Becoming Unstuck: When You Stop Needing Life to Stay the Same

How many opportunities have you missed because you were determined to keep your life exactly as it is?

Think about that.

A career opportunity you dismissed. A place you never considered living. A possibility you never explored.

Perhaps the opportunity was worth considering, yet it didn't fit the life you had already created.

Now, think about what is actually limiting your choices. Is it a lack of opportunities, or the expectations you have placed around what your life should look like?

If you have ever dismissed an opportunity because it meant changing something you loved, you already know how difficult that decision can feel.

Yet haven't we just acknowledged that opportunities have been available?

Perhaps the real question is how many possibilities we have ruled out before giving them serious consideration.

That is something I have been exploring in my own life, and three shifts have helped me become unstuck: gratitude, acceptance and release.

When Life No Longer Follows the Plan

This morning, I'm talking with a young client who is preparing to return to university to complete her master's degree. She is worried about what the experience might demand of her, particularly when she remembers her undergraduate years.

The overnight study sessions, sacrificing time with friends, putting her wellbeing aside and feeling that everything else in her life had to come second to her studies.

And she is worried she is about to do it all again.

As we explore what is happening, I encourage her to consider something different. She already knows what that experience taught her. She understands the cost of sacrificing sleep, connection and wellbeing in pursuit of academic success.

So why does her master's degree have to follow the same pattern?

What if she takes everything she has learned from her undergraduate years and uses that knowledge to create an entirely different experience?

One where academic success and personal wellbeing can exist together. Where friendships, sleep and time for herself become part of the plan, rather than things she sacrifices to achieve it.

Her previous experience gives her valuable information. She now has the opportunity to decide what she wants to do differently.

And as I'm sharing how gratitude, acceptance and release have helped me approach my own circumstances, I can see how closely our situations connect.

My husband has recently lost his job, and suddenly much of our future is uncertain. Where will we live? What opportunities might become available? Will we stay in Cairns or find ourselves creating a new chapter somewhere else?

The job loss brings uncertainty. My reluctance to consider leaving Cairns reveals something I have been holding on to for much longer.

Two months ago, my husband told me he was unhappy in his job. I understood that he wanted something different, yet I didn't want to leave Cairns. I loved where we lived, the lifestyle we had created and everything this part of the world had given our family.

He transitioned into another role within the same company, but he still wasn't happy. Then he lost his job, and the circumstances we had been trying to work within changed completely.

Looking back, I can see how my thoughts about leaving Cairns have been shaping the choices I'm willing to consider. I want my husband to find work he enjoys, and I also want our life to remain exactly as it is.

I'm willing to consider new opportunities, provided they allow us to stay in Cairns.

That one condition rules out possibilities before we've even explored them.

I have been trying to make the next phase of our lives fit inside the boundaries of the current one.

And that is what has been keeping me stuck.

Gratitude: When You Love the Life You Have Created

When we moved to the east coast, our twin daughters were 15. We wanted to give them wonderful final years of schooling, a different experience of life and greater opportunities to explore once they finished high school.

Cairns gave us all of that and so much more.

We discovered the extraordinary beauty of Far North Queensland, where tropical rainforests meet the Great Barrier Reef. We experienced warm mornings, tropical weather, walks to the beach and weekends exploring places people travel across the world to see.

There is something wonderful about stepping outside and knowing that the rainforest, the reef and the ocean are part of your everyday life.

We watched our daughters grow through an important stage of their lives, surrounded by experiences and opportunities that helped shape who they were becoming.

I love the life we have created.

And perhaps that is part of the problem.

When we have invested years creating something meaningful, we naturally want to protect it. We remember what it took to get there, how much we wanted it and everything it has given us.

Sometimes we become so focused on preserving what we have created that we forget to ask whether we still want the same things.

There is an interesting connection here to what behavioural economists Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer describe in their research, The Psychology of Sunk Cost.

The sunk cost effect describes our tendency to continue with something because of the time, money or effort we have already invested in it.

Of course, remaining somewhere you love isn't automatically an example of the sunk cost effect. There may be wonderful reasons to stay. The concept simply raises an interesting question: are we choosing something because of what it can offer us now, or because of everything we have already invested in it?

For me, that distinction matters.

I can be grateful for everything Cairns has given our family without requiring those experiences to continue in exactly the same way.

Nothing about their value disappears if we move.

The memories, relationships, opportunities and experiences are already part of our lives.

Something can have been absolutely wonderful without needing to last forever.

Gratitude allows me to appreciate the success of this chapter without feeling obligated to preserve every part of it.

Acceptance: Acknowledging What Is

My husband's job loss presents us with practical realities we can't ignore. Financial decisions, employment opportunities and questions about where we might live are now part of our conversations.

I can continue wishing things had unfolded differently, yet that won't change what has happened.

I can also see how much energy I have been investing in trying to protect the outcome I originally wanted.

Imagine arriving at a train station with your ticket in hand, ready for a journey you have carefully planned. You've organised everything around the departure time, perhaps even imagined what you will do when you arrive.

Then comes the announcement.

Your train has been cancelled.

Well, that's inconvenient!

You can stand on the platform arguing that the train should still be coming. After all, you have bought the ticket, made your plans and organised your day around it.

