Getting Stuck

As I thought about writing something for the newsletter this month I kept getting really stuck. What do our readers really want to hear about? At Diamond Edge we do a lot of work with senior teams so we often write about that and share tips from key issues facing teams today. But we also do a lot of personal development work with our clients and it struck me that many of our readers came to us through attending workshops run by Daphne and Curly on topics such as How to Manage your Boss, Partner and Kids, and Improving your Self Confidence. So here I am procrastinating like mad and realising that lots of you probably run similar procrastinations strategies which keep you stuck.

What gets us stuck and how do we unstick ourselves?

Several things can make us feel stuck:

• Not being clear about what our outcomes are.
• Limiting Beliefs about what we think we can achieve and our own abilities
• Focusing on the wrong thing, so we do not feel any compulsion to complete it
• Overwhelming ourselves with too big a task
• Aiming for perfection

Here are my top 5 tips for unsticking yourself:

1. Aim for good enough and not perfection - if you keep putting something off because it won’t be perfect then its unlikely you’ll ever get it done. For example, when I thought about writing this newsletter I wanted it to be the best article I’d ever written and to make sure that it really reached the audience- nothing wrong with that! But as a result I paralysed myself and just couldn’t get started, so when I remembered that I’ve written lots of perfectly good articles and even had some published, I was able to get started.

2. Chunk the task down into smaller tasks that are achievable. We can overwhelm ourselves with the seeming enormity of a task, so we put it off because we don’t know where to start. When I write proposals for clients I often put it off because I just don’t know where to begin or how I am going to cover all the issues that need to be included. If I think about just one section of the proposal at a time, then it’s much easier to get started. Once you’re started, the task seems far less daunting.

3. Challenge your limiting beliefs and tame those gremlins that sabotage you achieving what you want. So if you have a little voice in your head saying "you cant do that" or some other disabling message, decide that those voices may have served you in the past but right now you are not going to listen to them. If you have a belief that tells you are just not good enough, start looking for evidence to confound that belief - examples where frankly you were quite good enough.

4. Get really clear about what the end result is. As Steven Covey says - begin with the end in mind. I often plan for a meeting with a clear idea of the outcome I want from the meeting. That way I know if I am being blown off course, and I know if I’ve met my required outcome.

5. Make it fun and enjoyable - if it feels like a drudge and hard work, it’s not going to inspire you to complete the task. Do whatever it takes to change your mood - music, movement, a walk outside, gazing out of the window. Any sort of shift in your physical state will impact your mood.

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