Do you feel stuck in your career?

Holdingspace/ March 30, 2021/ Psychotherapy, Self-Development Resources, Yoga Therapy

Let’s talk about your career. Since you started reading this post, I’m guessing you’re feeling stuck in your career. Most of us felt it at some point in our lives. I would like to invite you to consider the following questions:

Do you feel creative?
Do you follow through on your creative ideas?
Do you compromise your True Self for the sake of money?
Do you put your deepest desires or aspirations on hold to prioritise safety and security?

Often when we feel stuck in our career, the flow of our creative energy is blocked.

Creativity is about giving birth to new creation. It has the energy of passion that needs to move the Earth, make an impact, and contribute to the community.

We’re all creative beings

There is a misconception that creativity is only for artists, but the truth is that we’re all creators. Consider the below expressions of creativity:

Marketers writing advertisements,
Business developers trying to close the deal,
Scientists looking for a solution to a tricky problem,
Accountants having to problem-solve.

Creativity is what we use when we’re faced with a task and no precedent to fall back on.

When we’re in the state of creative flow, we surrender control, lose sense of time, feel fully alive and at one with our creation.

Blocked creativity can make us feel stuck

When our creativity can’t be expressed in our day job, it may present like:

Feeling like you’re not using your skills to the extent that you want to,
Or realising that your skills are outdated,
Feeling unchallenged and bored,
Doing things that are (no longer) aligned with your own values,
Taking or staying in the job for the money,
Not being able to find pleasure or joy in what you do,
Not knowing what to do about that situation

Self-beliefs that can make us feel stuck and uncreative

We might also block our own creative expression through our conditioned and false self-beliefs:

Believing you don’t have the right skills or enough experience to take the step you want,
Believing that the timing isn’t right,
Thinking that you’re not good enough yet to take the next step,
Believing that we have a bad luck in life,
Thinking that what we want is way too big of a task for us,
Believing that if we stay where we are, even though we’re not happy, at least we are safe.

All these thoughts are illusions created and ingrained in our minds. They are powerful enough to hold us back and block us from reaching for our dreams.

How blocked creativity feels in your body

It’s important to acknowledge that a moment of stillness between projects or jobs, the space of not-knowing what to do, or not-doing, is not always a sign of creative block. In fact, often we need this time and space to allow ourselves to process, realign and figure out what it is we need to do next. However, if this process becomes too emotionally draining or starts generating physical symptoms, it is a clear sign that it’s time to address it.

Our bodies have their own unique ways of reflecting our inner states. Each of us is different so what happens in our bodies in response to the same situation, feeling or thought, may look different for each of us.

That being said, there are some commonalities that can be noticed:

1. If you’re feeling stuck in your career (or some aspects of it) your body may react with pain, spasm, tightness or illness that will be located in a place that will make it difficult for you to fulfill your tasks;

For instance: if your job requires long hours spent in a seated position, you may develop a sit bone injury making it impossible to sit still.

2. You may experience pains and issues with your lower back, around your pelvis and hips. Women may find that their PMS becomes more intense.

What blocks our creative energy?

I mentioned earlier different emotions, thoughts and self-beliefs that can lead to blockage in our creative flow. One thing that all these have in common is: fear. When we act from the place of fear, we’re suppressing our own need for creative expression.

Fear can block our creativity, it can block us from doing things we love and from achieving our dreams. This is because often reaching for our dreams seems more risky than staying in the same place. Fear can be paralysing because it comes with a promise of safety if you follow what it tells you.

How to overcome creative block and get yourself unstuck in your career?

The way to overcome it is through recognizing that it is the fear that is blocking your creative expression and stopping you from receiving joy, fulfillment, satisfaction and pleasure.

There are ways to work towards this healing realisation:

1. Talk therapy or coaching can be helpful when it comes to exploring the feeling of stuckness. A good therapist will help you make sense of your emotions, thoughts, memories and self-beliefs that may (or may not) be linked to fear. S/he can support your process of self-exploration in a way that would be hard to do on your own.

2. Sacral chakra meditations – according to yoga, sacral chakra physically governs the area of our lower belly and pelvis, mentally it governs creativity, and emotionally it’s linked to joy, and passion. Go ahead and try this guided practice to find more alignment on the energetic level:

3. Movement! There are certain types of movement and yoga poses that help to stimulate a healthy flow of energy in the areas associated with creativity. Try:

dancing
intuitive movement – get into the flow and follow your intuition
these yoga poses: