How to Gently Get Unstuck

A daily reminder to practice gentleness

Have you noticed that I took a small break from posting daily reminders since I wrote the last one about nourishing yourself with deep rest?

Somehow, I ‘rebelled’ by doing all the things I told you not to do through that article:

• I obsessed even more with scrolling social media using my phone.
• I binge-watched The Good Place on Netflix
• I lazed around even more.
• I didn’t feel like reading other articles on Medium too.

I wrote another new article out of immense guilt for not fulfilling my promise to publish a new reminder every day in December for 30 consecutive days, then I deleted it this morning after re-reading it.

My frustration piled up this morning while I tried to stop my kids from misbehaving.

My feelings just kept going on a downward spiral till I felt super stuck like the kitty in this image above!

I’m so thrilled to finally feel inspired to write a new daily reminder on gentleness, and I want to share 3 things I did to get unstuck.

Acknowledge that you feel stuck

Being self-aware of how we are feeling can help us gently release our resistance to our current realities.

While going on a short walk with my kids a little while ago, I acknowledged internally how stuck I’ve been feeling. I felt ashamed of my recent writing, judging by the low number of reads in my recent articles. And as I continued to walk, I allowed myself to notice how stuck I feel in my body.

Where am I feeling the stuckness? Where am I feeling that dull heaviness sinking my body?

It was in my chest, and it felt like I was stiffening myself against this immense pressure pushing down on my chest. I noticed this with a tinge of curiosity and took this time to feel how interesting that feels.

A few seconds later, I felt lighter in my chest. How fascinating! Yet, this phenomenon is ‘normal’ for me, because this is one of the ways I help my clients. I tune into the stiffness and ‘stuckness’ of their realities and with this gentle observation, their realities start to open up with more freedom. I just tend to forget to do this for myself, ha!

Acknowledge how you might be reacting to other people and events in your life

Most of us don’t live as hermits. We are intimately connected to other people, such as passersby, pedestrians, authority figures, colleagues, family members, and other loved ones. We get affected by their feelings, thoughts, and actions through hearsay and direct interactions.

As I paused to feel my stuckness, I suddenly remembered that my husband has been hosting his major annual event at his university this entire week. He has been working much more intensely for long hours, often sleeping past midnight, and waking up early for work again. Being an energetically sensitive person, I’ve been feeling his work stress and fatigue much more intensely this week.

As I tuned into my reaction to his work stress, it felt much easier to feel compassion for both of us and detach from his stress. Amplifying his stress doesn’t help him in his work. When I can feel calmer and more well-rested, I can take better care of my well-being and feel more energized to take care of our kids as well. My calm can have a much more positive influence on my husband compared to radiating more stress to him.

There are other personal and family situations bothering me as well. And it helps me immensely when I call these issues out in my mind and acknowledge them as daily situations I feel stressed about.

Re-evaluate and re-adjust the way you consume and digest mental and emotional energies

It’s easy to predict that if you eat physical food non-stop, you tend to get much more bloated, suffer from constant indigestion, and gain weight exponentially.

What about mental and emotional food?

It’s so much easier to keep consuming information, such as the news, Netflix shows, and a huge variety of online courses that are being delivered on-demand. There’s much less social stigma to be bingeing on this ‘food’ too.

But what happens if you keep ‘eating’ this information, and don’t bother to reflect and digest? What happens if you don’t allow yourself to acknowledge the emotional reactions and thoughts that arise from watching these shows, reading these books, and taking these courses mindlessly?

I find that I get ‘bloated’ with all these stuck feelings and thoughts. Some of these thoughts and feelings can get tangled up as I keep piling up more information. If I don’t give myself enough quiet time to contemplate and untangle these energies, they will inevitably clog up internally within me.

I think that’s one of the main reasons I got more and more stuck.

And in a way, I’ve been overwhelming myself with more external information, because I didn’t want to acknowledge and process the stress I’ve been sensing from my husband. In hindsight, it’s much easier to acknowledge and release that stress, instead of distracting myself from it.

How have you been consuming mental and emotional energies?

Do you give yourself enough breaks throughout each day to reflect and process these thoughts and feelings?

Closing notes

It is very normal for us to feel stuck from time to time. Our lives keep on changing and evolving, and if we keep ignoring the dramas happening in our lives, we’re bound to feel stuck eventually.

The good news is, we can get unstuck with gentleness once we acknowledge reality the way we see it.

Simply choose to reconnect with our lives again, and this willingness to reconnect will help us to notice what was previously hidden from us.

As we breathe more awareness into our current realities, we are able to breathe new possibilities in our lives again.

I hope this daily reminder is useful to you.

Spotlight on another writer

Today, I’d like you to read this interesting poem by Lucy The Eggcademic (she/her). She wrote this poem in response to my prompt, and I love the way she interprets this topic!

If you’ve loved this daily reminder, I hope you can take a look at the other daily reminders listed in this article: