What have the 14th century Italian poet Dante, Paul Newman and London in June got in common?
Inferno is the answer – the fiery hot and hellish kind.
Inferno is a word that always conjured for me either memories of studying Dante’s 14th century epic poem during my modern languages degree or watching a certain, slightly less well-known disaster movie of Paul Newman’s from the mid-70s.
Until last week, that is, when an unnaturally intense heat descended upon London (and many other parts of Europe), causing me – and the rest of the UK – to experience my very own kind of inferno as the walls of my North London flat closed in on me and the train tracks carrying me north for work, melted along with my mental health.
But while extreme heat creates one particular version of hell, the famous opening lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy describe a different kind: namely the sense of being lost and stuck in the dark woods of midlife.
The power of perspective
Many of us are familiar with the feeling of being stuck or lost – and it can indeed feel pretty hellish. Midlife is one definite trigger for a lot of people, but it is not the only one. It can come to us as young adults in the disorientating transition from the world of education to the world of work. We encounter it in the aftermath of bereavement as we grapple with the shellshock of loss and the challenge of reorientating ourselves to a different kind of future. We can come up against it when we retire or when we reach the end of one chapter in life and have no idea what we want to come next. We also find it when we’re out of ideas about how to solve an especially knotty business challenge or how to lead our people through a major period of disruption and change.
That feeling of being lost or stuck in a metaphorical dark wood is a common human experience – and often a really uncomfortable one. That said, not all experiences of being lost or stuck are equally hellish. Some of them are relatively fleeting. Others last longer, feel more confronting to endure and more challenging to navigate.
I have come to believe that no matter how hellish they are, one thing is always the case. That is that the perspective of being stuck – our belief that we are without options and don’t know how to move forward – is as much the issue as our actual circumstances. In other words, our mindset and what we tell ourselves is more the problem than the reality of our situation. And so it follows that a major part of the task is to change our mindset by challenging the stories we are telling ourselves.
Saying yes
I’ve been practising this recently. I’d been feeling stuck for a while for a mixture of reasons: some personal, some professional. As someone that loves to feel a sense of movement in her life, I was really struggling with the feeling and it was impacting my mental health.
I’d been languishing for weeks in a dark hole of self-pity when the penny dropped: I was not completely stuck. I did have choices. They weren’t necessarily easy choices or the ones I wanted, but they did exist. I remembered my personal sense of ‘sovereignty’. It might sound like a fancy word but it immediately gave me back my sense of agency.
So I decided to experiment with how I spent my time. I started saying yes to different things, some a bit weird, some much less so. I did a ceremonial cacao and shamanic drumming workshop, went on a day hike with strangers and did pilates on the Thames Path. I went to a networking event (I usually avoid them like the plague) and started reaching out to different sorts of people on LinkedIn and signing up for various sorts of gatherings.
And you know what? It made a huge difference.
My feeling of being stuck has left me completely. It’s been replaced by a feeling of adventure and being in transition. I love adventure and exploring – so that already feels like a win!
What’s more the things I’ve done and the conversations I’ve had have left me bubbling with ideas about the stuff I was feeling stuck with. Nothing has changed except my perspective. And that has changed everything.
Coaching people to become unstuck
Many of my clients come to me feeling stuck. They’re stuck in jobs they don’t like, stuck with leadership challenges they don’t know how to overcome, relationships they don’t know how to navigate or decisions they don’t know how to make. They want something but they don’t know to get it. Or they know what they don’t want, but not what they do want instead. More often than not, they believe that if they think about it a bit longer – and talk about it a bit longer – they will figure it out.
But the vast majority of the time, that is simply not true. Usually, sitting and thinking just leads to feeling more stuck and the hellish heat of discomfort and anxiety grows.
So my challenge to them is to stop thinking, get up from their desk or sofa and get out of their front door. I invite them to say yes to some different things, get out of their comfort zone, have different conversations, try different things – no matter what they are or how relevant they seem. Maybe even have fun along the way. Treat it like a treasure hunt, not like a heavy problem to be figured out and notice the impact that has on your energy levels and mindset.
After the activity, comes a period of reflection. What have you discovered? What learning have you brought back from your adventure? Sometimes a seed of inspiration has come from a conversation you’ve had, or a person you met has made a promising introduction. Sometimes the discovery is that you have shifted to a more creative, resourceful mindset and with that has come the realisation that you are not as stuck as you thought you were. You have ideas now about concrete actions you can take.
Coaching is a space where you can share your experience of the ‘dark wood’ of being lost and stuck, be challenged to step beyond your ‘stuck’ perspective and find a way to respond differently, to think differently and to open up new possibilities for yourself. My clients have left jobs they have outgrown, found new jobs, started new businesses, written books, gone on exciting adventures, set intentions for the next chapter of their lives and more besides. You can do that too.
Five tips to getting unstuck
If the heat is getting too much, know that you may simply need to change your perspective in order to see that there is a way out and a new direction waiting for you.
So please, don’t continue to sit stewing on it. Instead do this:
- Find 5 new gatherings or events to attend – online or in person – over the next fortnight
- Visit somewhere different next weekend, somewhere you have never been before – a change of scene works wonders for shifting our mindset
- Generate a list of 10 people you are going to have conversations with over the next month
- Go a different way to work every day for the next week
- Take up a hobby or take a class you have always been interested in, but never actually tried.
And if you are still stuck after trying all of those things, drop me a note to ask about my Urban Vision Quest. I will design you your own personal adventure in the town where you live (or the one closest to you). I will help you prepare for it carefully but you will journey alone with prompts, challenges and invitations that I will provide you with. And you might just find a whole new perspective along the way.
And that my friend, might be all you need.