How to Get Unstuck and Start Realizing Your Full Potential Today

Picture this: You’re up early after another restless night. You can't quiet your mind from thinking about ways you can escape from that soul-sucking job you stumbled into a year ago. You don’t want to face another day at work. You’d rather just stay in bed and not think about all your problems. But your bills aren’t going to pay themselves, and you’re barely making enough money to cover food, rent, and gas as it is.

You drag yourself out of bed and stumble to the bathroom in your cramped one-bedroom apartment. Looking at yourself in the mirror, you can’t believe how much weight you’ve gained in the last year. But you have zero motivation to exercise again, because what’s the point? You sit at a desk all day staring at a computer, endlessly typing, emailing, filing, and going to so many meetings that it’s a wonder you’re able to get anything done at all.

You want to say something to your bosses about ways you could be more productive. But you’re just starting out, so you’re afraid that saying anything that might rock the boat even just a little would be viewed as insubordination.

It’s not fair, really. Someone in their early twenties should be traveling the world, taking pictures and posting them on Instagram just to make all their friends jealous. It seems like that’s all your friends from college do all day.

But you’re broke and you know it. And you’re just now realizing that taking out all those student loans to get a degree that doesn’t hold much value in the market wasn’t that great of an idea. So now you’re stuck in a dead-end job you hate, living in a tiny apartment in some city where everyone gets in each other’s way and nobody seems to care about anyone else’s problems.

Each day that goes by, you find yourself asking just two questions: Where did I go wrong? And how do I get myself unstuck?

You’re Not Alone

If you’ve gone through even some of what I just described in that scenario, the first thing you should know is that you’re not alone.

According to a study of 5,188 US adults conducted by the Pew Research Center, only about half of them said they were satisfied with their job overall. But that same study found that about 40% of those adults said their career was “extremely or very important” to their identity.

And on the student loan front, the Education Data Initiative reports that the average federal student loan debt is $37,338 per borrower, with private student loan debt averaging $54,921 per borrower. The study showed that an estimated 45.3 million people are carrying around debt from their student loans, with half of student borrowers still owing $20,000 twenty years after starting school.

The Real Problem

All of these statistics show that Americans have found themselves caught in a dangerous financial and emotional struggle against anything resembling meaningful work. After all, it’s tough to think too much about your “higher purpose” when you can’t even scrape together enough cash to buy groceries.

But the issue of a person feeling stuck in his/her job isn’t a financial one. Not really. It’s more likely the result of a lack of motivation, dedication, and information.

So the question is, if you’re down in the trenches of life scratching and clawing just to survive, how are you supposed to get to a place where you feel like you’re really living?

It starts with knowing your destination, and then coming up with a plan to get there.

A Brief Background

When I first started to look at what I was supposed to do after graduating high school, the only course I knew was the obvious one: Go to college.

I didn’t know why I had to go to college. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got there. I didn’t even really know what college was, to be perfectly honest. From the outside, I just imagined sitting in classes listening to old men wearing merino wool sweater vests as they waxed poetic about the philosophies of dead people I’d never heard of before.

But off I went anyways. And I listened to those old men (and women) waxing poetic about topics I couldn’t care less about. I did that for four years and had a grand old time on campus. And then my university handed me a sheet of paper with fancy writing on it that said I was certified smart before booting me out the door.

And again, I had to ask myself: What do I do now?

The answer: More school.

So I went out and got a grad degree. Again, without having any idea why I was doing what I was doing besides the fact that it was just what people told me the next step was.

I finished my graduate program, and guess what I was told I needed to do? That’s right: Get another degree.

Except this time greater forces were at play. Because that’s when I went flat broke. By the time I finished grad school, I was completely out of money and faced a mountain of student loan debt I didn’t know how I was going to climb. And I didn't have any clue what I was supposed to do next.

What followed was a nearly two-and-a-half-year period when my life very closely resembled the scenario I began this article with. I was living with my parents at 24 years old, bouncing from job to job, and lacking anything even remotely close to self-confidence.

Little did I know at the time, but that period of my life would catapult me into the most purpose-driven work I had ever encountered before. You are currently interacting with that work as you sit reading this article.

How I Can Help You

You see, after over a decade of travel, education, and work in virtually every industry under the sun, I’ve built up enough failure muscles to help you – the young twenty-something professional just starting out – avoid all the mistakes I made throughout the early years of my career.

Everything I do on this site and on my social pages is to help you live up to your full potential, find meaningful work you truly love, and explore the world while maintaining a budget.

I’ve worked with travel companies, outdoor recreation brands, and brick-and-mortar businesses to serve the kinds of people who already know what I’m trying to help you realize. That is, that life is meant to be an adventure. You’re meant to explore, see the world, help other people, and serve a higher purpose.

None of us is here to just shove as much food down our throats as we can, balloon up to 500 pounds, and sit in our parents’ basement surrounded by all the stuff we can accumulate during our short time on this earth.

I believe we all intuitively know that’s not what life is about. But deep down, we’re terrified to make any changes, unsure of where to even begin, and wary of anyone and everyone who might try to hurt us should we dare to step out of our comfort zones.

Maybe you’ve been burned in the past. Maybe you’re reading this thinking you’ve tried to do all the adventurous things before and it didn’t work. Or perhaps no matter what you do, you just can’t get yourself to step out your door and try something new.

I know. Change is risky. It’s scary, and it sometimes doesn’t even work.

But more often than not, if you commit to something, anything, for any stretch of time – days, weeks, months, or even years – you’re going to see changes. If you don’t, well I guess I’ll have to refund you all the money you spent in order to read this article.

How to Get Unstuck: The First Step

But if you say you want to make some kind of change in your life in order to live more purposefully and adventurously, then the first thing you need to do is write your goals down.

That’s it. Just write down your goal.

Lose ten pounds. Travel somewhere you’ve never been. Ask somebody out. Get promoted.

Because writing that goal down means you have taken the first step in transferring the idea in your head into the physical world. It’s your version of punching a time card or stamping your signature on a letterhead. It’s a way of saying, “[Your Name] was here.”

Once you have that goal written down, hang it somewhere you’ll see it every day. Preferably multiple times a day. Put a daily reminder in your phone. You own that goal now. And that goal owns you.

One of my goals this year was to start the website you’re on now. Another is to write my first novel.

But what’s your goal? What’s that one thing you just can’t stop thinking about no matter how hard you try? What’s the idea that you keep coming back to again and again?

Grab a piece of paper and pen and write it down. It doesn’t have to be fleshed-out or very concrete. You don’t have to know any of the details about it yet.

Just know that writing your goal down is the first step you can take toward achieving it. The next step is coming up with a plan to make it happen. And then working that plan every day until you meet or exceed your goal.

For now, though, just focus on writing it down. So, what’s that one change you can commit to making in your life?

Grab a pen and paper and write your goal into existence right where you’re at. We’ll take the next step toward making your dream a reality together in a subsequent article.

Ready to work with me? Schedule an appointment today.