Do you ever find yourself engaged in a task or project where you hit a roadblock or a problem you simply cannot solve in the moment? No matter how much you try, you just feel stuck.
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Naturally, you probably find this to be incredibly frustrating. This experience can make one go from feeling bad to worse very quickly. In this episode, I want to provide some quick tips on how can get unstuck and in the process make their day flow better.
For me, this relates to The Breakout Principle written by Dr. Herbert Benson and William Proctor. In this book, they explain how the Breakout Principle is related to 4 stages.
The final and fourth stage, which I find most interesting, leads to “increasing amounts of nitric oxide throughout the body.” Dr. Benson suggests that nitric oxide is a special gas that participates in many biological functions such as neurotransmission and blood vessel dilation. Dr. Benson indicates that increasing amounts of nitric oxide throughout the body helps to counteract the negative effects of the stress hormone noradrenaline. This can facilitate the peak experience that — not only athletes but all of us — can learn to experience.
I find a very simple version of these concepts to work for myself and others I have spoken to about it. This version does not involve getting caught up in studying the various biological explanations of the stages or remembering a complicated technique.
The trick is to simply stop whatever we’re engaged in at the moment of time when we hit a roadblock, or when we’re feeling stuck, and then move onto something else that allows us to relax for just a few moments. Often within a short time span the solution to the problem may come to me. Or at the very least, I gain some insights or new perspective about the problem I am trying to solve.
This sounds simple enough but there is a challenge with implementing this strategy. If you are aware of this challenge though you can get past it. Most people — myself included even after learning about this technique — will resist the idea of stopping what they are doing, when they hit a road block, and instead will simply try harder to solve the problem. However, this is almost always futile and simply causes more frustration.
Like I said at the beginning this experience can make one go from feeling bad to worse very quickly. But this does not have to be the case when you have this knowledge.
Instead once you try this trick of taking a quick break and briefly putting your attention onto something more relaxing, I think that you will become convinced that it can be very helpful for dealing with the daily problems that all of us encounter in life.
What’s more: as I promised at the beginning, this provides some variety and I think it can make your daily life flow better. This is because in order to take a break from what you are doing in the moment, requires you to consciously transition to another activity. While this activity can take the form of deep relaxation, it nevertheless injects some variety into your life.
This will often make your life feel like it has more ebb and flow in it, and make you feel more satisfied with your day. This can be a great feeling.