Up until now, you’ve always done things a certain way, to be exactly where you are, now.

Your health, finances, career and relationships are the way they are because of the actions and decisions you’ve taken until this point to get you to where you are right now in the present moment.

The important question is: Are you happy with where you are, now?

Imagine: If nothing were to change, and you continued to live your life exactly the way you have until this point, would you be content with your results?

If yes, keep doing what you’ve always done.

If kind of, sort of, maybe…. Then would you have regrets in the future?

If you’re not happy with where you are now, and you’re feeling somewhat stuck, then it’s time for change.

And that’s OK.

We are designed to want more, we are created to grow. And it’s never too late to start thinking of yourself differently, to start taking new decisions and most significantly if you desire, to propel your life in an entirely new direction!

It’s all up to you! You are one decision away from change.

Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man in the world, uses something called the “regret minimization framework” to determine whether he should do something, or not.

Quite simply, if you would regret not doing something in the next few years, then you should do it!

So this article will show you 5 concrete ways to get unstuck, help you to stop just existing, and to start living.

Let’s get into it!

I’m excited to share these with you.

#1: Change Your Habits

People get stuck in life as they’re usually repeating their same mundane habits and past behaviors out of inertia. They’re too used to doing things the way they’ve always done them and keep following their regular daily routines, without conscious thought, mindfulness or presence. This is the most common cause of living a life on ‘autopilot’ and inevitably puts them out of control. It also leads to boredom, burnout and a life without passion.

We can only change what we are aware of and what we are willing to acknowledge.

An important step towards meaningful change is to stop, get aware and decide what exactly it is you want to change in your daily habits, and then start to adopt the new ones that enable you to feel more positive, and ultimately take the right actions for you and your outcomes and success.

Initially, you will need help to shake up your routine a bit, and hold yourself accountable for adopting the new habits you want to imbibe. But once you’re on the way to completing these habits daily, you will feel a renewed sense of purpose, deliberate intention and confidence like never before!

Start by enlisting the habits you want to adopt, and then creating an action plan for each of those habits. For instance, if you want to get up before 6am, exercise daily and cut your sugar intake completely, you need to be specific about these goals by naming the goal, setting a time frame, and creating an action plan and accountability plan for ensuring you get there.

Starting slow can be smart. By setting milestones that help you reach your goal, you can create an entire journey for yourself to your new habit! A life coach can be instrumental in helping you determine your goals, and creating this plan of action, so make sure you’re doing this collaboratively with one. I’m just a message away! 

#2: Define The Vision For The New You

To get unstuck, you need to know exactly what it would look like to be unstuck!

Knowing exactly why you’re stuck where you are is the first step towards acknowledging that you have a problem to fix. Don’t get stuck being stuck! You need to accept you’re stuck, and then do whatever it takes to get unstuck.

Once you know why you’re stuck, acknowledge you have a problem, and you’re fired up to get unstuck, you’ve already won half the battle in the context of planning your new self. Now you need to create a vision for new self, which can be so super exciting! And the best part is, you get to determine exactly who that person is!

Answering the following questions is a huge help:

• Who is the new you going to be?
• What type of person are you going to be?
• What does your daily routine look like?
• What kind of people do you mix with?
• What sort of events do you go to?
• What is your mindset like?
• What’s your purpose?

You need to become the new person you want to be. To do this, spend time answering these questions in the present tense, as if it is happening for you right now, in this moment. Create a state where you are this person already and start to dream of everything you see in your mind. Listen to your intuition, it knows.

And by changing the way you think about both, yourself, and others, and the situations you’re in, you’ll start molding your psychology to think like, and be like the new person you want to be.

#3: Seek The Wisdom Of Those Who Have Been Through What You’re Going Through

While being stuck can be an isolating, lonely and very challenging experience, the truth is that you’re not the only one who’s stuck in your situation. There are many others, trust me, who have been through your experience, learned how to overcome it and get unstuck in creative ways!

Figure out who’s already been through what you’re going through or who has made a similar change.

Although our experiences are subjective and personal to our unique selves, we can model other people and surround ourselves with the right kind of inspiration, motivation and examples to help us shift – even if it’s just a little. Sometimes, just one adjustment to our situation can lead to a magnificent and powerful domino effect, unfolding incredible transformation.

