Feeling Hopelessly Stuck on Your Soul’s Path? Read This …

Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong. – M. Hale

One of the most frustrating experiences in life is feeling like you’re getting somewhere on your Soul’s path, only to feel stuck again for the millionth time.

This first year of parenthood has been one of those for me. I’ve been met with endless roadblocks, personally and in my work. Just when I think I’ve found some sliver of clarity or direction, I’ve fallen into a dark bog of confusion again.

If you’ve made it this far, I’m sure you can relate to the feeling of being stuck. 

Wading through a cesspool of chaos, self-doubt, and disorientation is one of the most aggravating experiences known to humanity.

The sensation that you’re hopelessly stuck on your Soul’s path can make you:

1. Feel lost and alone
2. Feel angry and exhausted
3. Doubt everything in your life

After some Soul-searching and introspection, I’m sharing with you some of my findings. I hope they can help you find clarity if you’re feeling stuck on your Soul’s path.

You Feel Stuck For Three Reasons … 

If you don’t know where you are going, any road can take you there. – The Cheshire Cat (Alice in Wonderland)

There are many reasons why you may feel stranded or stuck on your Soul’s path. I can’t claim to know every nuance or detail of your unique situation.

But I have picked up on a pattern that seems to be common to many of us kindred Souls that I’ll share below.

The three reasons you may feel stuck on your Soul’s path are the following:

1. Your mind is lying to you, aka, it’s playing tricks on you through the mental traps of filtering, blaming, and denying, and all-or-nothing thinking.
2. You’re living predominantly from the head in an externally-focused way
3. You don’t realize that the roadblock itself is the lesson and path

Let me unpack this for you below:

1. Your Mind is Lying to You

The first reason why you may feel hopelessly stuck is that you’ve got lost in your mind. You’ve entered a “head trip” on par with Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.

Instead of being aware of your thoughts, you have become your thoughts. You have unknowingly become hypnotized by your own mind with all its fears, beliefs, and projections.

Some of the biggest forms of mental deception out there are known as ‘cognitive distortions.’ This is a concept I’ve borrowed from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but it applies to anyone in or outside the therapist’s lounge.

Feeling stuck on your Soul’s path is a good indication that you might be experiencing one of these ‘mental lies’:

• Mental Filtering Trap – This happens when your mind focuses on negative details to the exclusion of all other neutral or positive aspects of your situation. It says, “What matters is only the bad stuff. I can’t focus on anything else but what’s going wrong.” Mental filtering causes you to feel stuck by keeping you stranded in the quicksand of negativity.
• Blaming Trap – Let’s be honest, we all know what this is about! Blaming is denying that you have any role in the crappy situation you find yourself in and pointing the finger elsewhere. It says, “This/that/they’re responsible for my suffering, not me!” The blame trap makes you feel stuck because it robs you of personal responsibility and accountability. I’ve been there, and I’m sure you have too.
• All-or-Nothing Trap – Thinking in black or white happens when we swing from one extreme in our thinking to another. It says, “If I don’t experience total success in this, I am a total failure!” The all-or-nothing trap gets you stuck because it steals your personal power and reduces you to a shallow label such as “good or bad,” “weak or strong,” “right or wrong,” etc.

There are many other mental traps out there, but these three often dominate when it comes to feeling stuck. They are the alchemical ‘lead’ in our psyche, that, if identified, can lead to the gold of self-awareness.

If you’re struggling to find or get unstuck from these mental traps, I’ve created the Alchemical Soul Work Workbook to help you with just this. It’s a powerful problem-solving system that empowers you to find more clarity, freedom, and direction, especially if you’re feeling lost in life.

2. You’re living predominantly from the head in an externally-focused way

This point builds from the last: you’re too stuck in your head, and you’re disconnected from your heart’s inner knowing.

You can tell that you’re living too much in your head if you:

• Are disconnected from your feelings most of the time
• Tend to ruminate a lot and replay events in your mind
• Have little to no awareness of your body throughout the day

To walk our Soul’s path with grace, we need a balance of the mind and the heart, as well as logic and intuition. When one side is imbalanced, we can easily get stuck. 

Typically, most people in our modern society are stuck in their minds. But it’s also possible to get stuck in the heart and lack the ability to use clear thinking, leading to poor decision-making and delusional ideas.

Whichever side you occupy, the result is often the same: living in an externally-focused way – depending too much on what others think, feel, or believe, and being out of touch with our own inner reality.

3. You don’t realize that the roadblock itself is the lesson and path

This took me years to learn: sometimes the feeling of stuckness itself is the higher lesson and road ahead.

Perhaps being stuck isn’t the problem. Perhaps it’s the path.

We can learn a lot from feeling hopelessly stuck. Some of the greatest Soul lessons that come to mind are:

• It teaches us the power of trusting in an Intelligence greater than our own
• It teaches us patience, forbearance, and respect for the cycles of nature
• It teaches us the need to go inwards and listen to our Soul’s voice

The Biblical saying, “Be still and know that I am God,” comes to mind, as well as the Hanged Man card in the tarot – these teach us about surrender. 

The period of gestation is also a deeply significant process I want to mention here. Every new act of creation takes time to naturally grow and ripen. Look at the baby in the womb, the seed beneath the soil, and the fruit on a tree – each takes a matter of weeks, sometimes months, to emerge fully. The same process of gestation happens within our own lives.

You may feel stuck. But maybe what’s really happening is that you’re gestating and growing something new deep inside of you that hasn’t taken form yet. Maybe these feelings of stuckness are the ego’s impatience to rush the natural process of growth.

Feeling Stuck: A Soul’s Path Message From Spirit

Here’s the card I pulled as some extra guidance for anyone reading this article (from the Soul’s Journey Lesson Cards deck by James Van Praagh). 

If you resonate with messages such as these, see Shadow & Light for weekly intuitive guidance and personal support for your Soul’s path:

Sometimes, feeling hopelessly stuck on your Soul’s path is a sign that you need to stop focusing so much on yourself and start focusing on how you can be of service to others.

Focusing on our growth, our needs, and our desires is important. We need periods of intense self-focused Soul work and introspection. 

But if that’s all we do, it can easily lead us to feeling emotionally and spiritually malnourished, claustrophobic, and stuck.

Consider how you can give back to others. Reflect on what you can do to improve the life of even just one other person, young or old. 

If you feel more drawn to helping animals or nature, take some time to think about how you can sustain, protect, or heal the habitats or wildlife that call to your Soul.

In the words of some great souls,

“I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.” – Maya Angelou 

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” – Mahatma Gandhi 

“I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy. 

I woke and I saw that life is all service. 

I served and I saw that service is joy.” 

– Khalil Gibran

I hope this post has sparked moments of meaningful insight in you.

Tell me, why do you think you may be stuck? What do you think is the greater reason for this feeling of stuckness?

A more provocative question you may like to explore is: What are you getting out of being stuck? The unconscious mind often has some hidden agenda when it comes to feeling stranded. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.