Feeling Stuck and Don’t Know What to Do Next? 5 Ways to Start
Feeling lost, restless or stuck and unsure what to do next? Here are five ways to find direction, build confidence and start moving before you feel ready.
You know there’s something else. That might actually be the most frustrating part because if you were perfectly happy with your life as it is, perhaps you could settle into it. But instead you keep having ideas. You look at jobs you could do, courses you could take, places you could move to, things you could make or start or write. One day you think you’ve figured it out. By the next morning, you’re not so sure.
You talk yourself into something and then straight back out again. Underneath all those ideas is this restlessness, a feeling that you want more from your life, or perhaps simply something different from it, but you can’t work out what that something is. So you stay where you are.
This is the not particularly fun version of feeling lost. It doesn’t feel like freedom or possibility or a wide-open road. It feels constricting. Your world can start to feel smaller because you can’t work out how to make it bigger, and the longer you stay there, the more your confidence can disappear too.
Maybe you tell yourself you’ll make a decision when you’re more certain. You’ll start when you have more energy. You’ll apply when you feel more qualified. You’ll put the idea into the world when you believe in it — and yourself — a little more. Except the confidence doesn’t come, and without it, you don’t move.
I was thinking about all of this during my conversation with Victoria Phipps MBE on A Thought I Kept. Victoria describes emerging from COVID and the intense early years of motherhood feeling as though she had “fallen out of the world.” Before children, she had spent more than a decade running a charity with her father supporting Second World War veterans alongside a successful wedding photography business. Her life had felt big. She had felt capable. She had purpose and work she loved.
Then suddenly her life looked very different. She talks in our conversation about the “grief over my own capacity” — going from happily working a lot to finding that even sending an email could become a mission with two small children around her. But the ideas hadn’t disappeared. If anything, there were too many of them. Victoria estimates that she had over a thousand ideas about what she could do next.
This gets at something we don't always understand about feeling lost. You don't necessarily have no idea what you want. You can have far too many. So how do you start moving when you have all that restless energy but absolutely no idea where to put it?
1. Stop trying to find the thing
When you're lost, it's very easy to become obsessed with finding the answer. What should I do with my life? What's the right job? Which idea should I pursue? What am I meant to be doing? Victoria was asking versions of these questions too. She knew she couldn't simply return to the life she'd had before children, but she couldn't see what should replace it either.
Eventually, she stopped trying to recreate the thing and started thinking about the feelings underneath it. What had she loved about her old life? Connection. Community. Creativity. Conversation. Purpose. The feeling that how she was spending her time was making some kind of difference. She couldn't have her old life back, but perhaps those feelings could show up somewhere new.
I think that's such a useful place to start when you can't see a direction. Instead of asking yourself to name the job, business, project or life you want next, try asking what you want to feel more of. Perhaps you want to feel interested again. Useful. Connected. Creative. Free. Challenged. Calm. You still might not know what to do, but you've given yourself a direction to look in.
2. Follow the energy, even if you don't know what it means yet
There’s a moment in our conversation when Victoria describes having all this mental energy for the “adult world” while living almost entirely in the baby world. She was physically exhausted, but creatively restless. Those two things can exist together, and you might recognise that feeling too: you're tired of thinking about what comes next and simultaneously unable to stop thinking about it.
Maybe you keep returning to the same idea. Maybe there’s something you could happily talk about for an hour. Maybe you feel completely different after you've spent an afternoon writing, gardening, volunteering, making something or being around a certain group of people. Don't immediately ask any of these things to become your new career. Just notice them.
I think restlessness gets a bad reputation. We can treat it as something to calm down or get rid of, but sometimes restlessness contains information. Your energy might know something before the rest of you has caught up.
3. Don't wait to feel confident
Victoria eventually had an idea she really liked. She wanted to start a podcast. She told a trusted friend about it and her friend thought it was a great idea. And then Victoria did nothing with it for several months because she didn't feel ready.
She wasn't a podcaster. She didn't know how to edit audio. She worried about what people would think. She'd spent several years feeling as though she'd fallen out of the world and her confidence had taken a knock. So she waited, and then this thought kept following her around: “Ready is a decision, not a feeling.”
Eventually she had to consider the possibility that perhaps the feeling of readiness wasn't coming. I think this is where we can get really stuck. We assume confidence comes first: When I feel confident, I'll apply. When I'm certain, I'll leave. When I know I'm good enough, I'll start.
But confidence often doesn't work like that. Sometimes we have to do something while feeling decidedly unconfident about it and allow the doing to change how we feel.
4. Make the decision that helps you find out more
Shortly after her 40th birthday, Victoria announced that she was starting a podcast. And then she had to learn how to make one. The decision didn't suddenly make Victoria certain. It gave her something to do.
She learned the technology. She found guests. She figured out what she wanted the podcast to be about. She made an episode and then another one. She learned what she liked, what she was good at and what she wanted to change. The first decision created the next one, and the next, until gradually there was something that looked a lot more like a direction.
