5 Questions To Ask To Get Unstuck

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Has your career come to a grounding holt, where you are no longer being recognised, rewarded and promoted? Perhaps you are feeling bored, lacking challenge and missing the opportunity for growth. Are you wondering why it is that your career progression has plateaued over the last few years, leaving you less than excited about going to work every day?

Becoming stuck at the same place in our career usually dosen’t happen over night. It creeps up on us until one day we wake up and say how did this happen??

So how does it happen?

The simple answer is that you have been playing way too safe!

Too often we do what feels comfortable. We take the familiar route; doing what we know without question we can do well. We say yes to the projects that are similar to the ones we have had success in previously. We take the path of least resistance, avoiding “risky” innovative solutions and do what we can to fly under the radar to avoid the possibility of even more work coming our way.

The comfort of what we know is all too alluring…. but often not at all satisfying. When we think about the things we are most proud of, they are very often those things that stretched and challenged us.

If you want to achieve new results, hit new targets, be seen, heard and recognised for all you are capable of, then you must be willing to do what you have never done before. And yes! That means stepping outside your comfort zone.

Our growth, joy and fulfilment comes doing the things we have never done before. The magic happens beyond our comfort zone!

One of my gorgeous clients, Katherine, discovered this recently. She had an opportunity to speak and share her story at an event but felt that it was beyond her. She had an amazingly inspiring story of courage and achievement to tell but felt too scared to step out onto the stage. After a little work to raise her confidence, sense of self worth and belief in her abilities, she accepted the challenge and quite simply must have been brilliant.

By accepting the challenge, she has now been asked to speak at 3 more high profile events. And as you can imagine, opportunities have opened up for her because of that one brave move.

Everything that you want is available to you too. All that is required is for you to do the things that you have not yet done. This is true for my life and for so many of the women I work with. We must be willing to shift the status quo in our own lives, shake things up a little and to step into the unknown, where, yes, there is risk, but also so much more opportunity.

Here are 5 simple questions to ask to help you get unstuck.

1. Where in your work are you playing safe? Are you shying away from speaking up in meetings? Are you keeping your innovative ideas to yourself out of fear of ridicule or rejection? Have you passed up opportunities or failed to apply for a promotion?

2. Where have you have been doing the same thing over and over? Are you doing what you have always done and hoping to get a different outcome? Better results come from trying new ways, innovative strategies, extending the boundaries of what has been done before.

3. What would happen if you began doing the things that felt scary or outside your comfort zone? Imagine if you did muster up the courage to take on a bigger role, greater responsibilities, a challenging project, the opportunity to speak at an event or simply to broaden you network.

4. If you could not fail, what would you attempt to do? We all have dreams! What are yours? In the busyness of the day to day to do lists, both at work and at home, we get lost in the minutia of the same old same old. But it is for this very reason you have lost the spark for your work. Dig into your past swag of dreams and bring them to life again.

5. What is it costing you right now to stay stuck? Ok this one might hurt a little, but lets get real for just one moment. What is it costing you to stay stuck? Is it your health, your mood, your connection with those you love, your sense of fulfilment, career progression or is it quite simply that you want more from life and your work than you what you have right now??

The good news is that change can happen quite quickly once you realise you are stuck and begin doing some things differently. Even the smallest changes can create momentum towards a more rewarding career. The only question for you now to answer is “What are you prepared to do to create that change?”