Tag Archives: writing

5 Simple Ways to Stop Feeling Stuck – Step 1: Identify and Attack Your Triggers

This is Part 1 of a series on Getting Unstuck. Read the intro here.

The first thing I did when I realized I was feeling stuck was to try and identify the tangible triggers contributing to my stuck-ness. Below are three things I did to figure out what my triggers were and change my response to them.

1. Identify Your Triggers

Before I could attack my triggers, I had to know what they were.

To clarify: By triggers, I don’t mean things like “my entire personality sucks” or “I live in a rat-infested hole in Brooklyn”—those are life factors. I was trying to identify the emotional factors playing into the feeling of being stuck. Like I mentioned in the introduction to this series, I’m not actually stuck in any area of my life right now. Job is good. Apartment is great. Relationships are solid. But despite these facts, I feel stagnant. I’m not appreciating the everyday magic of my life as much as I want to. I’m going through the motions of a routine instead of experiencing the joy of being alive. It’s annoying, to say the least.

So anyways. Triggers. Basically, I wanted to see if my stuckness had any correlations with what I was doing. Had I changed something in my life? Here’s what I came up with:

 

  1. Increase in screen time (mostly television and Instagram)
  2. Not running as much as I used to
  3. Too much sleep (more on this later in the week)
  4. Nothing to look forward to travel/social-wise because Winter is dark and full of terrors
  5. Not spending my lunch break outside

2. Make a Wellness Checklist

The second step was to identify the flipside of these negative triggers: what things do I intend to do on a daily basis that make me feel good about myself and my existence? I made a Wellness Checklist. I actually got this checklist idea from Dax Shepard’s podcast (if you haven’t listened to the episode he did with his goddess of a wife, Kristen Bell, you are unnecessarily depriving yourself of joy).

Here’s my checklist:

  1. Engage in deep conversation with someone about my problem
  2. Go for a run
  3. Write it out
  4. Spend at least 30 minutes outside
  5. Leave the house
  6. Eat some vegetables

I resolved that the next time I was feeling stuck I would run through my Wellness Checklist. If I hadn’t done something on the list I would do it and see if I felt better. Rinse and repeat.

I also decided to tackle the first item on my trigger list: screen time. For me, the problem with screen time isn’t comparison, it’s mindlessness. Most of the things I watch on TV don’t really hold my attention—so I do something else like scroll through Instagram or add yet another magical zit cure to my Amazon Wish List, resulting in double screen time. I wasn’t making a conscious choice to invest my time in these activities. It was mindless.

3. Add a step

I decided there was no better way to stop a mindless activity than with mind games. The key? Adding an extra step.

Because these are mindless activities, all I need to do to stop engaging in them is make myself actually think about them. Groundbreaking, I know.

I have a bad habit of scrolling through Instagram when I’m bored. So I deleted it off my phone. Sometimes I watch Netflix before going to sleep. So I signed out of my account.

If you watch too much TV, you could try unplugging the TV so that you’ll have to really think before turning it on. If you drink to excess, try putting your alcohol in a locked cupboard. If you constantly check your phone for notifications, try putting it in airplane mode for 30 minutes at a time.

Today’s Un-Stuck Steps:

  1. Identify your triggers

  2. Make a wellness checklist

  3. Add a step that makes mindless activities mindful

Tomorrow I’ll be writing about the list that transformed how I spend my downtime. Hope to see you there!

Want more? Sign up for my Monday Motivation newsletter to get a metaphorical kick to the pants every Monday morning.

Why Fasting is the Secret to Creative Growth

Today is Ash Wednesday,* the day that marks the beginning of Lent for many people of faith around the world. Lent, for those of you who are not bombarded with reminders on social media about it every year, is a religious term referring to the 40 days leading up to Easter. It’s tradition for people to fast for these 40 days in preparation for Easter Sunday.

I had no idea what Lent was until I went to college and got band-wagoned into giving up something trendy each Spring. One year it was desserts. Another, Facebook. My friends gave up coffee or alcohol or carbs. In more recent years, I became suspicious of the benefits of Lent. It seemed like the things people gave up were less about some pursuit of spiritual discipline and more about personal benefits. Lent just seemed like another excuse to diet.

But in the past year I’ve awoken to the power of deprivation to spur personal and artistic growth. I’ve given up one thing each month since last August. Sugar. Coffee. Alcohol. Cussing. The practice started on accident. I did a spending fast because (shocker) I felt like I was spending too much money, and when it was over, I realized there were a lot of other things I consumed in excess and so I just kept going.

Fasting is most commonly known as a spiritual exercise and most religions incorporate it in some way. Muslims practice Ramadan. Hindus set aside certain days every week to fast. Christians fast during Lent. Jewish people fast to celebrate Yom Kippur.

When I started giving up things for set periods of time, I wasn’t doing it for spiritual growth. I was doing it for selfish reasons. I wanted to save money so I stopped drinking alcohol. I didn’t want to get addicted to caffeine so I gave up coffee. But what I’ve come to realize is that deprivation automatically forces growth.

In his book Emotional Intelligence, Dan Coleman writes that, “There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse.”

This is an especially essential skill in a first world country where delayed gratification is not a given. In America, you can go your whole life without going without. This is a blessing. But instant gratification can quickly become a burden. When we stuff ourselves with an endless stream of food, entertainment, and material goods, we starve ourselves of the opportunity to want something.

Fasting forces you to be present in your life. Every time you say no to something, you are reminded that you are a rational being, capable of making choices. It’s so easy to glide through our days with our heads down and never look up. My default is to ignore the big picture of my life in favor of getting through another day. Fasting reminds me of the very simple, but entirely remarkable fact that I’m alive.

Sugar, television, expensive clothes, alcohol—all of these things are unessential. Fasting sloughs them off.

