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The Concrete Wall Moment: Why Getting Stuck Isn't Your Fault (But Staying There Is)
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There's a particular moment I've witnessed in countless boardrooms across Sydney and Melbourne over the past 17 years. Someone leans back in their chair, stares at the ceiling, and says those three words that make my consultant heart sink: "I feel stuck."
Not "I'm confused" or "I need direction." Stuck. Like they've hit a concrete wall at 80 kilometres per hour and now they're just sitting there, engine smoking, wondering what the hell happened.
Here's what nobody tells you about feeling stuck: it's not actually about lacking options. Most people I work with have more opportunities than they can shake a stick at. The problem is they've convinced themselves that moving forward requires some grand revelation or perfect clarity. Absolute rubbish.
The Myth of the Perfect Moment
I used to be one of those people who waited for the stars to align before making any significant move. Career change? Better wait until I have six months' salary saved, the perfect job lined up, and Mars in retrograde. Relationship decision? Let me overthink this for another three months until I'm absolutely certain.
What a waste of bloody time that was.
The truth about momentum is this: it starts with the smallest possible step. Not a leap. Not even a confident stride. Just one foot in front of the other, even when you can't see where you're going.
I learned this the hard way during my own career transition in 2019. I was stuck in a corporate role that felt like wearing shoes two sizes too small. Every Monday morning felt like psychological torture. But instead of making the obvious move to start my own consultancy, I spent eight months "researching" and "planning."
Translation: I was scared senseless and using preparation as an excuse to avoid action.
The 72-Hour Rule That Changes Everything
One of my clients—let's call her Sarah from Brisbane—taught me something that revolutionised how I approach feeling stuck. She was caught between staying in her comfortable but soul-crushing finance role or launching the boutique marketing agency she'd been dreaming about for years.
"Give yourself 72 hours," she said. "Not to decide, but to take one concrete action toward the thing you're avoiding."
Bloody brilliant, really.
Within three days, she'd registered a business name. That's it. No business plan, no website, no grand strategy. Just one small, irreversible step that made the dream slightly more real than it was before.
Six months later, she was billing $180K annually and working with clients like Qantas and Commonwealth Bank. The momentum from that single action carried her through everything else.
The Australian Problem with "Having a Go"
Here's where I'm going to say something that might rub some people the wrong way: Australians are terrible at starting things because we're obsessed with being "ready."
We love the idea of having a fair dinkum go, but only after we've researched every possible outcome, consulted seventeen different experts, and created a risk assessment longer than the Melbourne phone book.
Meanwhile, our American counterparts are launching businesses with nothing more than a domain name and a Twitter account. Are they often underprepared? Absolutely. Do they get further faster? You bet they do.
The sweet spot—and this took me years to figure out—is somewhere between reckless abandon and paralysis by analysis. I call it "educated impulsiveness."
The Three-Bucket System
When I work with executives who feel genuinely stuck, I make them sort their situation into three buckets:
Bucket One: Things You Can Control Right Now
This includes your next conversation, what you read tonight, which email you send first tomorrow morning. These are your immediate levers.
Bucket Two: Things You Can Influence Over Time
Your relationship with your boss, your team's performance, your industry reputation. These require sustained effort but are absolutely within your sphere of influence.
Bucket Three: Things That Are Completely Outside Your Control
Market conditions, company restructures, your colleague's personality, whether it rains on your wedding day. Ignore this bucket entirely.
Most people spend 80% of their energy worrying about Bucket Three and maybe 20% actually working on Bucket One. No wonder they feel stuck.
The magic happens when you flip this ratio.
Why Your Brain Hates Progress
Your brain is not designed to help you grow. Evolution wired it to keep you alive, which means avoiding anything uncertain or potentially dangerous. Starting a new career? Dangerous. Having a difficult conversation with your partner? Dangerous. Wearing white after Labour Day? Apparently dangerous, according to my mother-in-law.
This is why professional development training often focuses so heavily on rewiring these default responses. Your amygdala doesn't care about your personal growth goals—it just wants you to stay exactly where you are, thank you very much.
Understanding this changes the game completely. That resistance you feel? It's not a sign you're on the wrong path. It's just your prehistoric brain doing its job.
The Power of Ridiculous Small Steps
I had a client last year—senior partner at a major law firm—who felt completely stuck in his career. Wanted to transition into environmental law but felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of the change required.
My advice? "Buy one book about environmental law this week."
He looked at me like I'd suggested he juggle flaming torches. "That's it?"
"That's it."
Three months later, he'd read four books, joined two professional associations, and was having coffee with three environmental lawyers. By Christmas, he'd secured a position with one of Australia's leading environmental firms.
The ridiculous small step broke the spell.
When Stuck Becomes a Lifestyle Choice
Here's the uncomfortable truth: some people get addicted to feeling stuck. It's safer than risking failure. It's easier than admitting they might need to change. It provides a convenient excuse for why their life isn't what they wanted.
I see this particularly with mid-career professionals who've spent so long climbing the wrong ladder that admitting they need to start over feels impossible.
But staying stuck isn't actually safer—it's just a different kind of risk. The risk of regret. The risk of looking back in ten years and wondering what might have been.
The Melbourne Coffee Test
Want to know if you're genuinely stuck or just scared? Try this: imagine explaining your situation to a stranger in a Melbourne coffee shop (assuming they'd listen, which in Melbourne, they might actually do).
If you can articulate exactly what's holding you back in two sentences or less, you're probably scared, not stuck. If it takes fifteen minutes and involves a complex web of circumstances, relationships, and timing issues, you might actually be dealing with a genuinely complicated situation.
Most of the time, it's fear wearing a very convincing stuck costume.
The Action Bias Solution
In business school, they teach you about analysis paralysis. What they don't teach you is that the cure isn't better analysis—it's developing an action bias.
This means defaulting to movement rather than contemplation. When faced with uncertainty, your first instinct should be: "What's the smallest thing I can do today to test this?"
Want to start a podcast? Record a five-minute test episode on your phone. Thinking about learning Spanish? Download Duolingo and do one lesson. Considering a career change? Send one LinkedIn message to someone in your target industry.
Action creates clarity in ways that thinking never can.
The Compound Interest of Small Movements
Here's something they don't tell you in those motivation seminars: momentum builds exponentially, not linearly.
The difference between Day 1 and Day 7 of taking action feels minimal. The difference between Day 1 and Day 90 is transformational. By Day 365, you'll barely recognise the person who was sitting there feeling stuck.
I've watched this pattern play out dozens of times. The executive who started with one industry newsletter subscription ends up launching a consulting practice. The manager who began with a single difficult conversation transforms their entire team's performance.
Small actions compound into big changes, but only if you start.
Getting Unstuck Tomorrow Morning
Right. Enough philosophy. Here's your Monday morning action plan:
Before you check your emails, before you grab your flat white, write down three things you've been avoiding. Pick the one that makes your stomach clench slightly when you think about it.
That's your target.
Now break it down into the most ridiculously small first step you can imagine. Something so simple that you'd feel silly NOT doing it.
Do that thing before lunch.
Then do the next small thing the following day.
Repeat until you're not stuck anymore.
The beautiful thing about feeling stuck is that it's temporary. Always. The terrible thing about feeling stuck is that it can become permanent if you let it.
But you won't. Because reading this far means you're already ready to move.
You just need to start.