How to Get Unstuck: Do This to Create the Future You Want

Dr. Adam Alter (20:07):

So I have some research with a colleague of mine, Hal Hirschfield at UCLA where I was 29 and I felt like I was about to be 30. This was a number of years ago now I'm much older than that now, but at the time I was 29, about to be 30, and I felt like I had to do something just to kind of show myself that I was still just as vibrant as I'd been when I was younger and so on.

 

Mel Robbins (20:31):

So did you feel stuck?

 

Dr. Adam Alter (20:32):

I felt stuck in various ways I felt stuck. And

 

Mel Robbins (20:35):

How so put me at the scene. I want to meet the 29-year-old Adam. You're not where you are yet. You don't have international bestselling books, all this renowned research. Tell me who Adam at the age of 29 stuck was.

 

Dr. Adam Alter (20:49):

I had just finished grad school. I was just starting a new career. I wasn't sure if I wanted to be in the United States still I was missing people in Australia. I was single. I felt kind of lonely and unwed in New York City. I didn't really know if I had a place there yet, and I just felt globally more blah than anything. Things were going well on paper, but I just wasn't sure where I was headed and I wanted to do something that kind of showed me that I had drive and that everything was working well. So I signed up to run a marathon, my first marathon, my only marathon, and I did this at 29 and Hal and I were talking about this and saying we were thinking about the idea that the way we count using the Space 10 system, the who? The decade just we count in tens.

 

Mel Robbins (21:29):

Oh god. Okay.

 

Dr. Adam Alter (21:30):

So the way we count using tens, we think of decades as meaningful. So turning 30, 40, 50, 60 is a big deal in our culture.

 

(21:38):

There's no inherent reason why 39 to 40 should be different from 30 to 40, 35 to 36, but it does feel different. And because of that we wanted to investigate whether every 10 years, when your age ends in a nine and you're thinking about a new decade, does that push you to think more deeply about your life? And that's what we found. So what you find is there's a little spike in questioning the meaning of life around the nine ending ages. It's like a little end of decade crisis and you see some interesting things happen on the back of that. So one of them is more people are likely to sign up for marathons the way I did

 

Mel Robbins (22:10):

At the age of ending at nine, at 9 29 39, 49, 59,

 

Dr. Adam Alter (22:15):

Yeah. They're more likely to be interested in things like reading books on aging. You see a little bit of people are more likely to buy those kinds of books. They become more focused on aging. You also see some negative things if they have a crisis, when they have that questioning of meaning. You see a rise in extramarital affairs. So if you look at the data, there's a rise with nine ending ages for those kinds of affairs, and you even see a small rise in the suicide rate. So there are profound things that happen at the end of the decade for people, and this is a time when we tend to have these little moments of questioning and when we feel quite stuck.

 

Mel Robbins (22:49):

So is that called a temporal landmark where there's this sort of almost marking of time that makes you then assess the span of your life?

 

Dr. Adam Alter (23:00):

Yeah, I think it's similar to how we do this thing of creating resolutions between December and January. It's a moment that just pushes us to think more broadly and abstractly and because of the way we count it happens to be just before those new decades.

 

Mel Robbins (23:14):

How can you use this research to your advantage? So you're kind of cruising into the 29th, 19th,

 

Dr. Adam Alter (23:20):

49th,

 

 

Dr. Adam Alter (23:25):

Yeah, so there are a few things you can do. One thing is to say that there's something very arbitrary about picking those years. You could be 34, you could be 44, you could be 54, 64 and say, this is when I want to do this little audit process. I don't have to ask myself whether my life's meaningful only once every 10 years. And actually doing it more often is better for you than doing it once every 10 years and having this huge event where it feels overwhelming. So do this often, just ask yourself maybe once a year, maybe it's your birthday, maybe you don't want to do that on your birthday. You want to do it on a different day.

 

Mel Robbins (23:55):

I think it's the perfect day.

 

Dr. Adam Alter (23:56):

It is. That's what I do. But other people might not want to have their birthday be about this process, but do it once a year. But

 

Mel Robbins (24:02):

Hold on, I want to push back on that please. Because the single best thing that you could do as a gift to yourself is to pull out a blank piece of paper and go, where is there friction in my life? Because what I know based on Adam's research is that if I were to turn my attention to the friction in my life and make it a project to either remove it, smooth it out, or face the stuff that I do not want to face, that I know is in the back of my mind and it bugs me and it's going to bite me in the rear end someday. If you did this, because here's the thing, I'm thinking about this list that I did with Pete, I do it every year, my business, my life, very different right now than it was even like six months ago. And so I think this is the greatest thing you could do for yourself is to wake up to where those places in your life where there's almost like stuck is this signal and this flag from your internal like navigation. GPS going, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,

 

(24:59):

Turn toward this.