If you are feeling stuck or in need of a creative jolt, I invite you to use Lent as an excuse to give something up. If you don’t know where to start, think of the things you do on a daily basis. What do you eat? How do you spend leisure time? Then go with the thing that sounds the most terrifying to be without.

Give up your crutch for the next 40 days. You may be surprised to learn that you are perfectly capable of standing on your own.

*it’s also Valentine’s Day, an irony that gives me endless joy

How to Actually Make Yourself Do Something (In 4 Easy Steps)

“You don’t have to believe in yourself, you just have to do the thing.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BZOgr6Nhp2M/?taken-by=alikaywould

Author Holly Black said this at the Brooklyn Book Festival this weekend (more on the Festival in my weekly newsletter, which you can get by signing up here) and it’s been haunting me all week.

I am lazy. My natural inclination is to do nothing, all the time. If no one interrupted me, I could probably read for at least seven years before noticing any time had passed.

I’ve spent years searching for the magical cure to my laziness. I’ve tried using SMART goals, building habits and creating detailed Calendars for Change. Nothing stuck. I’d be hyper productive for a few weeks and then drift back into my natural state of being.

I suspect I’m not alone in this.

There are tons of blogs, books, and speeches floating around in the world about how to do things. How to write a book, finish a screenplay, paint a painting. For those privileged enough to have a dream beyond mere survival, one of the great struggles of life is getting yourself to do the things you actually want to do.

This struggle is nothing new. Paul wrote about it in a letter to the Christian church in Rome in the first century.

“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

(Romans 7:15 ESV)

This is the story of my life. I hate passivity and laziness, yet I often live in those states. I know what I want to do, but the gap between it and what I actually do is vast. It is exhausting, to fail at something so simple.

Ben Hardy has written, “it’s actually far more exhausting to not work than it is to work.”

This is so true. Pursuing goals take energy, yes. But not pursuing thing them takes even more.

Most of the advice I’ve seen about how to make yourself do the thing you want to do essentially boils down to: if you really want to, you will do it.

This is not true. Plenty of people want to start companies, travel the world, or direct movies. Most of them take no action toward doing these things.

I’ve always found this advice useless. I want to do so many things and I do so few.

This year, though, I’ve discovered the secret to making myself productive and achieving my goals. It’s simple: trick myself.

That’s right. The easiest way to start is to trick yourself into doing it. Once I threw away all that hogwash about chasing dreams and artistic passion and focused on what actually motivated me, I discovered that playing mind games was the best way to get myself to do the things I wanted to be doing.

Here’s a few tips for tricking yourself into doing something:

1. Figure out what motivates you

First, it’s important to identify what motivates you. I am motivated by external expectations.

I don’t bail on plans with friends and I always turn projects in on time at work. It’s meeting internal expectations that I struggle with.

You might be the opposite. Maybe it’s easy for you to finish something when it’s a personal project, but you bristle at the thought of an employer deadline or outer expectations.

Gretchen Rubin has written an entire book about the four ways people respond to expectations called The Four Tendencies. You can take the quiz to found out how you respond to expectations here.

Once you’ve identified what motivates you it’s time to figure out how work within that framework.

This is tricky for internal goals—it can feel hopeless. How on earth can I motivate myself to do something if I only do things for other people?

Simple. I turned my internal goals into external deadlines. I will not work out unless I have to. This year I started signing up for races and telling people I was running them. Now I have to train because I’ve spent money on a race. I love deadlines and so this system works really well for me.

Don’t expect yourself to magically wake up one morning feeling motivated to make all the changes you want to in your life. Identify the things that have actually motivated you in the past, and figure out a way to create a similar set of circumstances in your present.

2. Put your pride on the line

Shame is usually a negative thing, but I’m not opposed to using it to motivate myself. When I tell my roommate I’m waking up early to go on a run, I’m more likely to do it because I don’t want her to wake up before me and notice I’m still in bed.

Put your pride on the line for your work. Post publicly about what you are doing. Tell a few friends. Tattoo a deadline on your body. Whatever works for you. Higher stakes will lead to better results.

3. Build momentum

Different goal setting systems recommend different goal sizes. The SMART system suggests setting achievable goals. Others recommend wildly unachievable goals. I’ve found the best way to meet goals is to find a sweetspot between what you can realistically achieve and what you would achieve in your wildest dreams. If you start out too small, you may forget why you needed a goal in the first place. If you start out too big, you’ll grow discouraged and give up.

The trick, as always, is to find balance. If you want to run a 5k, starting with a goal of walking fifty feet a day will probably not help you. It will be so easy to achieve, you’ll wonder why you need to train for the race at all. On the other hand, if you start with a goal of running three miles on your first try, you will likely be discouraged by how hard it is. (Unless you are one of those people who can just run forever without ever trying, in which case, I hate you.)

The key word here is momentum.

Momentum is the word my friends and I use to make ourselves go out in the city. Nightlife in New York doesn’t really get started until midnight or later, which, for someone like me who is socially akin to a grandmother, is asking a lot. We use the word momentum to get us pumped.

When we leave the apartment at 10, cold and tired and thinking all our plans of dancing and “having the best night ever” were foolish, we start yelling “momentum!” It’s weird, but it works.

The real trick to doing the thing you want to do is building momentum. You don’t wake up one morning with the strength to finish something. You take one step, then another, and build a consistent work ethic.

4. Objects in motion stay in motion

Once you’ve figured out how to motivate yourself and have started building momentum, the trick is to keep moving. Operate by Newton’s first law of motion: objects in motion stay in motion.

Just because you’ve started doing the thing you want to be doing doesn’t mean you’ve earned a break. Keep working. It is much easier to keep moving than it is to start moving. You’re in motion, congratulations. Don’t stop.

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