When you're feeling lost, you can put enormous pressure on yourself to make the right decision. It's as though you should somehow be able to stand where you are now and accurately predict how every possible version of your future will turn out. Perhaps the decision doesn't need to do that. Perhaps it just needs to help you find out something you don't know yet.
5. Be willing to be a beginner
This might be especially difficult if you've spent years getting good at what you already do. Changing direction means becoming new at something again, and being new at something can be uncomfortable. You don't know the terminology. You don't know how everything works. Other people seem much further ahead. The first version of what you make might not be particularly good.
Victoria talks about discovering at 40 that she could be a beginner again. She could learn how to podcast. She could create her first online course. She could change the way she worked as a photographer. She could learn on the job and, importantly, she could do those things imperfectly.
When she first launched her podcast, she tried to have everything ready: the website, the branding, the social media, four episodes in the first week. She remembers editing until 3am when she had two small children and absolutely did not need to be sacrificing sleep. A year later, she launched a rebrand differently. Not everything was finished. She did it anyway.
Somewhere along the way, she'd stopped needing to know that she could do everything before allowing herself to begin. And maybe this is the kind of confidence that matters when you're lost. Not I know exactly what I'm doing, but I trust myself to find out.
By the end of our conversation, Victoria describes herself as feeling “expansive.” It's so different from where she began: small, stuck, frantic, looking at everyone else moving forward while feeling as though she'd fallen out of the world herself.
She didn't get from one place to the other because she finally figured out exactly what she should do with her life. She noticed what she missed. She followed some of her energy. She made one decision and learned from it. Then she made another.
So if you're feeling utterly stuck right now — restless, knowing there must be something else but unable to see it clearly — perhaps you don't need to answer What am I going to do with the rest of my life? That is a lot to ask of yourself on a Tuesday afternoon.
Maybe there are smaller questions: How do I want my life to feel? What gives me energy? What am I waiting to feel ready for? What could I do that would help me find out more? Where could I allow myself to be a beginner?
You don't need all five answers today. You don't even need to know where you're going yet. Perhaps you just need one of them to make your world feel a little bigger again and give you somewhere to start.
You can listen to my full conversation with Victoria Phipps MBE on A Thought I Kept, where we talk about feeling lost, motherhood and identity, ambition, creativity, perfectionism, visibility, becoming a beginner again and the thought that helped Victoria begin moving: “Ready is a decision, not a feeling.”
And if you're feeling lost yourself, our book If Lost, Start Here was made for exactly these kinds of moments: when you don't necessarily need someone to give you the answer, but you could do with somewhere to begin.
What If You're Not Stuck?
If you feel stuck in a job, relationship or life transition, you may not be lacking motivation. Explore the emotional reasons we get stuck and how to find your next step with compassion and clarity.
A few years ago, I noticed that "stuck" was becoming one of the most common words people used in coaching sessions.
"I feel stuck in my job."
"I feel stuck in my relationship."
"I feel stuck where I live."
"I feel stuck in my life."
The details were always different, but the feeling underneath was remarkably similar. There was frustration, restlessness and often a fair amount of self-judgement. People would arrive convinced they should know what to do next. They should be making a decision. They should be taking action. They should have figured this out by now.
The assumption was always the same: if I'm stuck, something must be wrong. Yet the more I listened, the more I began to wonder whether stuckness was being misunderstood.
We tend to treat feeling stuck as a problem to solve. We assume it means we're procrastinating, lacking confidence or avoiding the obvious next step. We tell ourselves to be braver, more decisive, more motivated. We read the books, make the lists and search for clarity.
But what if feeling stuck isn't always a sign that you're failing to move forward? What if it's carrying information? What if, instead of asking how to get unstuck, we became curious about what stuckness might be trying to tell us?
Sometimes We're Not Stuck. We're Grieving.
One of the most overlooked forms of grief is grieving something that hasn't technically ended. You can grieve a workplace while still working there. You can grieve a relationship while still being in it. You can grieve a place you've outgrown while still calling it home. Often what we're grieving isn't the reality itself but the version we hoped it would become.
The manager who never recognised our contribution. The role that promised growth but delivered exhaustion. The relationship we believed would deepen. The future we imagined for ourselves that doesn’t feel like it will ever arrive.
When we're carrying that kind of grief, movement can feel surprisingly difficult. Part of us is still looking backwards, still hoping, still waiting for something to become what we needed it to be. We may find ourselves endlessly analysing what to do next when the real work is acknowledging what has already been lost.
Sometimes we're not stuck because we don't know the answer. Sometimes we're stuck because we're still mourning the fact that the answer isn't the one we wanted.
Sometimes We're Not Stuck. We're Protecting Ourselves.
One of the most compassionate questions I know is: what is this behaviour trying to protect?