Showing up and reaching out is what it takes.

It takes one brave conversation.

It takes one courageous outreach.

It takes one new perspective.

It take one changed behavior.

It takes one friend, one coach, one mentor, one hero….

Sometimes it takes one life-altering minute.

Are you struggling with paying off your debt? Or a new career choice?

Let your friends and family know your situation and that you’re looking to be connected to someone who has already solved a similar challenge to your own.

You’ll be so pleasantly surprised how willing people are to help!

Another approach is to research the internet, and browse forums like Quora for answers. People have asked and answered all kinds of questions on there!

Just put up your question there, and you will get a stream of answers in no time.

We don’t need to ever get unstuck alone.

#4: Connect With A Life Coach

Life coaches are there to help you get unstuck!

More often than not, the best insights ever comes from working with those who are passionately dispassionate.

A life coach isn’t your family member, which makes them see your situation dispassionately, while also being able to leverage their passion for genuinely helping people.

By connecting with a life coach, you can work with someone who’s dedicated to helping you solve your problems, and live the life of your dreams. A good life coach will use a range of effective tools, frameworks and proven strategies to assist you.

They’ve got plenty of really awesome life hacks up their sleeve! Trust me.

The important thing to note here is that life coaching is a process and can take time. By involving a life coach in helping you navigate your life challenges, you have an extra helping hand which will allow you to feel supported in courageously addressing your challenges.

You’ll never feel alone when you work with one!

#5: Meditate To Seek Your Inner Wisdom

Lastly, while you can have all the help in the world, you are the captain of your life and the master of your fate. Consulting external sources can be extremely helpful and may just give you the information you need, but you also need to consult yourself to make the best decision for yourself.

You are fully responsible for your decisions, your actions and your results. So you need to seek your innate inner wisdom, your intuitive voice and your sixth sense to make the best decisions.

You are the expert on your own life.

Prayer, breathing, silence and meditation are life-changing forces that enable this gift.

By sitting still in silence for a while, you can learn to block out all the noise inside and outside your head and just be present and attentive to what your heart truly wants to do.

Wrapping it up

Getting unstuck may be hard initially, I know.

However, it can be a very fulfilling experience if you use a combination of the suggested ways above to make even one positive change in your life.

Just do it!

I’m here to support you every step of the way!

I sat down with some clients this week to debunk some myths that many of us hold on to, about the end of one year and the beginning of a new one and this time of year in general when the pressure feels on.

Does it need to be? Does a new year have to be such a big deal?

Maybe some of these will resonate with you too, maybe some will help you with where you’re stuck in your own life, maybe some will help you get out of your own way, and maybe some will spark something inside of you that will expand your own awareness. This gave me profound food for thought.

If even one of these points help you be more compassionate to yourself in 2019, it will be worth it.

Myth 1:

I have to take a good hard look at myself on Dec 31^st.

Debunk:

You can take a good hard look at yourself ANY day of the year. 

Myth 2:

Once a year, I have to take stock, get real with my life and know a set plan for the entire New Year – and that in itself is so overwhelming for me.

Debunk:

You can take stock, get real and plan each day, each week, each month or each year at any given moment. You don’t have to make this a once a year EVENT. Personal development is a PROCESS not an event. It is more like a gauge than a switch.

You can choose. You can work on multiple levels at any stage of your life at any time of the year. You don’t have to wait for a year to end or until you have a crystal clear picture of the year ahead. Each purposeful choice you make will lead you in the direction of where you want to go gradually and intentionally.

You don’t have to know everything right now.

Success is not an EVENT.

It is a PROCESS.

You do not have to know the whole story.

All you have to know is your next step.

Myth 3:

Everyone around me is setting resolutions and sharing what they’ve accomplished. Everyone is focusing on their wins. This time of year just makes me think of all the things I haven’t done yet or failed to accomplish.

Debunk:

You are allowed to review your year and choose what to focus on. You can focus on what you haven’t managed to do yet or you can choose to focus on things you have achieved. If you can review your year and take a challenge you’ve overcome or something you did that you are proud of, you are allowed to focus on that and celebrate that. We get to choose where to shine the spotlight. Either on all the things we haven’t managed to do – or – to shift our focus and put our attention, soaking up inspiration and motivation from the things we have managed to do. Whatever we focus on grows. You get to decide. You get to review everything that went wrong, or everything that went right. Or both.

Myth 4:

At the end of a year, that’s when we claim our big prizes and track our progress and perform evaluations.

Debunk:

Why wait?

You get to claim awesome prizes along the journey too. You do not have to wait until the end of the year to be proud of yourself, learn something new about yourself, develop strengths, or see progress, grow and develop. The end of not the jackpot!

Everything you do along the way is!

You get to track each step along the way. Each win is a really big deal, not just the end prize. In fact, often times, if we wait until December 31^st to be proud of ourselves and celebrate success, we’ll give up long before.

Claim your prize, track your progress and evaluate throughout the year instead.

Myth 5:

My resolutions and goals are usually written down like this: All the things I must, have to, should, ought to, need to – and I genuinely find this pressurizing and stressful.

Debunk:

Pay close attention to language. Use other words.

The words have to, must, should, ought to – they activate the anxiety and stress centers in our brain. How about rewording your resolutions and goals with the words:

I will, I want to, I’m going to, I’d love to, I’d like to….

That way they will be value-based instead of needs- based. Your list becomes a heartfelt list of things that really matter to you, things you honestly want to do, things that are important to you. They become a blessing instead of a burden. Change your wording and your emotional experience may feel very different.

Myth 6:

I have to make changes in so many areas of my life simultaneously because when I am truly honest with myself, when one area isn’t at its best – everything feels like it’s just not good enough.

Debunk:

When we are making a change, it’s certainly messy in the middle.

It feels like the chaos has pervaded every area of our life.

Often, if we stop to separate each zone of our life into its own compartments, we may be pleasantly surprised to notice that so much is actually looking pretty good in other areas – we were just clouded by the fog of our current difficulty or obstacle that overtook everything else.

So – let’s separate them. There are amazing tools to do this well. We may be changing careers and everything feels so unstable, but when we look at our health or our hobbies or the relationships we have – those may indeed be flourishing. Let’s see each piece of the puzzle for what it is, rather than making sure the puzzle is perfectly complete.

Myth 7:

When I review my year, whatever hasn’t worked out the way I wanted it to, makes me feel like a complete failure.

Debunk:

Events and we are not one in the same.

Perhaps, what we tried failed, what we tried didn’t work. That may be accurate.

But we are not failures. The action may have failed.

We are not failures.

Let’s train ourselves to separate our actions from who we are.

And let’s consider failure as valuable feedback telling us that what we did didn’t work, it’s actually an invitation for us to make some important adjustments and try something else, something new, something different.

When I review my year, I can see failure as feedback and learn from it. My effort may have failed, but I am not a failure.

Myth 8:

Everyone has it so together. I’m a disaster.

Debunk:

Fact: No-one has it perfectly together.

We get a glimpse into people’s lives by what we see or what we have exposure to. There are countless behind the scene moments throughout the year where everyone we know is fighting a battle we know absolutely nothing about.

The biggest gift we can give ourselves is that of not comparing.

Not judging our successes and failures in relation to others.

It’s dangerous.

It leads to jealousy which is a futile emotion that allows us to count other people’s blessings instead of our own.

It also tempts us into using other people’s definitions of success as the yardstick for our own progress. And we may land up climbing to the top of someone else’s ladders only to sadly realize we climbed the wrong one!

What a shame that would be.

Our job is to look at ourselves. Live honest, authentic lives with integrity in alignment with our own values. Live your truth, your purpose – not someone else’s. To the extent that we can strengthen this abundant mindset, there is plenty for everyone and we can all achieve joy, fulfillment and meaning in our own ways. We can even help others achieve their goals and help them as much as possible. It’s quite awesome actually.

No one has it all together and you are not a disaster.

Myth 9

I think my idea of success isn’t serving me. Success to me is a person who has done well. I connect that to wealth and fame. I see people, especially around this time of year, celebrating in exotic locations at lavish New Years parties and I can’t help but wonder if I’ve been looking at success all wrong.

