Leveraging the Eureka Effect to Get Out of Stuckness

You don’t have to live in the land of stuckness forever.

I’ve written this before and I will again: one of the worst feelings is when your life has stagnated and you’ve tried everything you can think of to fix it, but you’re still stuck. It’s like coming to the place where the sidewalk ends: you know the path must pick up somewhere ahead – maybe? – but you can’t see where. This is the land of stuckness. It’s desolate and frustrating and frightening, and it can feel like you’ll never find the way out. Learning how to take advantage of the eureka effect, which is when you have a sudden insight that shows you a way forward, can put you back on a path of real progress. It’s an experience you can’t force, but here are some tools that can encourage it along.

The Map

The reason we get stuck is because the map we have for how life is supposed to go is wrong. When the expectation we have of life as a linear progression clashes with our real experience, it causes a painful cognitive dissonance that we try to solve by forcing our way forward. This may seem to work in the short term, but eventually you’ll exhaust yourself and stagnate. The only way I know how to describe that feeling of having done all the “right” things, and life just laughs and throws shit in your face, is despair. It just plain sucks when you realize the map you’ve been given for life isn’t working anymore.

The key thing to understand is that what’s actually keeping us stuck isn’t our circumstances but our struggle to force solutions. Look at it this way: sometimes on your journey the sun’s going to go down, and you can keep floundering around in the dark hoping you somehow find the way (you won’t), or you can settle down in a cozy shelter and wait until dawn. Our culture doesn’t tend to issue maps that say “Here You Shall Stop Trying So Hard and Perhaps Consider Giving Up for A While,” so you have to write that part in yourself. Magical things can happen when you surrender to apparent failure – more on that in a bit. But while we’re here waiting for the darkness to be over, let’s take a look at the major impediment to moving forward.

The Compass

It always helps to be able to orient yourself when you’re lost. But most of us thwart ourselves by trying to get through the land of stuckness with our eyes turned backward on where we’ve been. Our past has a grounding force like gravity: if we let go we might lose the plot, float away into the nothingness of our uncharted future. 

Our past and future are like two countries with totally different cultures. You have to let go of the beliefs and expectations of the old one in order to thrive in the new one. And the concept of moving from one world, or mode of existence, into another is too big for us to contemplate prior to actually doing it. So we walk through stuckness backward. But trying to resurrect options and outcomes that are behind you is how regret keeps you stuck. It’s such a relief when you finally let go of that fruitless struggle. So let’s try surrendering our hold. It’s okay if this takes time and we’re not very good at it. The important thing is we keep trying.  

Now it’s time to talk about the magic part.  

The Signpost

You’ve probably heard the story of the bath-taking Archimedes, who was so excited by his sudden insight about how to measure the volume of objects that he ran through the streets naked, proclaiming his discovery. While running around naked and babbling in public probably would move your life forward in some way, it’s that aha! moment we’re talking about here. The eureka effect can help you out of your stuckness, but you have to know how to recognize it and use it.

Step 1: Remember what I wrote above about surrendering? This is required for an aha! moment to occur. When you’ve tried everything and found no way forward, that’s the signal that it’s time. It’s frustrating as hell, but you’ve got to let go of trying to control outcomes. It may take practice if you are used to holding on tight. Be patient with yourself. This doesn’t ever happen all at once or in totality. This is a practice, not a goal.

Step 2: The aha! moment is when you have a total shift in your perception that rewrites your reality. But it’s not actually a single moment in time. It’s an experience that builds in stages to a tipping point, because it involves a big paradigm shift. Most of us spend a lot of time and energy denying our aha! moment because of our commitment to the past. Don’t worry – your aha! moment won’t abandon you! Keep practicing your surrendering, and one day you’ll be ready for it. It may very well feel like a “moment” when it happens - but you’ve been working on it all along.

Step 3: I talked about how the past and future are like different countries. Coming to a place of acceptance that you have to leave the old one behind is the hard part. Once you’ve opened yourself to your new paradigm, the borders of your new country will open to you. This stage is marked by feelings of ease and positivity. It can feel almost miraculous, like you’ve been given a gift – this is the relief of finally getting unstuck. Run with it! There’s a lesson in those ancient myths where the protagonist is warned to not look back when they’ve finally escaped the underworld. Keep your eyes forward, hold your head high, and dream big. You are the hero of your journey, and you’ve made it through a dark night.