Last Updated on December 23, 2024
Getting unstuck is easy and fun
Over the past 6 weeks I’ve been doing 2 hours of “meditation” a day.
It’s been amazing, life-changing even.
I put “meditation” in quotes because I’m not just sitting quietly on a cushion.
Some of the time I am sitting quietly, but mostly on the couch.
And a lot of the time, I’m doing what I call Pattern Interrupt Methods.
I’ve cleared out so much in such a short time, it’s unbelievable.
I didn’t even know how stressed I was…until I wasn’t!
And the best part is, it’s been easy and fun.
Stuck states are loops
When we’re feeling stuck, we’re in a loop.
It’s like an old tape that just plays over and over (a metaphor that only makes sense to Gen X and older).
Or a Spotify song set to repeat (a metaphor the younger folk can understand).
We tell the story of our suffering in the same words, from the same perspective, over and over and over again.
And every time we do that, we feel bad.
But “neurons that fire together, wire together,” as Hebb’s Law states.
Really Hebb said that neuron X fires just before neuron Y.
So it’s more like “If X, then Y.”
It’s like a computer program!
Deprogramming ourselves
Whenever we repeat “If think [old story of my suffering], then feel bad,” we are programming ourselves to feel bad.
Every time we do this, we are grooving the neurological pathway deeper.
That makes it easier to feel bad next time!
In fact, thinking about something with strong feeling is the very structure of learning.
In my field we just call this “hypnosis.”
It’s as if we are practicing feeling bad.
But knowing that is actually great news!
Because it makes it clear what we can do instead:
Anything else!
We can get unstuck and into the flow by introducing that old loop first.
We start playing the old tape and feeling bad…but not for too long!
Then we interrupt the loop, interrupt the pattern, but introducing literally anything different.
A simple way to get unstuck
Here’s a simple thing you can try today.
Set a timer for 2 minutes on your phone or computer.
Pick a specific context or a more general area of life where you feel stuck.
And get a song you like to dance to queued up on your favorite music player
Then say to yourself, “I’m going to speak out loud about this topic for 2 minutes.”
“I’m not going to censor or filter myself.”
“Then when the timer goes off, I’m going to stop speaking, and get up and dance to this song.”
Then do it!
After you dance, repeat the process.
Ask yourself, “What’s true now?” about this topic.
Repeat as many times as you want, with as many songs as you want, until you feel unstuck and in the flow.
But what if you don’t like dancing?
Then just pick something else, anything else, that you enjoy doing, and do it for 2-5 minutes.
You could…
- meditate,
- sing a song,
- do some yoga,
- or some tapping,
- take a couple minutes to journal about 3 things you’re grateful for,
- focus on how the sunlight through the window makes the dust particles dance,
- or do anything else that is wholesome and enjoyable and distracting.
It seems too simple to work, but that’s the nature of pattern interrupts.
They are easy and fun.
What’s hard is continuing to run that old loop on repeat!
I now know my purpose
Doing these pattern interrupts over and over has clarified something for me:
My purpose in life is to get unstuck and into the flow, over and over, and to teach others how to do so.
The cool thing is that I can always do this!
No matter how stuck I am, I can always speak about my stuckness out loud, or write about it silently.
I can always get up and dance, or do anything different to interrupt the pattern.
If I get into stuck states every day for the rest of my life, I can still live my purpose.
And if I’m already in the flow, I can cultivate resourceful states like peace and joy and love and confidence.
I’m finding that the more I clear out stuck states, the happier, more creative, and more productive I become.
May you also find the joy of getting unstuck and into the flow.
Take care,
~Duff
(they/them)
P.S. Feeling stuck? Get a free 30-minute consultation to see if 1-on-1 coaching or my weekly Joy of Doing coaching group is right for you!