Debunk:

Who do you truly admire?

What is your definition of success?

I admire kindness.

I admire strong people who don’t give up, who know how to forgive, who are inspirational, positive and uplifting.

I admire givers.

I admire wise, thoughtful, knowledgeable people.

I admire people who are vulnerable about what’s hard.

I admire optimism.

I admire authenticity.

I admire helpfulness.

I admire gratitude.

I admire hard work.

I admire humor and laughter.

I admire depth.

Think about your definition of success.

Imagine your 90^th birthday party celebration and someone stands up to make a speech.

The speech is all about you.

Everyone is gathered around to celebrate your life and your success.

What do you want them to say?

What do you want to be known for?

What legacy do you want to leave?

What contribution do you want to make in this world and this lifetime?

Our time here is fragile and precious.

Who do you want to be celebrated for?

Your answers to this question are magnificent clues and insights for you to create a life you want to celebrate.

Not only once a year annually on 31^st December at midnight when the fireworks roar, but every single day, quietly and unassumingly, when no-one is counting and no-one is looking and there aren’t any fireworks drowning the noise of your fears and insecurities, doubts and humaneness.

The little things you do, to live a life you truly value, not because one day a year dictates you must, not because everyone else is doing it, not because you feel like a failure or because your success is being measured and judged by others’ standards, but because you want to, because you choose to, because one random Wednesday morning you reached your threshold and decided it’s enough, I’m doing this now, I’m committing today!

Because you had a moment of awareness or a spark of inspiration, or you felt willing enough and ready enough to take something upon yourself – that’s when you set resolutions and make a change.

Because that’s when it matters most and that’s how you create a life that has more meaning and heart for you, than any specific date or time of the year.

And yes – you get to party like crazy every single time you are brave and courageous. Every time you ask for help. Every time you try. Every time you get back up after you fall. Every time you do something new and take a chance. Every time to step out of your comfort zone – you get to party like crazy. Every time you cry. Every time you are afraid but do it anyway. Every time you show up, doing the best you can, with where you are.

And if it so happens to be December 31^st – then that’s pretty amazing too!

We don’t have to do it alone!

If you want to live the life of your dreams, using some help can help fast track your progress.

We all need to feel supported, challenged, encouraged, motivated, focused, inspired, disciplined and driven to achieve the highest possible vision of life that we have for ourselves.

And let’s be honest – doing that alone can be extremely hard!

Working with a life coach can be the most empowering experience of your life. I know, because I use one too.

This is especially true if you don’t feel supported currently, and don’t have that one person to help you achieve your highest vision for yourself.

Some of the most successful people in the world have sought the help of a great life coach. Oprah Winfrey credits her life coach, Martha Beck, for some of her success. Serena Williams worked with Tony Robbins to fight through a tough phase in her tennis career to bounce back, and ended up winning a grand slam. The list is actually endless! And I’m not only referring to famous well-known successful people, I’m talking about every person who uses the gift of coaching to help them make meaningful, lasting and effective change in any area of their life – big or small.

As the well known life coaching tools expert says, “A life coach does for the rest of your life, what a personal trainer does for your health and fitness.”.

Working with a life coach is a very different experience compared to working with a counselor, or therapist because a counselor or therapist will  ‘hear you out’ and help lighten the mental baggage weighing you down, with an important focus on the past – but a life coach will be the driving force to propel you into action and directly address the concerns that are weighing you down so you can focus on your future. Both are awesome and have huge value. My background is in Psychology and I love coaching because it is a formal, practical meeting where you work. You will take a ton of action, feel a lot more confident and get on the path to living the life you want.

More importantly, ‘life coaching’ is very broad and covers all aspects of your life.

As a life coach myself, I use a tool called the ‘wheel of life’ as well as The Passion Test to understand all facets of your life. This covers your health, relationships, career, finances, hobbies and more. Life really can’t be compartmentalized! And it’s important to move all aspects of your relationship in sync, in a holistic, constructive and connected way.

