Unstuck 4.0: Need
We’re all stuck on something all the time. Not that we’re always supposed to be unstuck and flowing, but the impasses, like this infernal why question, sure can prevent progress. I’d intended to finish the book by August, but the question held me through July and August, and then September, too. Shame accumulated like ever-thickening mud on my boot soles until I could barely crawl. I was channeling what I was writing about.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.9: Compassionity
Of all the many forms of stuck, the muckiest emerge from my compassionate heart. Perhaps I’m playing out some pitiful sort of pity, simply showing myself I care, and I wouldn’t dare deign to demand that you change. True compassion’s never conditional until it must be. After that, it won’t be conditional without more personal change than I ever would have signed up for, had I only known.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.8: Situational
I eventually wonder where this specific context lies, for every context contains ten thousand situations; more. Which piece sticks me? I’m facing south, not north. Feet up, not down. Leaning back, not forward. Barefoot, not shod. In a rented room rather than home. Which specific rules this situation, and which shifted specific might unstick me this time?
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.7: Insufficiency
Curious how abundant insufficiency holds such power
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.6: Inconvenience
Modern life seems obsessed with the pursuit of convenience, when we might have noticed that the most important things seem to happen at the least convenient times. It doesn’t follow, though, that surrounding myself with inconvenience might somehow encourage important things to happen.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.5: Yet
”Oh, I haven’t spoken with him, and I won’t. I don’t do stuff like that.”
”Like what?” I wondered.
”I wouldn’t want to embarrass him by bringing it up.”
”But he doesn’t seem aware that he’s bugging you to distraction.”
”Well, he should be! It’s not my job to increase his self awareness,” she insisted.
Stuck, she’d explained her long escalating frustration, boxed in by her insistence that the simplest resolution was beyond her repertoire.
”Well,” she continued, “what are you gonna do about this. You’re the consultant.”
”Nothing.”
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.4: Faking It
Unstuck 3.3: Stuckticipation
Life’s probably best lived in fiery anticipation, hot on some trail against buffeting opposition, and worst lived behind any windbreak. The fire in my belly thrives on a steady injection of warm anticipation. Without the opposing force, I can become complacent, I might even stand haughtily tall or, heaven-forbid, lean back in phony repose. Nobody gets anywhere resting behind the laurel bush.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.2: Transcendence
I’m capable of choosing differently, but I’m also fully capable of forgetting that I always have other choices. I seem to shed options in the essential rush of life, and often miss the exits that might leave me transcending some damning ‘either’ and an equally damning ‘or.’
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.1: The Sound of Silence
We met and thought we might have some work to do together. I followed up with an email later that same day, and you responded within an hour or two, inviting me to coffee or lunch. I replied right away, saying, “You choose the place and the time and I’ll be there.” Then silence ensued.
Now what do I do? The chatter in my head asks a thousand questions. Would another email leave me looking pesky? Should I wait another day before following up?
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 3.0: Stucktainty
My forebears crossed the continent by every conveyance then known, including boot leather. Their letters ‘back home’ exhibited not a hint of certainty, ending as they did with the graceful phrase “if I live.” Their present action was not predicated upon anything close to certainty, but faith, mostly the unsupportable kind, which might be the only kind there ever could be.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.9: S.I.N.S.
The great S.I.N.S. of stuckness arise from taking it too damned seriously. The venal sin of unwarranted seriousness can consume the most upstanding souls. Stuckness, like life, qualifies as just too damned serious be to taken too damned seriously.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.8: Paying Attention
At a meeting this week, the convener was noticing how inspired she felt in the group. “We should get together more often,” she commented, “so we can get out of our routines and inspire each other.”
On my better days, I seem to find inspiration everywhere. Other times, I could walk untouched through the US Marine Band blaring Sousa marches.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.7: The 8th Habit
The 8th Habit might be called the habit-breaking habit. The first time, I struggled to escape a habitual. The second time, I perhaps struggled a little bit less. The third time, the effort was still great, but my experience informed my escape. Now, with decades of experience, I have a bit of a clue about what to do.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.6: The Merry-Go-Round
Unstuck 2.5: In Deep
For me, lately, it’s come from not being able to figure out the too-cleverly designed user interface. Someone sends me a message via LinkedIn (What IS that for, anyway?) or some other overly-secure social networking site, and I just cannot get in to respond. I must have an account, or I would not have received the message. But I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to get past the largely unnecessary security. My password doesn’t grok or my username isn’t registered. I slink to my corner and sulk.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.4: Echo
1- Failure to re-educate my originally infantile desire to please others may result in my becoming someone whose opinions are indefinitely responsive to a pressure to conform to the opinions of certain types of others ... What I present is an unconscious need for approval.
2- Infantile resentment of my need to please others — a relentless pursuit of disagreement.
In both cases, I’m an echo, not a voice.
I might also distrust my reasoning by unconsciously selective attention to some features at the expense of others. Overcome by having reasoning put into question by others.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals
Unstuck 2.3: Fits and Starts
Make no mistake, no moment provides smoothing algorithms. Creativity might depend upon their absence. They’re incredibly useful after the fact for making sense of—making up a soothing story about—the past. In real time, going forward, experience seems more fit-and-starty.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.2: Radical Acceptance
”Probably because he’s a snake.”
”Wha ??”
As I consultant, I describe myself as an expert at not being an expert. I know little about what my clients do as a business, but their technical details don’t usually get in their way. Something right before their eyes more often seems to.
Organizational difficulties emerge within a context I could not have access to or knowledge about before I’m poking around within that space. I am not nor will I ever be a content or process expert. As an expert at not being an expert, I rely upon my perception much more than my knowledge because I couldn’t possibly know beforehand. My contribution most often distills into simple observation.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.1: Do Not Read This
Attach it as a .pdf.
Post it to FaceBook.
Have Amazon send them a copy of the book.
I know, you want to share the confirming/enlightening/moving/life-changing experience you had when you read it, but you won’t. If they read it —I said IF —, they’ll read it as them, not you. They’ll have their own experience, not yours.
If they’re a partisan, they might appreciate the reinforcement of the beliefs you already share. If not, their perspective’s at best unlikely to change. More likely, they’ll interpret it as propaganda, and you’ll end up reinforcing just what you didn’t want. You’ll probably make ‘em angry, too. At you.
So what’s a mutha to do?
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 2.0: Copeless
Cope
does qualify as a strategy, especially when hope refuses to spring. Copelessness might be the worse outcome, much worse than hopelessness ever could be. Hope seems so pull-myself-up-by-my-bootstraps-ish, so notional. The logic doesn’t work; not even Archimedes could find any leverage point there. Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.9: Stucked
I’m stucked.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.8: Professional Crastination
On my better days, their derisions breeze over me like warm wind. On worse days, they wound like arrows through my heart. For I am a professional crastinator. I’ve rarely found advantage taking the early lead. I need and benefit from an essential milling around period first.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.7: Dread Not
Do angels trade in paradox? This particular Angel of the Lord passed, like a window-rattling fart in very quiet church, a particularly knotty one: The Not Knot.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.6: In-Smart
I claim that I’ll know it when I see it, but I probably won’t. Worse, I’m prone to concluding that I know simply because I see something. Where matters of the heart are concerned, I’m naturally in-smart. If I out-source when I’m in-smart, I consistently out-smart myself.
Almost any choice will do. Where would you like to go to dinner? Gosh, I don’t know, where would you like to go? Lemme check the Going Out Guide to see what the restaurant reviewer who’s opinions I don’t respect advises. He suggests a place that ends up serving small plates at astronomically high prices in deafening surroundings. We out-sourced what we might have more satisfyingly resolved with our in-smarts. We successfully out-smarted ourselves.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.3: Unthinkable
What does it mean? It means ‘something I could never see myself doing.’ In this guise, the unthinkable binds stuckness. I can watch that guy over there getting away with what ‘I could never see myself doing,’ and just sit. Firm in my belief of what ‘I could never see myself doing,’ I’ll choose to do anything, anything but THAT!
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.2: The 1% Resolution
Part of their magic must be linguistic. They label what we call problems ‘difficulties.’ Problems, they’ll explain with hardly any encouragement, have solutions. Not all difficulties qualify as problems because some of them couldn’t possibly have solutions, or we’ve never once seen them solved. It’s futility incarnate to force-fit some solution onto something that never qualified as a problem in the first place.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.1: That Damned Box
Stuck’s tenacity thrives on ‘all ya gotta dos;’ the more uplifting, the more encumbering. ‘All ya gotta do’ easily transforms into ‘you really shoulda already,’ and the stuckness hugs even harder.
You might more productively peek outside the box than think outside it.
Slip over here for more ...Unstuck 1.0: The Prague Paradox
The streets of Prague cannot be accurately represented on a map. This map, therefore, is not correct. Following it, you might find yourself lost from time to time. Fortunately, getting lost is the best way to discover Prague. Slip over here for more ...
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