When You Feel Trapped or Stuck, Try This Approach to Help You Find Freedom
A simple exercise can shift your mindset and allow you to find a better path forward.
In the fall of 2018, I was feeling more drained than ever. I had started a challenging role at a social impact start-up that deeply resonated with me, but the job requiring a lot from me. We were experiencing family sleep challenges at home, but I was resistant to slowing down.
Instead, I was pushing myself harder than ever.
In October, I attended a 3-day in-person workshop facilitated by Conscious Leadership Group founders Jim Dethmer and Diana Chapman. They introduced me to a number of valuable concepts, but the most impactful was the concept of stories and the damage I was inflicting upon myself by gripping mine so tightly.
If you haven’t heard of the concept of stories, here is a brief overview.
Stories are how humans make sense of what is happening around us. They are how we interpret the world and necessary part of our daily lives.
They stop serving us when we unconsciously confuse them with facts without verifying our assumptions. That’s when drama ensues.
Everything from what we assume our spouse was thinking when they left their clothes on the floor to why our colleague talks over people in a meeting.
The thing is, we need stories to help us make decisions (e.g. today is a good day for my black shirt), but we don’t always benefit from how we use stories to engage with others.
Being able to be more conscious about our stories helps us use them to our advantage instead of being swept away by them into unhelpful thoughts and actions.
At the time, one of my biggest struggles was navigating the tension between my husband and me about how much I was working.
My husband was pushing me to work less because he believed I wasn’t making enough time for him and the kids. He felt neglected and was worried about how stressed I was each day.
Meanwhile, I was convinced I wasn’t working enough to achieve my company’s goals.
I felt so trapped that for the first time in my life, I started to think that escaping to a monastery and becoming a monk was the best solution. Running away was feeling more and more appealing each day.
Through the Conscious Leadership Group, I learned an exercise to help me become more conscious of my stories and become more intentional about how and when I relied on them to guide my thinking and my behaviors.
It could not have come at a more important time.
When you feel stuck, play with the idea that the opposite of your story might be true.
Here’s how the Opposite Story Exercise works:
Write down your story.
Write down the opposite of your story.
Let the opposite version sit with you even if it makes you feel uncomfortable.
Ask yourself, “Can you be open to the opposite being true?”
If you can’t be open, then the exercise stops.
If you can be open, play with the opposite version some more and see where that takes you.
Here’s how the exercise played out for me:
I wrote down my stories
My story of husband’s view: I work too much.
My story: I work too little.
Then I sat staring at these words and stewed in a lot of emotions: guilt, shame, fear, anger, and despair to name a few.
When the emotions had flowed through me a bit, I started to write and play with the idea of some opposite stories.
I work too little.
I work too much.
Work is what I do at my office.
Work is where I need to put effort into my life.
Work is what matters most to me.
Work is what I should be putting the most effort into to better my life.
My most important work is making sure my family life is strong.
My most important work is taking better care of myself and my family.
Through this exercise, I began to reshape my story and how I saw the world. Instead of viewing work as what I did in the office, I started to see work as what I prioritized and what mattered most to me and where I needed to put the most effort. My work at the office was important, but it wasn’t more important than my health and my family.
I had a revelation: I was working too little on what really mattered to me.
I had been stuck in a negative reactive mode with my husband’s stories and my stories for so long. I finally felt less concerned about who was right and instead focused on what actually mattered to me.
I wasn’t working too much.
I wasn’t working too little.
I was working on the wrong things.
As a result of this exercise, after the retreat, I had a heartfelt conversation with my husband. We talked about practical implications like financial health and more emotional implications like how he and I would feel going forward and we both agreed wholeheartedly with my next steps.
I met with the CEO the next day to scale back my job. I cut my scope by 70%, took a pay cut, and changed my title.
I didn’t even think twice about a decision that only a few years prior could have felt like I was acquiescing and admitting defeat.
I had spent months struggling because I had such a tight grip on my stories and had unconsciously let them shape my decisions and my life.
In the months prior, I had become entrenched in my warped sense of servant leadership and ego-driven feelings of responsibility that placed me in the role of “company hero.”
I had become so attached to the idea of being the hero, I didn’t realize I was also embodying the role of villain and victim as well. I was a villain fighting against my own instincts and the feelings of my loved ones and I was a victim feeling pressured in all directions.
When you become so attached to your stories, even the people around you that you trust, like my husband, start to feel like enemies. If they dare to question your stories, they threaten your sense of world order and sadly, this can result in you holding your stories even tighter.
In many ways, it’s such a simple exercise that you can do anytime, anywhere.
Over time, you can start to do this within seconds in your head, and no one else even needs to know you are giving yourself permission to get unstuck.
As you play with the opposite story exercise, there are some pitfalls to avoid.
Here are some examples of when you shouldn’t use the exercise or should proceed with guardrails:
If you are prone to over-thinking, be careful not to let this exercise become an excuse to avoid making a decision.
How do you know if you should proceed versus pause? You should proceed if you have followed a solid process of considering alternatives, taking in inputs, and reviewing data.
If you’ve done the work, trust you have a solid path forward.
If you want to make space for the exercise, do so with a time limit. Maybe just 15 minutes and then move on. Rehashing a decision over and over is not the same as being open to alternative stories and paths forward.
If you are particularly fatigued, fearful, or triggered, consider alternative paths including taking a longer pause from the specific topic or issue before tackling this exercise.
It’s much harder, or nearly impossible, to hold something loosely when you are not feeling well, or are experiencing significant or challenging emotions.
Don’t judge yourself for needing a break or some time away from the topic. Everyone experiences these challenges at times, and your ability to step away is a sign of your wisdom and strength, not your weakness.
If a decision is urgently needed and you feel you are not equipped to loosen your grip on your stories, appoint someone else to the task. This is not shirking your responsibility. As a leader, your job is to put the best person in the role. Sometimes that person isn’t you. Knowing when to temporarily take yourself out of the game and being brave enough to make the change is a tremendously valuable skill and will result in better outcomes long-term.
Almost any good thing can be turned into a weapon or unhelpful tool when applied incorrectly or overused.
Trust yourself that as you practice this exercise, you’ll know when it is working well and when it’s no longer helpful. If you aren’t sure, find a trusted confidant and ask them to be your litmus test for when it’s helpful versus when it’s not needed.
Loosening the grip I had on my stories and that my stories had on me helped me feel more at ease in all parts of my life.
When you feel less judged and less judgement, life and work get a lot easier. You start to see things as they are, a series of decisions and behaviors that lead to outcomes.
Instead of guessing at other people’s intentions, categorizing people into right and wrong, and assuming your inner saboteur’s musings are right, you now have the option to flip all of that on its head.
Few things in life are more freeing, don’t cost you anything, and are such a low time investment.
Try it out, and let me know what you think!
My 1:1 coaching slots are currently full, but you can join the waitlist for my next group coaching program, Positive Intelligence (8 weeks: February 14 - April 11, 2025).
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