Some issues that could be keeping you stuck, for which you can seek the help of an experienced life coach include:

• Your health. If you’re finding it hard to stick to your health goals, or need someone to hold you accountable, working with a life coach can be fantastic. Life coaches facilitate you into finding your own answers and making progress. They provide tools, inspiration and motivation and show you ways to move ahead step by step with purpose.
• Your relationships. If your relationships are in turmoil, you’re moving to a new city looking to meet new people and make new friends, or you have issues with your family that weigh you down, working with a life coach can show you the path to building meaningful relationships that leave you feeling fulfilled.
• Career issues. If you need help with coming up with a vision for your career that excites you, and helps you work towards your unique definition of ‘success’, working with a life coach can help you do just that.
• Any other life issue. Life is not always straightforward. And life coaches can help you simplify it and make it as straightforward as possible, so you can live with confidence, and learn to win at life!

Personal development is for everyone. 

Nobody is perfect and we all have miles to go to break the boundaries, and know what’s possible for us. Tony Robbins said the one thing that leads to happiness is progress! If you’re not making progress in some area of life, you will stagnate, and your happiness will stagnate too. So, developing yourself to make progress is the true key to real and lasting happiness, no matter what stage of life you’re at.

I’d like to give you a few solid reasons why you should consider working with a life coach:

Reason 1: Save Your Time!

Imagine solving a very complex life problem, all by yourself. You might take days, even weeks or months before you come to a solution. As Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” Therefore, working with a life coach can help you save precious time and expose you to a whole new way of thinking, empowering you to come up with creative solutions to your problems.

Reason 2: Challenge Yourself.

Personal growth comes when you challenge yourself. But people don’t always challenge themselves, and that’s why some external stimulus from a life coach can provide the much needed challenge you need. Rather than sinking in the ordinariness you’ve created, a life coach can challenge you to become extraordinary.

Reason 3: Create An Inspiring Vision.

To get somewhere in life, you need a powerful vision. And your vision must be one that really pulls you towards it. Not one you have to push yourself with huge resistance to achieve. A life coach can be instrumental in facilitating you to create that vision. By helping you dream, visualize, and giving you amazing tools to break out of your current reality, a life coach can be the catalyst you need to create an inspiring vision that helps you be the highest, truest expression of yourself.

Reason 4: Make Concrete Plans.

Creating a vision is fantastic. But without a plan, a vision is just a dream.

To get to your dreams, you need the help of a life coach to enable you to come up with concrete plans and a strategy that helps you get there. A life coach will give you the tools and frameworks to make specific, time bound plans that help you achieve your vision.

With a lot of my clients, I use the incredible Walt Disney technique to help them create a vision of their dreams, and then make pragmatic plans to get there. I find it’s very effective in helping my clients think in uninhibited ways and create possibilities that previously looked or felt impossible.

Reason 5: Gain Crystal Clarity.

Whether it’s your health, career or relationships, the biggest challenge a life coach can help you overcome is not knowing what you really want out of life. This is the trouble with a majority of the people out there, who continue to live life on autopilot, drifting in any direction life takes them. A life coach can help you become more conscious, intentional and deliberate about the way you spend your time by helping you gain clarity about what you really and truly desire.

Wrapping it up

An international life coaching survey found that more than 80% of clients improve their self confidence, 73% improve their personal relationships, 72% improved their communication skills and over 67% improved their work life balance, simply by working with a life coach. Experience the thrill of working with a life coach and weave magic into your life.

I’m excited to support you every step of the way!

Let’s get started!

As Aristotle says: “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

Without knowing yourself, it’s impossible to make the right choices in life.

Think about it for a moment: what if introverted Elon Musk decided to be a standup comedian, or the talented Jim Carrey decided to be an accountant? Do you think they would achieve even half the level of success they have in their lives? I somehow doubt it!

The only reason why people are purposefully successful at life, is because they take the time to invest in understanding who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and take meaningful action accordingly.

But knowing yourself isn’t easy.

Some people take a lifetime to know who they really are!

And that’s why we continue to make choices that are not always aligned with our core values, personality type and interests, often leading to tremendous disappointment.

A life coach can help you navigate this complex journey of understanding yourself.

Through asking you relevant questions, unpacking your purpose, and being your ‘mirror’ to help you see yourself better, a life coach can be instrumental in exploring yourself fully, and consequently, support you in your making wiser choices for living a fulfilling life.