You can argue all afternoon. The departure board remains unchanged.

At some point, you have to look at the other services and consider what else is available.

That is how I think about acceptance.

It means acknowledging our circumstances, including the disappointment and uncertainty, so we can make decisions based on the reality in front of us.

There is a psychological principle that helps explain why this matters.

Psychologist Steven C. Hayes and his colleagues have extensively explored psychological flexibility, a central concept in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Psychological flexibility involves acknowledging our thoughts, feelings and circumstances while choosing actions that remain connected to what matters to us.

A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis by Jenna Macri and Ronald Rogge examined 67 studies involving 9,123 participants. It found that improvements in psychological flexibility during ACT interventions were associated with reductions in psychological distress.

I find that interesting because flexibility allows us to remain connected to our values while reconsidering how we might experience them when circumstances change.

I still value family, freedom, connection and meaningful experiences.

Those values haven't changed.

So why have I decided they must all be experienced in Cairns?

And there is another uncomfortable truth.

I want my husband to find work that makes him happy, yet my expectations about where we should live have been limiting the opportunities we are prepared to consider.

That creates pressure around our decisions and has the potential to affect our connection with each other.

We both deserve the freedom to explore what the next stage of our lives could offer.

Acceptance allows me to acknowledge my preference to stay in Cairns while recognising that my husband's happiness and opportunities matter equally.

Cairns might still be an option.

It simply doesn't need to be the only option.

And that opens the door to a different conversation.

Release: Making Room for Possibility

I find myself thinking about what it means to become unattached to the life we have created.

Do I need to stop loving Cairns? Stop enjoying our lifestyle? Somehow convince myself that the rainforest, reef and tropical weather are no longer appealing?

Of course not.

I can continue loving and appreciating our life while releasing the expectation that our next chapter has to look the same.

For two months, I have effectively been saying we can consider new opportunities, provided they allow us to stay in Cairns.

That sounds reasonable when you are happy with where you live.

Look a little closer, though, and it becomes a significant restriction.

What if my husband's next opportunity takes us somewhere we have never considered living? What if we discover a different lifestyle we enjoy just as much? What if the stage of life we are entering offers possibilities we couldn't have imagined when our daughters were 15?

We have time to explore those options before making a decision.

And exploration itself gives us something valuable: information, experience and a wider view of what's available.

This is where the distinction between values and expectations becomes important.

A value might be freedom, family connection or adventure.

An expectation might be that freedom requires a particular lifestyle, or that our family can only experience adventure by living in a certain place.

The value can remain important even when the way we experience it changes.

And sometimes, by holding too tightly to our expectations, we unintentionally restrict the very things we value.

I want freedom for our family, yet I have been placing conditions around the choices we are prepared to consider.

And there it is.

The expectation that has been limiting our possibilities.

I also find myself questioning whether I have been protecting a definition of success that belongs to an earlier stage of our lives.

We came to Cairns to give our daughters opportunities and create wonderful experiences together.

We have done that.

So why am I measuring the success of our next chapter by whether we can preserve the last one?

Our daughters are growing older. Our circumstances are changing. And the capabilities we have developed along the way aren't confined to one location.

We know how to adapt, build relationships, explore unfamiliar places and create meaningful experiences together.

We have done it before.

There is no reason to assume we can't do it again.

I think again about my client preparing for her master's degree.

She already knows what happens when academic achievement takes priority over everything else. She has experienced the exhaustion, the missed time with friends and the pressure of trying to keep up.

Those experiences have given her valuable information about how she wants to approach her studies differently.

She can make new choices about how she studies, what boundaries she establishes and how she protects the other things that matter to her.

And I can do the same.

Our experiences in Cairns have taught us what we value about the way we live. We know more about the experiences we enjoy, the opportunities that matter and the capabilities we have developed.

We can use that knowledge to shape our next chapter without requiring it to look like the last.

The past gives us experience. It doesn't have to become the instructions for our future.

Releasing the requirement to stay in Cairns doesn't suddenly give me an answer about where we should live.

It gives me the freedom to explore possibilities I had previously dismissed.

Instead of asking how we can make the next phase of our lives fit within the one we have already created, I can begin asking what kind of life we want now.

What experiences would we enjoy?

Where might we like to live?

What opportunities would allow each of us to grow?

What might we discover if we allowed the future to look different?

There is something exciting about considering those questions without needing to know the answers.

I can keep loving the life I have created while giving myself the freedom to imagine what else I might love.

Begin From Here

Yesterday, in Beginning Again Is Not Failure, I explored how a change in my behaviour led me to question what I wanted to create next. Today, I am sharing the process that helps me reach that point.

Think about something in your life that you have been reluctant to change.

Begin with gratitude. Recognise what the experience has given you and what you value about it.

Then practise acceptance. Acknowledge what is happening now, including the circumstances you cannot change simply by wishing they were different.

Finally, consider what expectations you might be ready to release. What possibilities could you explore if your future didn't have to look exactly like your past?

You don't have to decide everything today. You can appreciate what you have created while

remaining open to something different.

Sometimes becoming unstuck isn't about finding more opportunities. It is about releasing the expectations that have been preventing you from seeing them.