Just over ten years ago I suffered a near-death experience, a motorcycle accident put me into a coma that lasted for eleven days. Laying in the hospital bed I dreamed and floated in and out of reality, not aware of what was happening to me until I finally awoke. And, like many others before me, a traumatic experience tends to shine an intense light on the life you have been living up until that moment. After that, I became acutely aware of time and just how I’d been spending mine. Discovering how much time was enough time, changed my focus completely after that experience. 

I guess if you are constantly chasing more and more it can eventually make you really successful or quite miserable, so given that time is a precious commodity, one that can’t be purchased, setting up the right goals early on can help get you off the treadmill before your use-by date expires. Have you ever noticed how often your body is somewhere but your mind is definitely somewhere else altogether. It’s certainly not that uncommon, it’s just we don’t notice it happening. It could be time to exit stage left but you hesitate because of the deep uncertainty swirling around. What’s next for me is just too difficult to wrap your head around now, so I’ll wait.

We do have the habit of running from one experience to the next, always in a hurry to get there and never really stopping long enough to understand why. There’s a price to pay for every decision we make in life, our words, thoughts and actions push us along. Stopping is always difficult, it’s taken us a lifetime to get up to speed right. Continuing on in a haze has it’s costs but we must be realistic and know that stopping also has its own repercussions.

So Let’s Explore Where Can We Get Stuck in Life:

Money –  yes, of course, that magic stuff that allows us to do so many wonderful things in life. It’s bright and so shiny and we wish we could be Aladdin in that cave making a wish that will make us happy forever. This is a bit of a tricky decision. Will my first wish be for lasting contentment or a chest of precious jewels, on the one hand, it appears that the jewels will give me the second choice anyway, so why waste a wish right. This is the problem with us chasing money beyond the point that it gives us any lasting happiness. If the jewels can provide temporary relief from our boredom or dissatisfaction then what if we happen to spend too much and then have no option left other than to take up our second wish. Now things are a bit more serious. It appears that money may have its limits after all.

Romance – If our happiness is derived from our emotional state and related to how we feel, then our sense of self-worth, our feelings of fulfillment are also connected to our sense of being loved, of being connected to the world. But what if that’s not happening for you? What if you feel you don’t have your own life anymore. Perhaps your interests are outside and spending time with others is more meaningful for you. Healthy relationships require constant nurturing. No one ever wishes to separate so instead of getting to the point where you say enough is enough, look to see how you can challenge your other half in different ways, that’s where you’ll find growth, that’s where you’ll find opportunity, thats what will keep you evolving and prevent boredom from hurting you both. Being stuck leads to depression and it hurts the heart so best deal with it now.

Work – so, are you ready to call it quits, or are you staying for all the wrong reasons? This is the 64 dollar question. We need to remember there is a difference between having a bad day at work and having a bad job that makes us feel like a sack of potatoes. If you are still working then making money is probably the easy part but showing up everyday to an environment that no longer supports you can be emotionally difficult to say the least. Conversely, having work that you enjoy doesn’t necessarily mean you should stick around. Knowing when work is over and when you should quit is never going to be a straightforward decision but there’s also no prizes for staying on longer than necessary, especially where your health is concerned. Knowing when enough is enough is also about realising that your personal life could also be suffering without you noticing it. Those important others around you could be feeling very stuck, waiting for you to make a more meaningful contribution to their lives.

There’s no magic formula for understanding the nuances of our own inner world, our minds are uniquely different but it can be debilitating if we reach a point where we stop having the ability to enjoy everyday activities because we have simply stopped noticing that we are stuck, it silently seeps into our lives and then nothing is ever enough again.

Hope allows us to push forward even though the truth is sometimes elusive and difficult to find. Staying hopeful will always be the antidote to not giving up, developing inner strength allows us to stand up and be present in our lives even when everything is looking pretty grey. So, remaining open to new and unexpected opportunities is key to being able to build a more positive perspective on life. Fate is not directing our hand, only we are responsible for doing that. 

Fate handed  me that accident but it was in my determination and my clearer motivation to take the necessary steps, however challenging it was at first, that helped me arrive ahead of time. I could have easily pushed on another 10 years and ohhh…. what I would have missed out on.