It’s a common thing to hear people say that they feel somewhat stuck and are not sure of want to do with life. After all, in this day and age, we’re inundated with choices of industries, courses, paths, hobbies, careers, religions, social networking sites and even chocolates!
So often the biggest battle in life can be settling on WHAT choice to make rather than feeling as if there are a LACK of choices.
I get to meet and know people from a broad spectrum of the community and so I see people in all sorts of situations; even successful people who still feel a sense of almost being lost! A very simple solution to this problem is getting a bit of variety in your life! It should come as no surprise that if you’re just going to work, coming home, eating, watching t.v., going to sleep and waking up the next morning for work, that you’re going to feel a lack of self worth and be in a place where you feel stuck and lost!
Voluntary Work
If that described the you from yesterday then be happy and accept that today is a new day with which you can begin a fresh challenge. A good thing to do is start by trying out a few things. Voluntary work is always a good way to go. Even if it has nothing to do with what you’re interested in it will still help you to develop your power of perspective and give you stronger resolve to make any decisions. The reason I say this is because it will give you the amazing opportunity to break down many barriers that you may have built up in your mind over time. It’s like smashing the comfort zone. If you stay in comfort long enough it gets you to a point where you you almost a sense of lethargy and disinterest with life. A place,I’m sure, where you don’t want to be!
Taking up a fresh challenge will smash through some of those walls that you’ve built up in your mind. Through working with children my confidence has grown massively. Not only that but I was also given free training which was huge boost to my C.V. It also allowed me to grow through having a difference kind of experience. I was recently put into a situation where I was put into a class of about thirty students and I had to give them a workshop on preparing for work experience. I was provided with all the materials but there was no handbook on how I was supposed to do this. I wasn’t taught how to deal with the naughty and the noisy kids, I was thrown in at the deep end and I loved every minute of it!
I also work one-to-one with children and I coach and mentor them to improve the quality of their existence. I can think of no bigger challenge than this. It takes a great amount of courage to sit down face to face with a child and get them to open up to you about the challenges they’re facing. Getting them to open up is only the first challenge. It gets easier but you somehow have to find a way to get the trust of that child. Then, through the rapport and trust that develops over time, you can gradually begin to guide them and help them to be better than they ever thought they could be and get them to leap over any barriers they had. Once you see the results of something like that, guess what? You start to realise that you have an immense amount of potential within you too and you slowly begin to manoeuvre your life to a place where you previously thought you couldn’t be.
Try Something New
Experiences like those can ignite a spark within you and may give you some clues as to which area you would like to pursue. Even if it doesn’t what it will do is give you the opportunity of expanding yourself! It will increase your sharpness, mental clarity and also open up a universe of new possibilities. You will feel more open and alive and those previous feelings of being stuck and frustrated will slowly start to dissipate.
Another idea to try is hospital radio which is another thing that I am going to get into very soon. It’s been my dream from a young age to get onto radio and hospital radio is a fantastic stepping stone onto bigger and better things. What more noble thing can you think of thank helping sick people get better through entertainment? You can truly turn your life around and start by doing absolutely anything! Look in your local paper; go to the library and find out what things there are for you to participate in! A friend of mine was telling me recently that she joined a roller blading club! On the weekends they go to places like Hyde Park and explore and just go crazy on their roller blades! (She often comes back with cuts and bruises but she absolutely loves it!!)
Take a course, learn how to play an instrument, take up dance classes, try Yoga or Tai Chi or some other Martial Art; go hiking, bike riding, go carting, bowling, paint balling, read a book of a genre that you never even thought to try before, start a website, join a club of some sort, start some charity work, do a fun run etc! There is so much out there that the list could just go on and on and on!
Get Active
My biggest tip in all of this though would be to take a regular sporting activity and make sure you keep it up! There is nothing worse then starting a job and realising that your gut is growing in inches at the same rate as your age!
Keep your self in good shape by taking up a sport such as badminton, squash, tennis, football, or anything along those lines.
Playing a sport will keep you sharp and again help you increase your focus and clarity and give you the extra drive and enthusiasm to take your life in a new and fresh direction. (It will also increase your libido!) Not to mention that you’ll meet lots of new people, make some great friends and even maybe make some great contacts for the future that inspire you or give you that idea or that “something” that you’ve been looking for!
Keep A Journal
I would also suggest keeping some sort of journal or diary. The reason for this is perusing your entries often helps bring further clarity and perspective on any given situation. It’s also a good way to gauge the progress in your life. It really hit home for me when I read some diary entries of mine from a about 5 years ago and some diary entries from about a year ago and they were almost identical and my goals were exactly the same. It showed me that I had made no progress whatsoever and that nothing had changed in my life.
At first, when I saw it I became a little depressed but afterwards I realised that it was great gift! Seeing those diary entries made me realise that life can be incredibly short. Unless I chose to make something of it for myself I would wake up one day and realise that my entire life had floated by and I missed out of almost every opportunity to be happy and live a fulfilled and enjoyable existence. If you can begin to keep a journal, and update it regularly with your fresh desires and goals and monitor it regularly, ticking off your achievements and desires as you go along then you will find that over time you will feel much happier at having reaching and surpassing these milestones that you set out for yourself.
These are just a few starting points, but the key, is to become active! Switch off the t.v.; turn off the computer and go out there and meet some new people and enjoy the entire universe outside your front door!

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All I want to say: THANK YOU! You’ve written a great post, I like it a lot.
Great Article and it’s helped me so much getting through this time when I was stuck!
Nice article! You have some really good ideas on getting unstuck, and embracing the possibilities that always exist if we open our hearts and minds.

amanda@choosing-life-my-way.com´s last blog ..Live Life to the Fullest
Twitter: amitsodha
December 2, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Hey Amanda.
Thanks for the comments and I agree that all you need to do is try new things. You may not always like them or they may not always be right for you but sooner or later you’ll come across something you enjoy! Sometimes it’s the different view point that the activity gives you is all you need.
Hey Amit,
Very nice article..I had an epiphany when I read your post. Suddenly everything seems so clear dude. “Just try new things”…how simple yet so true. Thanks Bro..I hope your article serves as an impetus to me to do something that gets me out of my slump in my life…
Cheers,
Ashwin.
Twitter: amitsodha
March 25, 2010 at 11:58 am
Hey Aswin, that’s an amazing story, care to share your epiphany??
Twitter: eduardezeanu
July 16, 2010 at 8:03 pm
Hey Amit,
Now that I think about it, I think this is how I started salsa dancing. I was sort of stuck in my personal life, and I decided to try something new. I had this ‘be fit’ philosophy and I was getting bored of swimming, so I decided to move to dancing. And it was one of the best decision I ever made.
We are often hesitant to experiment. Even when we feel stuck, we will sometimes stay like that and wait for something to happen, instead of acting. And just like a body in motion tends to stay in motion, the opposite is also true.
LOL at that cow!!! Such an apt entry – I love how fresh you’ve made it – very good advice as well!