How To Get Unstuck

Today, I’d like to share a few quick tips I use to help myself and my clients get unstuck when we find ourselves knee (or neck) deep in emotional muck that is blocking or sabotaging our purpose and ability to love and serve ourselves and others sustainably.

In this entry, I’ll be addressing a few topics, in case you’d like to skip ahead or go directly to the solutions for the muck you are currently dealing with:

• What is the muck?

• What causes the muck?

• Dealing with self-doubt

• Getting clear when you are confused

• Why you are experiencing this particular creative sludge

If, however, you are experiencing muck that I’m not addressing in this entry, definitely leave me a comment below and I’ll continue this conversation at a later date and attempt to address your specific form of muck.

What is Muck?

We’ve all experienced it, those days, weeks, or months of indecision, confusion, and paralysis that keep us from sharing our creative gifts.

In the art world, you often hear the term “creative block” when describing muck. But you don’t have to be an artist to find yourself creatively, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally blocked.

Most people experience some form of creative muck, from a lack of confidence or self-doubt to paralysis of thoughts, actions, or ideas.

What Causes the Muck?

There are a myriad of reasons why you may be feeling like you’re wading through a molasses-type sludge of the mind and heart:

• Someone said something that made you feel small or foolish

• You’re stressed by financial or other heavy life woes

• You had a major failure in the recent or not so recent past

• You’re overwhelmed by the rise in social bullying and are afraid to speak your truth because of how others might react

• You’re working on a project that is requiring you to do something you’ve never done before

The list could go on and on.

So, what causes you to get stuck in the muck? In short, anything that robs you of your sovereignty will pretty much throw you into the deep end of muck.

Let’s look at the most obvious forms of muck and how to get unstuck when you’re buried in it.

Dealing With Self-Doubt

Nine times out of ten, the muck you’re experiencing is due to some level of self-doubt that is the result of past failures or negative interactions with others. Today, I’ll be addressing the latter.

If you are experiencing self-doubt because of what someone said or did to you, somewhere along the way, you gave away your sovereign power of knowing who you are and what is right for you to someone else, most likely a critic of some sort, and probably one you know well.

This critic could be a parent, a friend, a work associate, a partner, a child, or anyone else you’ve interacted with throughout your life.

These critics often show up in the form of memories you have of something someone said or did to you that lessened your self-confidence and you filed it away in the recesses of your mind so it would be easily accessible in those moments you habitually remind yourself of your failings and incompetence.

Why would you do something so self-destructive? Because self-doubt is, more often than not, a subconscious method we employ to keep us in the good graces of whoever we are trying to please.

Let me say that another way. People don’t criticize you because they like what you’re doing or how you’re expressing yourself. They criticize you to make you stop.

Criticism isn’t positive or helpful, it’s a selfish reaction and a tool I’m sure we have all used at one time or another to make someone else feel small so that we can feel big.

Self-doubt, born from outside criticism, is you shrinking down yourself to make others feel bigger and better, so you can go on being accepted instead of rejected by them.

The problem

Self-doubt is most often a result of negative, not positive, interactions with others. Parents, teachers, and so-called friends, chose—probably due to their own self-doubt—to intentionally or unintentionally take a jab at your self-worth and sovereignty with their self-serving judgments and opinions.

Criticisms are generally offered by way of someone else’s insecurities, and are most often, unhelpful and even meant to be harmful.

Yet, we give our power away to criticisms because we are taught early on to trust others judgment over our own, especially those who we believe to be the experts, and if the so-called experts think we’re stupid or faulty, we must be.

Sadly, because of our need to fit in, feel loved, liked, or accepted, we absorb criticism from others like it is medicine that will protect us from ourselves and keep us socially healthy.

The solution

First, recognize that you don’t need to protect yourself from yourself.

Certainly, we all need to learn how to properly manage and govern our lives, habits, actions, and our gifts, with wisdom and foresight. Yes, that includes receiving critiques and useful forms of advice and feedback, whether expert or not, when we are out of line or struggling to find a solution to a problem.

But negative criticism is rarely, if ever, a reliable source from which to reframe or change one’s character or deepen one’s self-worth and value. Criticism simply teaches one that they cannot, and even should not, trust and put faith in themselves.

The goal IS to trust yourself and to take back the power those negative criticisms stole from you.

Although it can be difficult, it is important to sort through the negative voices in your head and then do some mental and emotional clean up.

One of the ways I do this for myself is to give a name and a face to the negative conversations happening in my head.

Who said that mean thing to me?
When did they say it?
Do I really believe it was an accurate observation?
What do I think of that negative criticism now?
What positive affirmation would I like to replace it with?

As I take time to address each object of self-doubt as it comes up by giving it a name, a face, and a time and place, I’m able to begin the process of elimination that is crucial to taking back the power I gave up when I attached my worth and value to some insecure critic’s opinion.

Once I have identified the culprits and the negative thoughts they brought into my life, I invite them to leave.

