When You’re Stuck, Stop Asking “What Do I Want?”
I want you to imagine something.
Imagine it’s been raining for four days. You’ve been in the house, and on the fifth day, the sun finally comes out. So you put on your coat, you put on your boots, and you head outside. You go walking down that path you absolutely know and love—the one that feels like your place. And somewhere along the way, you forget it’s been raining.
Until you step into a deep pile of mud, and you can’t move. You are literally stuck.
Most people know this feeling, even if it doesn’t show up on a trail. It shows up in your work, in your relationships, in the life you’ve built. There’s that moment where you stop and think, I don’t understand why I can’t move forward. I don’t understand how I got here. And if you’re being honest, there’s usually a layer of frustration, a little confusion, and even some embarrassment. You tell yourself you’ve got it, that you’ll figure it out, but underneath that, something feels off.
The Question That Keeps You Stuck
Why “What do you want?” doesn’t work
What tends to happen next is that someone notices and asks what sounds like a reasonable question: What do you want? And I’ve got to tell you, that question drives me nuts. Because when you’re stuck, you don’t know what you want. If you did, you wouldn’t be stuck.
I know that to be true because I’ve been there. After leaving my company of 22 years, I found myself in a place where I had no idea what was next. I was frustrated because I thought I should know. I was confused because I had always known what was next, and suddenly I didn’t. And if I’m being honest, there was some embarrassment in that too, because I’m supposed to be the one who can see what’s next. But underneath all of that, what I really felt was fear.
What’s Really Going On When You Feel Stuck
The three fears we all have to move through
When we find ourselves stuck, there are three very real fears that show up.
The first is the fear of the unknown. It’s that place where you can’t see down the path or around the corner, and your brain is trying to protect you by saying you don’t have enough information. You’ve got more questions than answers. So instead of waiting for clarity to appear, what we actually need to do is start exploring. We need to get into research mode, gather information, and begin answering some of those questions through action.
The second is the fear of failure, and this one can carry more weight than it should. We put so much pressure on getting it right, on not making mistakes, on meeting expectations. But if you really look at those experiences and ask yourself what happened, what you could have done differently, and what you learned, then it shifts. If you’re learning, it isn’t failure.
The third is the fear of change, which is really a combination of the first two. We like to be comfortable. We like to know what to expect. And when we give in to that, the result is that we settle. We convince ourselves that staying where we are is easier than doing the work it would take to move forward.
When these fears go unchecked, they don’t just keep you stuck—they start to shape the decisions you make. And so, if you’re ready to embrace change, you have to decide how you’re going to respond to them.
You have to decide that not knowing isn’t a reason to stop—it’s a reason to start exploring. You have to decide that making a mistake isn’t failure if you’re willing to learn from it. And you have to decide that staying comfortable isn’t the same thing as being fulfilled.
If you don’t make a shift, those fears will keep making your decisions for you. And that’s usually where settling begins.
Where Settling Shows Up—and the Question That Changes It
Settling can look reasonable on the surface. It sounds like, I don’t love my job, but at least I have a paycheck. Or, I don’t love where I live, but at least I have a roof over my head. We justify it. We make it make sense. But over time, it keeps us in place.
So instead of asking, What do I want?—which often leads nowhere—we need to ask a better question:
What is most important to me?
That question doesn’t require you to have everything figured out. It asks you to look at your own experience. To notice when you feel at your best, when you feel energized, when you feel like yourself. It asks you to understand how you thrive.
For some people, that looks like being in a team, collaborating, building something from beginning to end and putting it out into the world. For others, it looks like working independently, in a quiet space, without constant interaction. There’s no right answer, but there is a right answer for you.
Why Knowing Isn’t Enough
Once you understand how you thrive, you can turn that into something practical. You can define what’s most important to you and use it as a filter. When an opportunity comes along, you can measure it against that. If it doesn’t align, it becomes easier to say no. And over time, that’s what changes things. You raise the bar for what you’re willing to say yes to.
But clarity on its own doesn’t move anything.
There’s a point where you have to make a decision to embrace your Nxt. And I see this all the time in my Nxt coaching work—people do the work, they get clear, and then they stay right where they are. At some point, you have to put a stake in the ground and choose to move forward based on what you now know. Because from there, life keeps moving.
Life is full of nexts. We move from one to another, sometimes in small ways and sometimes in much bigger ones. A next is simply what comes after. It’s the next step, the next role, the next chapter. It happens whether you think about it or not.
But a Nxt is different.
A Nxt is intentional. It’s not just what comes after—it’s what you choose to step into. It’s the phase of your life that reflects who you are now, not who you were. It’s the moment where you decide you’re not just going to move forward—you’re going to move forward on purpose.
And that’s a very different experience.
For me, getting clear on what was important led to something I could actually see. I realized I was looking for freedom, for expansiveness, for a different way of living. And once I could see that, I wasn’t just moving to the next thing—I was stepping into my Nxt.
So instead of asking yourself what you want next, come back to something more grounded.
What is most important to you right now?
Your Nxt Starts Here
If you’re in a space where something feels off, but you can’t quite name what comes next—you don’t have to figure it out on your own.
The Immersion is a private, one-on-one experience designed to help you step out of the noise of your daily life and get clear on what’s actually important to you. It’s not about starting over. It’s about reconnecting with what you already know and using that to move forward with intention.
If you’re ready to get out of the mud and into your next, you can learn more or apply for The Immersion here.
And if you’re not quite ready for a full Immersion, you can listen to my full talk, Why You’re Stuck (And What to Do Instead)—it’s a powerful reframe for anyone navigating uncertainty, fear, or their Nxt chapter.
