“Lack of direction is a very significant—and much overlooked—source of being stuck.”

A thought by Matt Perman, from his book, How to Get Unstuck (p. 32). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

So where am I going?

Matt says, “Sometimes we aren’t sure what we need to do or want to do at all—with our lives, with our career, with the next project, or even with the next hour. When this happens, we may feel disoriented, lacking direction, or just confused (that is, stuck!).

“Lack of direction is a very significant—and much overlooked—source of being stuck. For you can’t get where you are going if you don’t know where you are going! The problem here is lack of vision.”

He goes on, “Very often, even when we do know what we need or want to do, we aren’t sure how to do it. We aren’t sure what the path is—or how to chart the path and move along it. This is like being in the water and seeing your destination, but not knowing how to swim. You know where you want to go but can’t move yourself there. This, also, is a much-overlooked cause of being stuck.

“Here you can feel trapped, stuck in the most literal sense. Stuck in the mud and immobilized. The problem here is lack of planning and execution.

He continues, “Beyond that, even when we do start on the path, obstacles threaten to throw us off. These obstacles often take the form of our being overscheduled, over-busy, and overwhelmed. And, interestingly, sometimes fear is an obstacle. One of the biggest obstacles is fear of risk—or even fear of success.

“This is the problem of obstacles in the way. We know how to execute and may even be pretty good at it, but our execution has holes. We are more vulnerable to obstacles than we need to be. This is the most recognized cause of getting stuck, and it needs to be addressed. But it can’t be addressed first, because often the obstacles are actually symptoms of being stuck in one of the first two ways.”

He then says, “We are stuck when we don’t know what we want or can’t accomplish what we want. Not knowing what we want is the problem of lack of vision. Not being able to accomplish what we want breaks down into two subproblems: we don’t know how to execute, and obstacles are in the way.

“Lack of vision, lack of execution, and obstacles—those are what get us stuck.”

So, it seems, doesn't it, that the first task is to find out what God wants us to accomplish? 

Yes, yes!