Through this new lens, almost anything seems possible.
