I’M STUCK!

“Stuck" seems to be the prevailing zeitgeist of Summer 2024.

Two different articles appeared this week (The Atlantic and the WSJ) outlining the intense feeling that so many people are having right now - no option for advancement or changing jobs, no real choice when it comes to electing our leaders, no option to avoid to rising costs of housing, insurance, consumer goods, or childcare. Just...stuck.

I have been mentoring with the incredible Colleen Companioni of NeuroKind. Colleen is very clear, as a coach, that when a client shows up feeling “stuck" (as they almost always do) that it’s enormously important to move from a place of “Proactive Compassion.”

Proactive Compassion is the intentional act of compassion around the *real* limitations of someone’s *actual* situation - access to resources, education levels, systemic barriers, intersectional identities - while also actively supporting and encouraging individual agency inside of that situation.

Also, there are numerous studies that call out the feeling of Personal Agency - or the ability to make intentional choices that shape our lives - as an element that is *directly linked* to daily happiness and satisfaction.

Neither of these are new concepts but, in these seemingly "stuck" times, folks are clearly struggling to understand where they can actively practice Proactive Compassion and Personal Agency.

So what *can* we control? Here are 6 meaningful actions I share with my clients at The Wren Way that you can start today to practice both:

1. Work to become adept at naming, acknowledging, and working through your emotions. This is the beginning of self-mastery and the ability to change your life.

2. Become aware of what situations trigger negative emotions and reactivity in you. Learn how you can re-regulate your brain and body in those moments. Once you are adept at this, you have taken back your power.

3. Dedicate yourself to nurturing meaningful community and rewarding relationships. Our tribes are an invaluable element of happiness as well as a necessary conduit to expanding your world and changing your circumstances.

4. Invest (time, money, or exchange) in mentors, coaches, teachers, leaders, and friends who help you to see and call-out daily patterns of self-sabotage and reactivity. We don’t know what we don't know, so an outside perspective can really help.

5. Practice radical self-compassion around economic and industry trends, oppressive systems, and immovable institutions that you *cannot* change and do everything you can to limit your exposure to and interaction with them. If you have the ability to get involved in an activist role, get out there! But stop the endless, pointless, soul-crushing doomscrolling.

6. Help someone else. When we choose to actively lift someone else up, it helps us get unstuck by taking our mind off of ourselves for a moment. Additionally, it’s a clear path to building community (see number 3).

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Jennifer Wren, founder of The Wren Way, is a Life and Leadership Coach who helps mid-life women stop feeling stuck and start having fun though the intentional practice of compassion, play, curiosity and aligned action.