A tool that’s helped me do this effectively as a life coach is Lumina Learning.

Lumina Learning is not just for individuals, couples or leaders looking to maximize themselves and their relationships. Lumina is a tool that directly helps organisations bring out the best in their people through showcasing and enhancing meaningful personal growth. Using innovative and unconventional psychometric testing, it reveals the colorful and complex personality portrait of the person taking the test to give them an even deeper dive and invaluable insight into their true nature.

The great thing about Lumina Learning is that it’s used by authorised coaches globally, so it’s highly credible, and being perpetually improved for accuracy. It’s not the usual psychometric assessment, it’s far more detailed, highly personalised and customised to every individual.

While this isn’t a sales pitch at all for Lumina, I genuinely believe in it and based on the overwhelming feedback from my clients, that I wanted to shed some light on just how amazing it can be for anyone looking to explore themselves, or any organisation that wants to understand team dynamics to produce the best possible outcomes.

The way it works is that individuals firsts complete a questionnaire, which produces a gorgeous ‘portrait’ of themselves, and who they are in relation to others. The test measures over 24 personality traits on a continuum, and is personalised through the coach you work with. The reason why it works accurately every time is because of the deep scientific research that’s gone into developing it!

By answering questions like the following:

• How do you work under pressure?
• What motivates you and what are your success drivers?
• Which job role excites you the most?

you get a solid grasp of your strengths, weaknesses, motivational factors, inner drive, and your personality traits, which can be utilised for the purposes of:

• Developing you as a leader
• Improving your management skills
• Knowing how you can look after your wellbeing
• Build confidence
• Refine your sales skills
• Learn how you can lead change

And a lot more! So much more!

As a coach, I’ve seen just how insightful this assessment can be in addressing the needs of my clients, because it’s only when I truly know who they are, in relation to the various circumstances and situations they’ve been through, that I can assist them by making a meaningful difference to their lives and guide them towards their goals, vision and ultimate results!

The great thing about this assessment is that it’s universally applicable, no matter what profession you’re in. Whether you’re a doctor, musician, lawyer or artist, this test looks into your ‘traits’ and not so much your ‘skills’ so you can use this personal wisdom to your advantage whoever you are.

Another key benefit of taking this assessment is that it helps match organisations with the right talent to hire. While a CV may demonstrate your key competency skills, educational qualifications and experience, it doesn’t capture your unique personality traits which often leads to wrong hiring decisions and huge turnover.

For instance, you could have completed a psychology degree from university by virtue of being a great student academically, but if you lack empathy, you’re probably going to have a hard time being a good psychologist.

From the perspective of employers, the Lumina learning assessment clearly communicates who the ‘person behind the CV’ is. So if an organisation is looking to hire sales staff with a high tolerance for pressure to hit targets, the assessment will capture how effective the individual is in managing stress, empowering HR professionals to make better decisions.

To give you an example of how companies are using Lumina Learning, Tesco, a premier grocery retailer in the UK with over 6800 stores, and 440,000 staff members, wanted to build competent teams for it’s new chain of “Extra Stores” which were more client focused.

To do so, they used Lumina Learning to develop the ideal ‘team dynamic’ and came up with a goal for the types of personality types needed to be within a team to help a store flourish. This is what it looked like:

As you can see, Tesco needed people who were a combination of outcome focused, people focused, down to earth yet extroverted. This gave them a clear idea on ‘who’ they needed to hire to make sure their project was a success.

Armed with that laser like clarity on the types of people they needed to hire, they ensured their interviewed candidates went through the assessment in order to ‘cherry pick’ the ones who met their set criteria for success.

The results were fantastic, with Tesco having successfully launched it’s Extra Stores, with more client focused, outcome driven teams leading to lower attrition rates, and higher employee satisfaction, a win-win!

Wrapping it Up

Having been through the rigorous Lumina Learning practitioner qualification process, I am one of their globally licensed professionals and have access to their amazing network of professionals, facilitation guides, and understand the principles behind their methodology. Reach out to me if you’re interested in learning more about your own personality portrait and coming up with a strategic action plan to set you up for personal and professional success!

I’m excited to work with you. Let’s make 2019 your best year yet!

http://www.andisaitowitz.com