Get Un-Stuck

We tend to get in our own way. We struggle, get exhausted, and give up. ‘I don’t know what to do with my boss’, ‘I can’t hit my sales number’, or ‘I’m drowning in debt’. These are all phrases of someone who needs to be empowered. Falling into chaos and feeling stuck is similar to falling into quicksand. Quicksand is an extremely saturated mixture of sand and water which can no longer support weight, and we can’t get any traction in it. Although quicksand seems to suck its victims down and hold them there, it is not a living creature or a bottomless pit. In fact, quicksand is rarely deeper than a few feet and can occur almost anywhere if the right conditions exist. Quicksand is not the all-powerful force of nature that it appears to be on the big screen; however, it is an excellent metaphor for our life circumstances.

In the movies, we watch our hero being sucked down into a pit of quicksand. Just before going under, he reaches out and grabs a tree branch or a rope from a friend to pull himself out! When we fall into uncertainty, oftentimes our rope, the structure we need to help us out of our rut, is just beyond our reach. It seems like the more we try, the harder we commit, the more the goal evades us, and the right choices become less apparent. As with quicksand, the more you struggle, the faster you sink. Fear and doubt creep in. They cripple you, preventing you from pursuing your goal, no matter how badly you want it. During these times, we need to reach for a structure to help pull us out of our stuck place.

Dr. Jeffrey E. Auerbach, in his book Personal and Executive Coaching, discusses a structure that I use on a daily basis to help myself, my family and my clients get out of the places they feel are like quicksand in their lives. It’s called the “GOOD” Model and it is used to identify what the desired goal is, what obstacles are preventing us from achieving the goal, and what options are at our disposal. Once we see that we have choices, we can do something. We can then get back on track, and take small action steps -moving forward on the path of hope and purpose. We feel more inspired and that inspiration gives us what we need to create new behaviors. Concisely, the “GOOD” model stands for Goal, Obstacles, Options, and Do-actions.

Take Martha, for example. She was absolutely stuck, drowning in a sea of unbelievable responsibility. Over the last year, she and her husband had taken their ‘small’ business and launched it into a multi-million dollar venture. She was happy, she thought, but clients, vendors, employees and accounting were becoming overwhelming. She had wanted to create this successful business, but now she felt trapped, as if she were out of control. She was afraid someone would discover that she wasn’t doing as good of a job as she should be. She was falling behind in her bookkeeping. Even though it appeared as though she were ‘living the American dream’, she was actually drowning in quicksand. The more work she did, the harder she ran, the faster she fell behind. She needed a rope to pull herself out of the quicksand. When I first introduced her to the “GOOD” model, she laughed. While it might be a good idea for some, she said, Martha was skeptical that it was robust enough to help with her problems. Although I understood, I asked her if she would humor me. Being desperate for a change, she decided she would walk through the process and picked her biggest challenge: the backlogged accounting work.

Martha’s goal was clear: She was 9 months behind on recording the financial transactions of the company and since she was the head instructor, she did not have time to sit in the office day after day to catch up on the required data entry task. She needed the books brought up-to-date, immediately.

It was easy for Martha to identify the obstacles she saw that were keeping her from achieving her goal. First of all, she had too many responsibilities on her plate. Secondly, because she was actually trained to do accounting, she felt she could not hire out the job — that would be a waste of money. The third obstacle was that she could never trust someone else with the financial details of her business. Lastly, and after some digging, we discovered that Martha didn’t really want to do the accounting for the farm. She wanted to pursue her true passion: teaching the students.

The options that we uncovered for Martha as we moved through the “GOOD” model included hiring out the job to someone (maybe even the CPA), getting one of the other employees to do it, delegating some of her responsibilities to make time in the day for accounting work, or choose to do nothing about the backlog. Once Martha was able to see that the problem had a finite set of options (in her case, there were four), she could stop thrashing around.

At first, Martha didn’t like her options, but she began to see that she had choices. She felt hopeful. She could take responsibility and make a decision. She could see some small, possible, action steps to take. If she chose one of the options, and later realized that it wasn’t working, she was free to change her choice! The structure of the “GOOD” model was pulling her out of the quicksand and empowering her to do something positive towards her goal of catching up on the backlog. Someone had thrown her a rope she could reach!

At times, we all need an outside influence to help us walk through the “GOOD” model. But, no one knows you better than yourself, so no one can empower you better than yourself. Martha’s story reminds us that when we have focus, purpose, and choices, we are not victims of circumstance. No matter what life throws at us, we can slow it down and evaluate what we really have. Martha now disciplines herself to walk through the “GOOD” model whenever she falls into the chaos-pit. She remembers that wrapping a structure around her goals allows her to get back on track and live the life she loves. I challenge you to apply the “GOOD” model to that place in your life where you want to get un-stuck. See if it will work for you. Empower yourself today!