How To Find Another Way When You're Stuck
Illustrations by Witchy
Poor Witchy. Since her spells went wonky and she nearly blew up the Transylvania Forest, she’s been trying so hard to learn how to cook without her cauldron. The Fire Department insisted she put them on speed dial. In fact, there’s been talk of them building a new fire station right next to her cottage in the woods. 🤦🏻♀️
She’s been through such a lot already and despite her neurotic fears of just about everything, she puts on a brave face and my little blue friend refuses to give up. Determined to figure out how to live without her magic, she’s been working hard at conquering how to use a cooker (that’s British for oven/stove)…
But as you can see from the photo above, so far it’s not going too well. 🙄🫣
Gotta give her credit, though. Even though she didn’t know there’s a timer on the cooker, she figured out another way to, uh, learn that dinner was done. Very, very done. I’m not sure she’s particularly enjoying the fruits of her labour (or the charred remains of it). But she’s proud of herself for putting some ingredients together in a non-cauldron and cooking the concoction in a non-cauldron. Somehow, she’s muddling through to keep herself fed while adapting to her new and extremely different surroundings.
I can relate to Witchy’s situation. When I found myself needing to set up an online business, I had no idea what technical / technological hell was waiting for me. I couldn’t hire anyone to do any of it; I had to figure it out for myself. From building websites to learning about CRM systems and even something as simple as how to convert a PDF to a JPG or vice versa — everything was new and much of it was beyond frustrating when I couldn’t find answers. YouTube and Google sometimes promised the solution but as I’d follow step by step, invariably I ended up with, “Aw, dang! My screen doesn’t show that! I don’t have that option.” Etc. 🤦🏻♀️
And so … I’ve become the Queen of Work-arounds! I’ve found solutions when there were no answers available and no one I knew who could help.
If I didn’t already know how doggedly determined I am, I sure knew it after a few years of that sort of misery! I knew that if I just used my noggin and got creative, eventually I’d come up with an internet version of duct tape and glue to get a workable result. Might not be as efficiently as “the right way” but whatever that right way was, it eluded me every time. I dug in my heels and opted for, “the way I figured out how to make it work!”
It’s so easy to get stuck in one way of thinking, in believing that there’s only one way to do something. I would venture to say that for most things (if not all), there’s always another way. We might not be able to see it but it’s there.
So what do you do if you really need that second option but you don’t see it? What if you can’t even imagine there is another one?
Well, the first step is to be open to believing it. Even if you’re stuck in your old beliefs just as firmly as if you’re up to your neck in long-dried concrete, as long as you’re willing to say, “What if…?” you can open the door to another way of seeing something.
This isn’t just helpful when considering how to do something a different way. It’s often essential in terms of seeing a situation another way. For example, when you have a disagreement with someone and you’re struggling to make your point or to hear the other side. You end up deadlocked and neither of you can move forward. Or you walk away, still clinging to your opinion and having no idea what the other person really felt or said or meant. And it’s the first (or another) step in a widening rift.
Or maybe you’re stuck in terms of how you view something from your past. A hurtful incident, a destructive relationship, a painful loss or distressing period of time that lingers and all you can see is how much it hurts or how wrong it was and it still feels awful.
When you can shift your perspective and see it from another angle, sometimes this is all it takes to nudge you down that path of healing. It can trigger an “Aha!” moment that helps you understand or see the other person’s point of view or realise something that takes the emotional charge out of it.
Or you might see that there was another way to solve a problem, another route to a desired outcome, another option to figuring out how to make something happen.
It’s like putting on a pair of glasses that have a different filter than the ones you usually wear. If you’re usually wearing blue ones, everything looks blue. But when you decide to pick up some purple ones, oh, my — everything looks different.
The filters of our experiences and beliefs can sometimes keep us from seeing something another way or finding another solution. Unless we choose to use another filter and allow the possibility of another way of seeing it, or of being, or of doing something, we stay stuck and never move forward. At least, not enough to become all that we’re meant to be.
Dreams remain unfulfilled. Purpose remains hidden behind a concrete wall. A tapestry with a bright rainbow of colours splashed across delicious fabric remains locked on the other side of a door with “Do Not Enter!” burned into it.
What kind of fun is that? What kind of life is that? When we do this, not only do we do ourselves a disservice, we do our Creator a disservice by not expressing the fullness of our souls, which is the whole point of this existence (in my beliefs anyway, maybe not yours; we don’t have to agree).
Whatever you think about that notion, at the very least we do each other a huge disservice when we keep ourselves stuck in one set of beliefs, one way of doing something, and refusing to find or use another way — even when (and especially when) another way seems the best or only course of action.
In doing this, we never let anyone — including ourselves — see that full tapestry. A tiny portion of it or maybe even a pretty good-sized portion might be visible. But no one will ever know just how beautiful that whole tapestry is if it remains hidden away because we don’t know how to open the door, break through the wall, and find another way of being. Or of doing. Or of seeing.
You don’t have to eat the charred remains from whatever you put in your pot. Find the cooker timer and learn a better way of doing things.
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