8 Steps to Getting “Unstuck”
In life we all face moments when life suddenly changes…getting married, the birth of a child, losing a job, or experiencing a health crisis. These are seminal moments in our lives. I’ve always heard and believe it is true. We can either get bitter or better. It’s a choice.
It’s easy to “get stuck” in these moments. How do we most positively and effectively confront these moments and periods, moving forward rather than being immobilized?
Facing The Cliff
In his book, What to Make of a Life, Jim Collins describes three significant aspects of facing the storm of change and uncertainty. The first is “the cliff.”
A cliff is any event that ends life as you knew it. The cliff creates conditions so changed that you have to ask yourself again and again, “What will I make of my life?” It doesn’t have to be dramatic and may not even be negative. It can be caused by something from the outside you have no control over like an automobile accident. Or it could be self-imposed like resigning from your job. It can happen suddenly or be something you’ve long anticipated like retirement.
What makes something a cliff isn’t its size, large or small. It’s the fact that the old framework for doing life is gone. How you previously understood your life and identity no longer apply. The author, through extensive research, found cliffs to be universal. He could find no one without them.
Examples from his research included two rock musicians confronting a future without their successful group, two public figures tainted by scandal forced to rebuild their lives, and two women achieving their epic goal but left with the puzzle of what to do next.
Lost in The Fog
After the cliff comes the fog. It’s a period of very real disorientation, feelings of uncertainty and, often, an actual loss of identity. It’s the period of time when life turns upside down… clarity shifts to confusion. You no longer have a clear pattern or frame of reference for interpreting your circumstances or yourself.
We all experience this sometime and often many times throughout life. I was so glad he mentioned this because so often in these times so many I talk with feel alone…as if no one else has ever felt this way. That’s a lie. It is a normal and real part of life and running from it or choosing denial only prolongs the process.
Coming Out of the Fog
It is at this point we either come out of the fog or get “stuck.” We can choose to go through the process of defining a new “normal” in life or refuse to adapt to the new life now inevitable. We can embrace God’s words of hope,
“See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland,” (Isaiah 43;19).
Or instead choose to become angry, bitter, and hardened by life’s events.
Collins’ central piece of advice is don’t try to force clarity. Don’t make big leaps or decisions while still in it. Instead, he introduces what he calls “simplex stepping.” He encourages each of us to take the best step that’s visible right in front of us. Even when you don’t know where we’re ultimately going, it is from that new vantage point we can identify the next best step.
When we heard him speak at the Global Leadership Summit he said, “Avoid big, irreversible decisions while you’re in the fog.”
If you can see a cliff coming, start preparing for what’s next before you go over. He apparently learned this when facing his own retirement. He explained the way out isn’t escaping fog altogether. Instead, a meaningful life isn’t built by avoiding cliffs or escaping fog but is it built by continually discovering who you are on the other side of each one.
In essence, you rediscover purpose through repeated cycles of disruption and re-formation, rather than living a life expecting to reach a permanent state of clarity.
He goes on then to describe those things that enable you to personally discover your unique purpose and fulfill it. He begins by describing the fire.
Feeling the Fire
The “inner fire” is the deep, sustaining energy source that makes you willing to continue through difficulty, obscurity, repetition, and slow progress to find your personal most meaningful work. This doesn’t mean something you’re constantly excited about, since no meaningful pursuit remains thrilling every minute. Instead, he described a deeper source of energy tied closely to what he defines as the idea of “encodings.” He uses this term to describe the very essence of who God has made you to be. We read in Romans, “For God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable,” (Romans 11:29) and “We are His (God’s) workmanship, ( His own master work, a work of art), created in Christ Jesus…,”( Eph. 2:10).
Collins explains that there is a fire that is fed when we live from these encodings. Paul encouraged Timothy, “For this reason, I remind you to fan onto flame the gift of God within you,” ( 2Tim.1:6).
Collins discovered in his research that the quality of the fire can change over a lifetime even while the intensity stays high. He explains in his own case, as a young man, his fuel was rage, fury, and a sense of terror with no safety net afraid he might lose that edge and lose his drive.
This was replaced though by a different kind of fire. He discovered the joy of being curious, the reward of being lost in giant projects and fascinating conversations, and the fulfillment found in sharing what he learned. His drive ended up much higher and fulfillment in life greater.
So how do you structure your life…your work, your finances, your commitments… to feed the fire for the long haul? How can you structure your life to fulfill that one big thing that feeds you within? His book explains that the people who kept that fire burning hottest weren’t asking “What’s my legacy” but rather “What am I still responsible for?”
Growing in Self-Knowledge
The author considers his book, not a self-help book, but a “self-knowledge book.” He believes self-knowledge is discovering and trusting your own encodings. Don’t copy someone else’s playbook no matter how great it seems. Find your own encodings and trust them as you move forward.
8 Steps for Getting Unstuck and Moving Forward
- Don’t wait to move forward.
Don’t wait on the complete picture to move forward. Full clarity is not immediate so don’t take a big leap. Take the first simple step. The fog lifts through motion, not through endless thinking. And when you move, you don’t get stuck. If you’re already stuck, choose motion to move on. Take a step, even the smallest step. - Take the smallest next visible step (“simplex stepping”).
I remember when Elisabeth Elliot told me the story of when her missionary husband, Jim, wwas killed by native Indians in South America. She was immobilized. She contacted her mother who said very simply, “Pick up the broom and just start sweeping.” Motion is everything. Collins’ core direction for moving through fog is to take the best step that’s visible right in front of you. You don’t need to know where you are ultimately going. When you’re standing in this new position, identify the next best step from there. It’s a step-by-step process rather than a grand plan. - Avoid big, irreversible decisions in the fog.
Because your judgment and identity are disoriented during fog, don’t make major life decisions. I know when my father died, my mother was encouraged not to make a significant move for up to 2 years. She waited and made a much more informed decision when she decided to move from Florida to Virginia, where my Mom and Dad had spent most of their lives. - If you know a cliff is coming, prepare.
Before you go over the cliff, if you know it’s coming, prepare first. The next step will be less disorienting as a result. - Identify your encodings and what you’re intrinsically built to be and do.
Getting unstuck is about rediscovering your own deepest capacities. God has given you unique and wonderful capacities, your encodings, that He waits for you to discover through the experiences of life. Fog often clears once a person identifies which encoding applies best in their new circumstances. - Anchor to what you’re still responsible for, not what you’ve lost.
Rather than fixating on the loss that caused the cliff, or a legacy question, ask a forward-looking question: “What am I still responsible for?” - Build in structured reflection.
Collins uses and recommends an ongoing practice for continually recalibrating your life as you evaluate life’s moments. After almost any conversation, teaching moment, or significant interaction, write down three things that went well and three things you could have done better. This small, repeatable habit enables you to regain self-knowledge and momentum as you go forward. - Trust that like your financial investments, momentum compounds with each fog cycle.
Facing cliffs and moving beyond the fog is a repeating cycle throughout life promising growth even late in life. People he studied still maintained their encodings and many kept discovering new ones. Their cumulative experience continued growing. He did state though that, “When you hit 60, you finish your warmup.” It’s time to make this growth a lifestyle.
So, for all of us as we navigate the cliffs, move through the fog, fan the flame within and identify and apply our pertinent encodings for the current situation, may we trust God develops the plan and guides our steps. As he said to Jeremiah, “ ‘I know the plans I have for you’, declares the Lord,’ plans to prosper you and not to harm you (plans for good and not for evil), plans to give you hope and a future,’” (Jeremiah 29:11).
