Being stuck is one of the most common and least-discussed forms of suffering. It is not dramatic enough to be a crisis, but it is persistent enough to wear you down. You know something needs to change. You cannot quite see what. Or you can see exactly what, but the thought of doing it is paralysing. Either way, the result is the same: you are standing in the same place you were six months ago, a year ago, maybe longer.
Getting unstuck is rarely about finding the right strategy. It is almost always about identifying and addressing whatever is actually keeping you in place — which is usually not what it appears to be on the surface. Here are seven steps that genuinely move people forward.
1. Name What “Stuck” Actually Means for You Right Now
Stuck is not one thing. It can mean feeling directionless, or feeling trapped in a direction you do not want, or knowing exactly what you want and being unable to move towards it, or not knowing what you want at all. These require very different responses. Before you do anything else, write a specific sentence: I feel stuck because… and follow it honestly, without editing. The specificity matters. Vague problem, vague solution.
2. Identify Whether You Are Avoiding the Decision or the Action
Most stuckness falls into one of two categories. Either you have not yet made a decision — you are in an unresolved state of “I do not know what to do” — or you have made the decision but you are avoiding the action it requires. These feel similar but are completely different problems. Indecision responds to clarity work. Avoidance responds to courage work. Knowing which one you are dealing with tells you where to direct your energy.
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3. Ask What You Are Protecting By Staying Stuck
This is the uncomfortable question, but often the most useful one. Staying stuck is rarely purely passive. Inaction usually protects something — the comfort of the familiar, the avoidance of failure or judgement, the preservation of a relationship that would be disrupted by change, or the freedom from the responsibility that comes with moving forward. Identifying what you are protecting does not make the stuckness worse. It makes it navigable.
4. Reduce the First Step to Something Embarrassingly Small
The research on behaviour change consistently shows that the size of the first step is the single biggest predictor of whether someone will take it. Not your level of motivation. Not your intentions. BJ Fogg’s research at Stanford on tiny habits demonstrates that making the first action almost absurdly small dramatically increases follow-through. Not “apply for the job.” “Update the LinkedIn profile.” Not “start the project.” “Open a blank document and write one sentence.” Start smaller than you think you need to.
5. Tell Someone Who Will Hold You to It
Accountability is not a character weakness. It is a neurological reality. When we make a commitment to another person rather than only to ourselves, the social stakes change the weight of the commitment. Research by psychologist Gail Matthews at Dominican University found that people who wrote down their goals and shared them with an accountability partner achieved significantly more than those who kept their goals private. Tell someone what you are going to do, and ask them to follow up with you.
6. Accept That the First Move Will Feel Wrong
Most people who get unstuck report that the first action felt uncomfortable, awkward, or somehow not right. This is normal. Inertia is physical as well as psychological — the initial movement out of a resting state requires more energy than continuing to move once you have started. The discomfort of the first step is not a sign you are doing the wrong thing. It is a sign you are doing something real after a period of doing nothing. Trust the discomfort enough to move through it.
7. Acknowledge Progress Without Waiting for Completion
People who get and stay unstuck are not people who never doubt themselves. They are people who have developed the skill of acknowledging their own movement — noting when they have done something difficult, when they have moved in the right direction, when they have kept a commitment to themselves — rather than waiting until they have “arrived” somewhere to feel good about it. Progress reinforced becomes momentum. Momentum is what completion is built on.
Related reading: How to Build Mental Toughness, Finding Your Purpose, The Power of Saying No.
Rubie Le’Faine is the founder of Rubie Rubie and a writer specialising in emotional well-being, self-identity, and the psychology of modern relationships. She holds a Level 3 Certificate in Counselling Skills and has spent over eight years studying attachment theory, cognitive behavioural principles, and human development — first through formal study, then through lived experience that no course can replicate. After navigating a significant relationship breakdown, an identity rebuild, and the complex terrain of rediscovering herself in her 30s, Rubie began writing to make sense of what she had learned and to offer honest, human guidance to others going through the same. She founded Rubie Rubie in 2022 as a space for women seeking real answers, not platitudes. Based in Surrey, UK, her writing is grounded in research, shaped by experience, and centred entirely on the reader’s genuine wellbeing.
