Dear Springboard:
I have been consumed by a dream and have worked really hard to make it happen.  Despite all my effort, I have hit a wall.  I’m stuck and don’t know what to do.
Sign me,
Bogged Down
Dear BD:
I can relate. There have been times when I have felt stuck and didn’t know what to do.
Just a few weeks ago, I gave a presentation on the chapter “Getting Unstuck” in Adam Grant’s book Hidden Potential. The whole book is very worthwhile, it was my turn to facilitate a discussion with colleagues.
Grant laid out how we get stuck and strategies to get unstuck. I picked up several themes that include:
  • Having a growth mindset
  • Letting go
  • Taking action
  • Asking for help
  • Maintaining perspective
Let’s look at each of these.
A growth mindset is optimistic in the face of setbacks and demonstrates persistence, resilience and hope.
Letting go is hard to do.  How do we decide whether to persist or to surrender to the obstacle and then be willing to take a step back and try a different approach.
This reminds me of the Strength Deployment Inventory assessment I use with clients. This strengths survey prioritizes our individual profile of 28 strengths.
When faced with resistance, many people try the same way harder, longer, more intensely. The coaching suggestion is to look beyond the top strengths they use all the time and try a strength or two that is the next level down for a fresh approach.
In the book’s chapter, Adam Grant tells the story of baseball pitcher RA Dickey who couldn’t consistently make it in the major leagues.  His fastball wasn’t fast enough.
So, he spent seven years perfecting the quirky, difficult-to-throw (and hit!) knuckleball.  After being sent down to the minors seven times, he finally had success in the majors.  He noted, “Hope is incredible fuel.”
He demonstrated persistence, agility, resilience, innovation plus humility in both stepping back to retool as well as asking for help.
Taking action is critical.  Nothing changes if nothing changes. Grant advises that we don’t need the specific directions of a map.
Instead, imagine you have a compass; get started and check in to ensure you’re headed in the right direction.
Be open to exploring and experimenting. The path may unfold as you go. The trick is to get started.
Asking for help can be difficult in itself.  Personally, I sometimes struggle with it myself.  Not so much an ego thing, but not wanting to bother someone.  Over literally decades, my experience has consistently been responses of generosity when I have reached out.
Grant does note an interesting dynamic about receiving help.  With the inclination to seek an expert (the best!) for their counsel, we may not be knocking on the right door for the most helpful advice.
These experts have “the curse of knowledge.”  The more they know, the harder it is for them to fathom what’s it’s like to not know. They operate with unconscious mastery at an intuitive level and there is a mismatch with novices seeking direction.
Grant does recommend seeking out mentors as sounding boards and believes we don’t need big numbers – two or three can be enough.
When the journey of seeking gets bogged down and we feel worn out, there can be the emotional toll of languishing.
Languishing is a feeling of stagnation and emptiness, not seeing enough progress to maintain motivation – feeling stuck and staying stuck.
Faced with languishing, Grant suggests letting go and taking a break with a “detour.” Stop trying to make headway with the project at hand and spend time in another (unrelated) activity where you will make some progress and have a feeling of accomplishment.  It positions us to return to the main project refreshed with renewed energy.
The last theme of perspective is offered to put current circumstances in a larger context.  If we experience a disappointment, don’t despair; look at the bigger picture over a long arc of time and see it as the minor setback that it is.  I think of a graph of the stock market and how a small correction looks inconsequential on a five-year trend of growth.
Grant offers more encouragement. Noting how we might experience frustration if it feels like we’re going in circles, take heart and notice our progress when it is really an upward spiral.
I think we need to celebrate more the small wins as they come along.
“The strongest known force in daily motivation is a sense of progress,” wrote Grant.