Feeling stuck in life and in your coaching business? Here’s what’s going on
Feeling stuck as a solopreneur is its own special kind of frustrating. You're not sitting still: you're working hard, spinning your wheels, jumping from idea to idea. You might feel genuinely excited about all of it, but when everything feels important, nothing is (I write about this more here), and somehow all that energy doesn't translate into actually getting anywhere.
And then the “shoulds” show up. This should be easier. I should be further along. I should be able to figure this out. Which does nothing except make you doubt yourself more. Not helpful, brain!
If you're feeling stuck in life as well as in your business, I want to offer you a thought that I hope is actually useful: you're not stuck because something is wrong with you, and you're not stuck because you don't have enough information.
Here’s what’s actually going on:
It's not an information problem. If you're someone who is smart and capable and used to figuring things out on your own, your first instinct is probable to research more, gather more data, think it through more carefully. So you read the articles, listen to the podcasts, make the plans. And yet you're still stuck. That's because being stuck isn't a data problem. More information isn't what's missing. Going looking for it is just a more productive-feeling way of spinning your wheels.
And it’s not a you problem either. I know this because I've lived it, and I know it because I've coached people through it. I've worked with coaches who had so many things to offer that they couldn't figure out what to lead with, and therapists who knew they needed to work on marketing or getting clients but couldn't land on a direction and stay there. What I’ve seen across all of these situations is a pretty consistent pattern. You circle the same decision over and over. You second-guess something that felt completely obvious an hour ago. You try something, and when it doesn't immediately work, you pivot not because you've taken the time to understand why it didn't work, but because staying still feels worse than moving. So you try something else. And something else. And the cycle continues. It's exhausting.
It’s an entrepreneur loneliness problem. When you work for yourself, there's no one else in the room. No colleagues to think out loud with, no peers to push back on your ideas, no one to force a decision. Just you and your own thoughts, going around and around and around and... you get the idea. Entrepreneur loneliness is often talked about as an emotional experience, and it is that, but it's also structural. When you're the only one in the room, you're both the person asking the question and the person trying to answer it. That loop doesn't break itself. You just keep going around.
And you can’t think your way out of it (at least not on your own). If you're a coach or a therapist, you already know this. It's probably one of the main reasons your clients come to you. They need someone to help untangle their thoughts because they can't do it alone. You help people do that all the time. And yet here you are, trying to do exactly what you'd tell them they can't do. Physician, heal thyself, and all that.
How to get unstuck in life and in your business
So here's the answer, and yes, it's annoyingly simple:
It’s talking. Out loud. To another person.
Yes, it could be a coach or thinking partner, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be a fellow solopreneur, a peer, a friend, your partner, someone who knows your business well, or someone completely disconnected.
In my own experience, getting unstuck has almost never happened in isolation. It's happened in conversation with other coaches, with peers, with my partner while I think out loud across the kitchen table. What shifts isn't that someone hands me the answer. It's that having another person there helps me stop going around the same loop and actually start getting somewhere.
Instead of circling wider and wider, you start going deeper, getting closer to what's actually in the way. You stop spinning and start moving.