Certainly, some of those negative thoughts and the memories associated with them are tough to weed out. Some cling to you like a static-ridden garment and don’t want to let go. But with some persistence, you can be free of those negative and destruction thoughts.

Case study 1

Here’s a quick example. I had a friend in high school that I felt very close to. We had been friends for years, even. One summer, I went on vacation with my family for a few weeks and when I returned, I called her up straight away, excited to see her after being gone so long.

Her voice on the other end of the phone immediately put me on my guard, and my instincts were right, she was upset and frankly told me we couldn’t be friends any more. She listed a few of her reasons, all of which were surprising to me and could have been remedied with some honesty before I left, as I had no idea she had been scrutinizing my behavior so acutely and for so long.

I was devastated, and what’s more, her harsh and sudden rejection confirmed self-doubt I had been fostering already and for some time, self-doubt born out of negative criticism I had received from another person close to me, comparing my inadequacies to the abundant abilities of my friend. “Why can’t you be more like her?” was a question I heard more than a couple of times.

With both an unfair comparison and my friend’s negative opinions, I felt as if my whole world was collapsing. I took it all to heart and deemed myself overwhelmingly unworthy and shameful, a feeling I carried with me for many years.

Later, when my friend attempted to mend the upset in our relationship, she admitted to having gossiped about me while I was gone and that gossip had led her to see me more unfavorably than she really did.

As she was someone everyone admired for her upstanding character, I couldn’t see clearly, at the time, how self-righteous and hypocritical it was for her to be gossiping about me in the first place. I just accepted her apology and continued to blame myself for the hiccup in our friendship.

For many years, this friend was a voice in my head reminding me how inadequate and unlovable I was. It wasn’t until I began to do some mental and emotional weeding out that I realized the full and negative ramifications this so-called friendship had had on my sovereignty.

As I’ve had time to ponder on the self-doubt that I allowed to enter my heart and mind, it became fairly easy to invite her voice and that friendship to leave my life altogether. I concluded that anyone who would spend time gossiping about me and then audaciously blame me for the negative effects of that betrayal, was no friend of mine. But, sadly, it took until my 40’s to set those boundaries. My hope is that you’ll learn from my experience and identify and invite the voices that are troubling you to leave as soon as possible.

Sum up

Letting go of self-doubt isn’t about blaming others for past hurts. Instead, it is releasing those hurts and replacing them with sovereign thoughts.

Giving a name, a face, and a time and place to the self-doubt helps us to analyze and assess whether or not that criticism is even worthy of a place within us.

It was much easier to let go of a betrayal than it was to let go of the criticism. But once I realized the truth, I no longer wanted to hang on to the memory or the friendship, and I let them go.

Getting Clear When You Are Confused

Finding clarity when confusion has infiltrated one’s heart and mind is a similar process to removing self-doubt. One must identify the source of the confusion.

The problem

Confusion is most often born from self-doubt. They are like two peas in a pod. Where there is doubt, there is confusion, and where there is confusion, there is always self-doubt.

If I could stress one point here above the rest, it would be the importance of sovereignty. Without a healthy relationship with self in the form of trust and love, one is vulnerable to attack by both confusion and self-doubt.

Confusion is that all too familiar head space of a kind of shoulder-shrugging, “I don’t know.”

It’s my observation that women suffer from the I-don’t-know syndrome more than men.

Culturally, men are expected to know. Because of that lopsided and irrational expectation, women often find themselves playing second fiddle in the second chair for most of their lives. Even single women will, at times, take a back seat to the proverbial “he” or “they” when it comes to asserting their knowing.

Yet, the feminine is idealized as the knower, the intuitive, the diviner. Women have an enormous capacity for self-knowing that they keep hidden or stored in the pantry of mystical arts, instead of propped up front and center on the hearth-fire of relevant truth for all to see.

The solution

You have to practice knowing, regardless of whether or not you are 100% sure.

Once you have cleared out a good portion of those negative memories and criticisms that have fostered unhealthy levels of self-doubt, it’s time to start asserting your sovereignty in the form of “I know this or that for myself,” regardless of what others think.

Women, especially, spend too much time seeking outside opinion. “What do you think?” should be replaced with “Here’s what I think.”

There’s no magic bullet or easy answer here. The truth is, you have to stop saying “I don’t know” and use your intuition and individuality to know.

One way I helped myself out of the muck of confusion and into a clearer and more confident mindset was through a bit of self-love in the form of investing money in my dreams.

Case study 2

One of the first major self-improvement investments I made was to go to a real expert—instead of asking friends and family who had no clue—and get professionally color analyzed through a draping process.

It probably seems like a silly place to start, but at the time I really needed the clarity, and more importantly, to believe I was worth the investment.

For months I researched the company and system I felt was best, then I told my husband. Although he didn’t see the value in a color analysis, he knew I was serious and lovingly supported my knowing what I needed. My confidence made him confident.

If I had approached him with a lot of doubt, he probably would have dismissed the idea. But, he could see and feel that my mind was made up and I knew this was the right decision for me at that time.

We planned a weekend trip to travel to the color analyst’s location, about five hours north of where we lived. We invited my brother and sister-in-law to join us for some fun time away, and made it a mutually beneficial experience.

In total, I think we spent about $600. I had never dared to invest that kind of money in myself previously. But that experience taught me the value of self-love and of seeing yourself as someone worthy of knowing and worthy of receiving.

Taking a calculated risk to bolster my self-worth fortified my sovereignty and enhanced my clarity.

Sum up

In my opinion, that first investment got the snowball of my sovereignty and belief in my inherent value, rolling.

That experience, although one of many, was a key catalyst in my self-love journey and in discovering my worth as an individual and in launching my business which, consequently, helped support my family through some pretty lean years.

What if I had said, “I don’t know,” instead of, “I know”? What a different story I would be telling.

The truth is, that color analysis I received wasn’t great and I’ve had better ones since. Does that mean it was a waste of money? Absolutely not! Taking that risk and investing the money was worth every penny as it opened a major door for my heart and soul to accept my own worth and value.

From that moment on, I began to invest more and more, not only in myself, but my sovereign knowing became contagious and my husband started investing more in himself and I was able to better teach and support my children in their self-worth journey as well.

Never underestimate a little self-love for increasing your clarity. In my opinion, if you are uncertain, it is probably because you have chosen to believe the lie that you don’t matter and aren’t worth it. But you are.

Why You Are Experiencing This Particular Creative Sludge

One last example before we wrap this up.

Creative sludge, self-doubt, and confusion can also be a product of exploring and pioneering new territory in our minds and in our lives.

As adults, we often overestimate our capacity. We don’t think of ourselves as at the beginning stages of anything. In fact, we believe we are supposed to have it all figured out.

But if you have a growth mindset, you will most likely encounter many many experiences that challenge your brain and comfort zone.

The problem

Creativity often throws one into new realms of experience. Our brains learn by creating dendritical pathways. When we were young, we were used to dragging ourselves through the endless experiences of creative sludge as our minds learned the tedious processes we would need for adulthood, like reading, walking, running, eating, writing, etc.

As adults, if we attempt anything new, like learning a new language or a new skill, we’re going to experience the same tedious process children are so familiar with. Our creativity is going to have the sensation of dragging legs and body through sludgy molasses as our older, more decisive brain rebuilds and reroutes those long-standing dendritical pathways.

In essence, learning something new hurts and it’s seriously uncomfortable.

The solution

If you are feeling like your creative project is causing doubt, confusion, and discomfort, ask yourself, “Is this is a totally new to you experience?”

If it is, there is a good chance that you what you are experiencing is simply a rewiring of the brain, and that doesn’t mean that what you are doing is wrong, or silly, or confusing. It simply means that you are learning and the only way to learn is to keep going even when you want to quit.

Case study 3

I famously enjoy being comfortable. I hate surprises, even birthday surprises, and the feeling of discomfort that comes with charting new territory, unless I’m in the early, fun stages where I feel pretty confident is disgusting to me.

My husband and I started a business years ago before the internet was much of anything. My husband was the “creative” one. He had the ideas, and I was the workhorse that made those ideas happen.

One of my most prominent memories was learning how to construct a business and marketing plan from scratch with nothing more than questions to guide me. It was an extremely tedious and mind-numbing learning process. I had zero previous knowledge to guide me, just a lot of grit and a few blog posts in the new territory that was the internet.

Amazingly, I managed to create fairly comprehensive business and marketing plans, with what limited data we had. It was painstaking work, but after I finished I could have taught a class on it.

Sum up

Necessity is the mother of invention, but it’s also the bearer of bad news: this is going to hurt like hell before it’s over.

Creative endeavors are hard, straight up. If you’re getting swallowed up in the molasses sludge of it all, learn to pace yourself and definitely don’t mistake learning and growing for confusion, doubt, or a this-is-a-mistake kind of mentality.

It’s super easy to give up before you’ve even made a dent, especially if you believe that being an adult absolves you from growing pains.

Conclusion

Muck is a sign, and it’s telling you a couple of important things:

1. Self-doubt is a waste of time, eliminate it

2. Your sovereignty is vital for your success

3. Confusion is a product of doubt and deferring your intuition and knowing to others——who probably don’t know any more than you do and who definitely don’t have your best interest in mind——is a big mistake

4. The feeling of being in muck may just be your brain trying to grow and learn, so be patient and consistent, the muck will turn into stepping stones eventually

5. If all else fails, invest in yourself with some self-love and even some money and you’ll find clarity comes more naturally

Thanks for reading. Let me know in the comments below what areas of muck you’re dealing with or which of the case studies you most related to. I’m happy to help or to just give you a sounding board where you can be seen and heard.

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