Many of the things we criticise ourselves for are actually forms of self-protection. Staying quiet may protect us from rejection. Keeping ourselves small may protect us from visibility. Not applying for the job may protect us from disappointment. Not leaving may protect us from uncertainty.
Particularly when we've experienced setbacks, betrayals or repeated disappointments, our protective instincts can become incredibly sophisticated. We stop hoping. We lower expectations. We convince ourselves the grass isn't greener. We tell ourselves we're being realistic.
Yet underneath that realism there is often a quieter truth. We are trying not to get hurt.
The difficulty is that protective strategies have a habit of outliving their usefulness. What once helped us survive can eventually prevent us from growing. We become trapped not by our lack of courage but by the very strategies that once kept us safe.
Understanding that doesn't mean forcing ourselves to change overnight. It simply allows us to meet ourselves with curiosity rather than criticism.
Sometimes We're Not Stuck. We're Exhausted.
There is a version of stuckness that has nothing to do with clarity and everything to do with capacity. Many people are trying to make life-changing decisions while carrying far too much. They're burnt out at work, overwhelmed at home, supporting everyone else, navigating uncertainty and wondering why they can't summon the energy to reinvent their lives.
Everything feels harder when we're exhausted. The future feels smaller. Possibilities feel further away. Decisions that might have felt manageable a year ago now feel impossible.
In those moments, asking "What should I do?" may be the wrong question. A more useful question might be: "What do I need?"
Sometimes what looks like stuckness is simply a nervous system asking for rest, support and recovery before it can contemplate what comes next.
Sometimes We're Not Stuck. We're Waiting for Certainty.
If you've ever told yourself that you'll move once you're sure, you're in good company. Most of us are waiting for certainty. We want to know the next job will be better. We want reassurance that the move will be worth it. We want proof that we're making the right decision.
The problem is that certainty is rarely available in advance.
Most of the meaningful decisions in our lives are made without guarantees. We don't know how relationships will unfold. We don't know how jobs will turn out. We don't know how future versions of ourselves will feel about the choices we're making today.
What often keeps us stuck isn't uncertainty itself but the belief that we need certainty before we can move.
The people I admire most aren't necessarily the people who are most certain. They're the people who have learned to trust themselves in uncertain situations. They know disappointment is possible. They know things may not go to plan. But they also know they can respond, adapt and begin again if needed.
Sometimes We're Not Stuck. We're in Transition.
Some chapters of life have no obvious label. The old version of your life no longer fits, but the new version hasn't fully arrived. You can feel the shift happening, but you can't yet see what it's becoming.
These periods can be deeply uncomfortable because they don't offer the neat narrative arc we're looking for. We want a map. We want progress. We want to know we're heading somewhere. Instead, we find ourselves in a kind of hallway between two rooms.
Yet transition has its own purpose. Beneath the uncertainty, we are gathering information. We are discovering what matters. We are testing assumptions, developing resilience and becoming someone capable of inhabiting the next chapter.
The growth is real, even when it isn't visible.
Sometimes We're Not Stuck. We're Choosing.
This may be the most uncomfortable possibility of all. Sometimes we are making a choice. Not necessarily forever. Not necessarily consciously. But a choice nonetheless.
We may be choosing the known discomfort of today over the unknown discomfort of tomorrow. We may be choosing security over possibility, familiarity over uncertainty, stability over growth.
The challenge is that we often resist acknowledging the choice because we don't like the options available to us.
Yet there can be enormous relief in admitting it.
"I am choosing to stay in this job for now."
"I am choosing not to move yet."
"I am choosing to remain here while I work out what comes next."
The circumstances may not change immediately, but something important does. Agency returns. When we acknowledge our choices, we stop seeing ourselves as trapped and begin seeing ourselves as active participants in our own lives. We can then ask different questions. What is this choice giving me? What is it costing me? What need is it meeting? What would need to change for a different choice to become possible?
What If the Opposite of Stuck Isn't Movement?
We often imagine that the opposite of stuck is action. A resignation letter. A difficult conversation. A move across the country. A dramatic leap into the unknown. Sometimes it is. But increasingly, I wonder if the opposite of stuck is trust.
Trust that you can grieve what didn't happen. Trust that disappointment is not the end of the story. Trust that uncertainty is survivable. Trust that your instincts deserve a hearing. Trust that when the time comes, you'll know enough to take the next step.
Perhaps feeling stuck isn't always a sign that you're failing to move. Perhaps it's an invitation to understand what is really happening beneath the surface.
Because once we do that, movement often arrives naturally. Not because we've forced ourselves into action, but because we've stopped fighting the wisdom hidden inside the pause.
Explore Emotions Coaching
If you're feeling stuck in work, relationships, a life transition or simply in your own head, emotions coaching can help you understand what's really happening beneath the frustration.
Together we'll explore the emotions, needs, beliefs and protective patterns shaping your experience, helping you move from self-judgement towards greater clarity, self-trust and agency.
You don't need to know what comes next. You just need somewhere to start.