Feeling Stuck?
How to Question Norms and Take Bold Action
Fear is one of the most alluring emotions. It’s attention-seeking, convincing, and it knows your deepest inner workings. Fear is like the popular girl in high school that you just can’t say no to. She can get you to make poor decisions, lie, and question everything you believed to be true. But unlike your school-aged bully, fear’s greatest power is its ability to persuade you that avoidance or inaction is the path to painlessness.
When fear really sinks its teeth in, you stop noticing its presence. You move from recognizing the fear, assessing the cause, and thoughtfully responding to a shortened cycle of stimulus and response. You often stop evaluating the real why behind your actions and instead fill the space with stories you’ve crafted over time.
For example, I’m afraid of both physical pain and being judged for my inadequacies. I grew up around adult women who verbally expressed both their own physical pain and judgment of others often. So I found ways to avoid both. But now at 35 years old, instead of questioning if an activity will harm me or benefit me, I jump to the safe conclusion that I just can’t participate in A LOT of things. The story I tell myself is that I’m wildly uncoordinated and therefore can’t risk being injured or judged. While I have plenty of evidence of my clumsiness, I no longer pause to assess that “truth.” Instead I just skip out on jumping from the waterfall, trying the rigorous hike, or driving the go-kart as fast as it will go. The story I tell myself excludes me from so much joy. Honestly, I sit a big portion of my life stuck on the sidelines because I don’t want to face the fear.
So, what do we do about these fears? Since starting Un-Professional, our individual and team coaching offering at Stoked, we’ve learned a lot of people are feeling the same way: stuck. Stuck in mundane routines, stuck in a job, stuck in a relationship rut, or stuck in their head. For us, BOLD action is a remedy. It’s identifying the real why, or fear, behind a problem and then fistfighting that fear with an action that forces you to question your “truths.” But what the heck is a BOLD action and how do you know if you’re doing it right?
5 Ways to Take BOLD Action
Taking a bold action means assertively deciding to try something different, not just dreaming about it. Here are five ways you can get started:
1. Challenge a story you’ve been telling yourself. Maybe it’s an assumption you’re making about your own capabilities.
Your fear might sound like: “What if they see me for who I really am?” “What if I’m not enough to pull this off?”
2. Dare to try something you believe goes against the norms of your peers. Maybe it’s a way of working, parenting, or even just communicating.
Your fear might sound like: “Will people think I’m not good enough?” “Will I upset them if I do it this way?”
3. Repeat small actions that make a significant impact. Maybe it’s a pattern you want to break or a new healthy habit you can’t seem to force yourself to embrace.
Your fear might sound like: “I’ll try it tomorrow.” “Maybe after I get through ___, I’ll make it happen.”
4. Make a big life change that feels scary or overwhelming. Maybe it’s quitting your job, making a big purchase, or going to school.
Your fear might sound like: “What if I can’t afford the lifestyle I’ve created?” “Will people think I’m not successful if I do this?” “Can I actually follow through?”
5. Reframe your perspective or create clarity. Maybe you lack passion in your life, you feel out of sync with your values, or you just don’t know where you’re headed.
Your fear might sound like: “I’m in a rut. Every day is the same. Why do anything at all?” “I feel trapped in my life.”
BOLD actions are relative. What’s BOLD to me could feel really easy to you. So how can you check in to be sure you’re challenging yourself appropriately?
How Do I know If My Action Is BOLD?
Think less about a one and done activity and more about an uncomfortable action that perpetuates more experiments. Here are a few questions to ask yourself or discuss with your coach:
- Does this feel brave? Why? In what ways does this scare me?
- If I don’t do this, what might I regret? What’s the cost of inaction?
- Check in with your body. What do you feel when you imagine taking this step? Does it feel like the right amount of discomfort?
- If I knew I couldn’t fail, I would _____.
- Ask yourself what you’d be proud to share at your 20- or 30-year reunion. Does this help you get there?
BOLD Action Examples
Here are two recent examples from Un-Professional coachees (aka our clients) who both chose the Getting Un-Stuck challenge track. They are very different, but equally bold.
Case Study #1: It might not be a challenging task that holds you back, it might be the way you feel about yourself when you step into a challenge.
Initial Problem: This coachee wanted to reimagine manager training but felt she had too many executive cooks in the kitchen to make progress.
Problem Reframe: She learned that she didn’t feel confident bringing her unique perspective to a group of senior executives. She questioned if she belonged. Instead of finding ways to gain alignment, she decided she wanted to live into her unique voice and rewrite the rule book on leadership norms.
BOLD Action: Through our work together in Un-Professional, she designed a two-hour session for executives where she introduced frontline voices in strategic conversations. She determined that her unique brand was representative, colloquial, kind, and calm, unlike her formal and urgent counterparts. She demonstrated the power of diverse styles of management with individuals three times her senior.
Outcome: This totally changed her perspective on what it means to be a great leader. Instead of chasing someone else’s definition, she finally felt comfortable in her own.
Case Study #2: Instead of asking for it all, it might be about narrowing priorities.
Initial Problem: This coachee wanted to explore new job opportunities while maintaining the same status and pay. He wanted to work fewer hours, prioritize creativity, and collaborate daily with highly talented peers.
Problem Reframe: He learned that growing into something new doesn’t necessarily mean adding to your long wish list of must-haves. Instead, it means letting go of old stories, celebrating them for what they offered at the time, and writing a list of non-negotiables for the next phase of learning.
BOLD Action: He began moonlighting with a small business that was more playful, full of talented people, and provided more work-life balance.
Outcome: He then took a job with that company with less pay, a lesser title, and a new outlook on how he wanted to define happiness in this next chapter of life.
We’ve had other coachees have tough conversations with bosses, finish a dissertation after putting it on hold for years, decide they want to run for local office, switch career paths entirely, reframe their entire worldview on the role of conflict at work, and more. Let me repeat — BOLD actions are relative. They’re about facing your inner fears, not comparing yourself to external stories. For me, it would be more intimidating to take a public dance class than to quit my job. So you do you.
Finally, a Few Tips for Taking BOLD Action
Here are a few tips that can really make a difference.
- Surround yourself with inspirational people who make you want to be better.
- Don’t think about this action as your only opportunity to be bold. Try to break free from your well-worn grooves a little bit each day.
- Say NO. You can’t do something new if you don’t make space for it. Let something go. It’s time.
- Design bold actions like you would a science experiment. Get really clear on your hypothesis, what you want to learn, and how you’ill assess what you’ve learned. If it doesn’t go exactly as planned, it’s not a failure. You’ve just learned something new about yourself.
- Try your BOLD action in a two-week time frame. Time constraints are everything. It’s not about fully reimagining your life in one action, it’s about getting started.
Thanks for tuning in. I’m off to try mountain biking or to say yes to a seemingly bad idea! I owe that to myself. What BOLD action do you owe yourself?
