You’re good at what you do. You’ve achieved your goals, you’re well rewarded and people see you as one of the best in your field. You’re not unhappy. And yet, after ten or twenty years in the same company, role or sector, a quieter question keeps coming back: is this what I want for the rest of my working life?

In this episode I talk about the stuck expert: someone whose experience has become the very thing that keeps them stuck, because it’s all they know. I look at why the can’t I always speaks about the past, why searching for your job title keeps leading you back to where you already are, and why the more useful questions are about who you are rather than what you do.

• Why being an expert can make it harder to imagine yourself anywhere else
• Why “I’ve never...” says nothing about what you could do next
• Why searching for your job title or your CV keeps leading you back to where you already are
• Three questions to take to a notebook, for five minutes a day or half an hour a week:
• Think of your best days at work. What were you doing, who were you with, and what made them good?
• What must be there in your next role for you to look forward to Monday morning?
• Away from work, what are you naturally drawn to, and who do you most enjoy helping?

If this sounds like someone you know, please share it with them. I’d love to help as many people as possible find the fulfilment and freedom that come from living in line with their values.

If you are feeling stuck in your career, or business and you would like some help book a free discovery call through my contact page at anne-wilkinson.co.uk, or connect with me on LinkedIn (Anne Wilkinson Coach).

If you have found this episode helpful please give it a Like and follow Stuck Is Where It Starts so you don’t miss what comes next.

Should I Stay or Should I Leave?

You've been talking about leaving for months, maybe longer. On paper, staying makes sense: the salary, the security, the familiarity, the people you like working with. And yet something keeps telling you it doesn't fit any more. You can't quite name it, and you can't argue yourself out of it either.

In Episode 1 I promised to come back to this question, because it's one I'm asked more than almost any other in my coaching practice. In this episode I look at why it's so hard to answer, and even harder to act on. Being stuck isn't the same as being unable to make a decision. It happens when the practical side and the feeling side give you different answers, and thinking harder only ever hears the practical side.

In this episode

• Why stuck lasts longer and runs deeper than an ordinary decision
• How loss aversion quietly tips the scales towards staying
• Why we're far more likely to regret what we didn't do than what we did
• A five-minute handwritten journaling practice to give the feeling side a voice, built around these questions:
• What will I lose by leaving?
• What am I losing by staying?
• What would I gain by leaving, and what does that word actually mean to me?
• Looking one to three years ahead, which loss would I regret most, and which could I make peace with?

If this sounds like someone you know that could find it helpful, please do share it.

Thank you!

Anne

Episode 1: This Podcast and How I Got Unstuck

Is there something you’ve wanted to do for years and still haven’t started, even though you know exactly what it takes? I’d been wanting to launch a podcast for three or four years, and I had more reasons not to start than I care to admit. In this first episode, I share what happened in less than ten days that I couldn’t achieve in three years, and what it taught me about the part of us that quietly says “you’re not ready”.

In this episode:

• Why so many capable, senior people come to coaching feeling stuck, when they make decisions all day for a living
• The practical reasons I gave myself for not starting: the tech, the microphone, the lighting, and moving the furniture around a thousand times
• Our two operating systems: the practical outside world we can see, and the inner world that either helps us or holds us back
• What was really in the way for me: overwhelm, and one big lump called “start a podcast”, until bite-sized tasks of 15 to 30 minutes a day made it manageable
• Questions to ask yourself: how does my brain work, when do I do my best work, and what’s the first small step I could take today in just 15 minutes?

If you’re feeling stuck and would like to talk it through, book a free discovery call with me:

https://anne-wilkinson.co.uk/contact/

Connect with me on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annewilkinsoncoach/

Follow the show so you don’t miss Episode 2, where I’ll share some of the most common patterns of stuckness I see.