(25:46):

One is to set yourself a goal, which is why running a marathon or an ultra or a trial or whatever, that's a good goal because it's an extended goal, it's very defined. It has steps that get you closer to the goal. That's very reaffirming. It's also about connecting with people. So one way we get meaning in our lives is to feel a sense of community, to feel a deep sense of connection with other people. And so if you can do that, if you can make sure that you reach out to all your friends that you've been meaning to reach out to, that will also be very productive on those times when you're questioning the meaning of life.

 

Mel Robbins (26:18):

Okay, so doc, I'm going to play the role of the stuck family member, and I have been in a string of jobs that just blew and I've been through a breakup and my life is boring and is kind of how I feel. How the hell is running a marathon or setting a goal going to change my life?

 

Dr. Adam Alter (26:48):

So the thing itself is not, that's not the issue. It's not that you've run a marathon and suddenly you're going to become a person who makes all their money and spends all their time running.

 

(26:57):

That's not what it's about. It's about demonstrating to yourself through the way you're behaving certain things about who you are, that your life has a kind of purpose, and that you're the kind of person who can seize an opportunity to approach a goal and to reach a goal and to succeed. There's something tremendously valuable about signaling that, especially when you feel globally stuck. So it doesn't actually matter what the goal is. It's not the goal for goal's sake, it's the fact that you are moving towards something that says, I have achieved, I have done this thing. So that's what the value of say a marathon is. It's not for everyone, but for some people it's very useful. It was very good for me. It did make me feel much better about where I was.

 

Mel Robbins (27:35):

What are some examples of things that you found in your research that people would pick as a goal to signal something else That I'm moving forward. I'm not going to be defined by this stuckness. The fact that I can say I'm going back to school or I'm losing weight, whatever, if I'm playing the disgruntled family member because I think you feel so stuck that there's so much resistance to even first the belief that it's going to change and also resistance to moving yourself in a different direction. I mean, you're up against inertia. We're talking physics here. 

Dr. Adam Alter (28:23):

And these things? Because it's not about the thing itself, it's just what it signals. They're kind of like palette cleanses that get you ready to do the thing that actually needs to be done. So for a lot of people, that's a very valuable step. The things are often one of three types. There are athletic pursuits, so something like running a marathon, running a try, whatever it is, and that has the benefit of often getting you moving, which has its own benefits that are separate from all of this. Second kind is intellectual. I want to learn a language. I want to learn a new skill. I want to learn to code. It doesn't matter what it is, but it's something that's important to you. It can be directly relevant to your job, so it might actually push you forward, but it could just be like, I don't know how to do crosswords.

 

(29:01):

I want to get to the point where I can do the Saturday crossword in the New York Times and then you do that, whatever. And then the third kind is creativity based. I want to paint a picture. I want to create a piece of music. I want to create a film. I want to take photos. It doesn't matter what it is, but I want to get better at a particular skill that matters to me. All of those are very valuable in showing you that you can have forward motion, that you can make movements towards a goal. It doesn't matter. Everyone has their own preference about which one works, but they seem to work pretty well.

 

Mel Robbins (29:29):

I can give you a bunch of examples from my family. So my husband, Chris, has completed that online fitness challenge 75 hard four times now. My daughter's done it twice, both times. They committed to doing it simply to shake up their life and tap into their potential. Here's another one. So just yesterday, my husband got up at six o'clock in the morning to go to a national park service website so he could reserve a campsite for six months from now to the date. And believe it or not, by the time he logged onto the website at six o'clock in the morning, his top two choices were already reserved. He got his third choice for a campsite up at the national park so that our family can climb Mount Kain. Now here's what's cool about that. We are not doing it yet. It's just something that we have put out into the future. We made it a goal over the holidays that our family wanted to do that this year as a family, and Chris marked his calendar four months ago that this was the date he needed to log on yesterday, he logged on at six o'clock in the morning, he got the campsite. These are all small steps forward towards something out in the future that is deeply meaningful to us, that really keeps you feeling like you're tapping into the bigger potential of your life,

 

(31:02):

And I want to see if, I can't really make sure that for you as you're listening, whether you're listening for yourself or somebody that loves you, who's a pain in your ear end, sent you this episode because they think that you're stuck and they want to see you moving in the right direction and happy and vibrant and no more friction in your life, I want to make sure that you really get the power of what he is telling you. 

(32:17):

And all of a sudden you have put a destination point out in the future, which the destination doesn't freaking matter. What matters is that that destination signals it's time to stop spinning, move in the direction, start getting in shape to go up kain, register your rear end for the AI class, take up the painting course. When you start moving toward it, it's like the road trip to a new you has begun and it's that sort of new direction piece that must be changing something. Is that why this works?

 

Dr. Adam Alter (32:51):

Exactly, yeah. And so as you go through a friction audit, you list all the points of friction. The other thing to list is what are all the things in my life I'd like to be able to do that I can't do now?

 

(33:00):

That's what you start picking from when you do this because it signals not just that you're getting friction out of the way, which is really external to you. It's like saying, this thing is outside of me. I want to move it away and make forward motion. This is something much more personal. I'm the kind of person who can take on a goal and achieve it. Whatever the goal is, it's something that's on my bucket list. And when you do that, then you are prepared to move forward with the thing that perhaps really matters to you in that moment.

 

Mel Robbins (33:26):

What's also fascinating about this research is it confirms something that I have certainly felt when I've been stuck in my life or my marriage or my job or with my body and my health is that you feel like a victim and the act of setting a goal and then starting to work toward it, it proves that you're not a victim. 

Dr. Adam Alter (33:59):

It's exactly as you've described because we spend a lot of time asking ourselves, what kind of person am I? And it's very disempowering to be stuck. You feel like you are not the best version of you, whether it's a particular stuckness. I'm trying to do this very narrow goal and I can't do it, whether it's I just feel kind of blah and I'm not making forward progress either way. You're not looking at yourself in that moment saying, I'm an efficacious person who can get stuff done.

 

Mel Robbins (34:25):

What does efficacious mean?

 

Dr. Adam Alter (34:26):

I make things happen.

 

Mel Robbins (34:27):

Got it. Okay.

 

Dr. Adam Alter (34:28):

I have efficacy. I can make things. The outcomes that matter to me happen. That's not how you feel in that moment. You feel kind of disempowered and powerless and not very good. And so the thing about creating a goal that's maybe meaningful to you, it's on a bucket list and succeeding, is that it tells you that you are actually someone who can get stuff done. It counteracts and contradicts that feeling of helplessness. And once you know that about yourself, you are in a much better position to try something, tackle something that's really big and meaningful. That's maybe been a sticking point sometimes for months or years, rather than being in a position where you're like, oh, I feel terrible now I'm going to just try this thing. That's really overwhelming. You're not in the best position to do that in that moment of powerlessness.

 

Mel Robbins (35:09):

I have this interesting question that I want to ask you, and I don't know if you researched this, but given that so many of us are going to share this episode with somebody that we love, 

Dr. Adam Alter (36:00):

Yeah, so I really firmly believe that you can't make people care about a goal or an outcome. You can't say to someone, you're stuck and you have to care about getting unstuck. That's really got to come from the person. You can guide them there, you can show them why it's important. You can have them introspect about it to the point where they say, you know what? I'm now seeing the light. I understand why it's so important to do this, but you can't bully people into saying this thing that's sticking me as a problem and I need to do something about it. So I think the best thing you can do as a loved one, as a friend, as a family member is to make it without being judgmental, is to make it as clear as possible why this thing matters. And gently guide this person along in that direction. Show them that it matters and have them answer some questions about it. That's the best thing you can do is ask questions. Do you want this thing to change? Do you think it could be better? The friction audit is a great example of this because it means it's not about them, it's not confronting, it's you just say, Hey, this is not about you, but tell me all the things that are kind of annoying to you right now. What's a friction point? And by pouring out all of those things onto the page, you then have something you can latch onto and at least say, Hey, this seems like it's an issue for you. Let's work on it together.

 

(37:09):

Rather than telling them, here's your problem, we're going to fix it together, which often leads people to push back.

 

Mel Robbins (37:15):

You do a lot of work with companies. So how does this work apply if you feel like you're on a team and the team's stuck?

 

Dr. Adam Alter (37:21):

Yeah, so I mean that's originally where I started doing this work was with companies. It wasn't with individuals, but it was the same idea that companies either in the way they interact with customers or internally in their operations have sticking points. Every company, no matter whether it's big or small, even more if it's big, will have this series of bottlenecks and sticking points and red tape and bureaucracy they need to deal with. And so this is an attempt to figure out where those points are.

 

(37:49):

It's also when you're dealing with customers, a lot of my work is on consumer behavior and human judgment and decision making. Humans don't like stuff that's hard. And if you are losing people in a sort of funnel in your interactions with them in a sales funnel, moving towards making a particular sale, all of those points where you lose them, you can almost always put it down to friction. You're asking them to do an extra thing, an extra click on a website, go to an extra page, make a phone call, make a text, send an email. And so I work a lot with companies to say, let's figure out where those friction points are and see if we can track what sort of effect it has when we remove those from the process.

Dr. Adam Alter (38:57):

Yeah, so the one thing we haven't really talked about is the third section of the book, which is habit. It's actually doing something. It's acting The single best thing you can do if you feel stuck is to take a minimally viable action. In other words, the smallest possible action that moves you in the right direction. Try to think of what that tiny little action would be. It might be if you're in a job you don't like, it might be just learning what the alternatives are, making a list of alternative job options, alternative industries you might want to work in. Maybe go even to the point of making a list of specific companies that are your goal companies. And then you can go through the sort of pros and cons exercise of figuring out what are the strengths and weaknesses of each one. But even that small act, doing something, moving in the right direction is enough to signal that you've got forward progress and then you can do the biggest stuff later on. But getting the ball rolling is the biggest trick. It's doing the small things so that you're not static, you're actually moving in the right direction.

 

Mel Robbins (39:51):

Why is that important?

 

Dr. Adam Alter (39:52):

It's important in part because you're signaling to yourself that you are the kind of person, again who can move the same issue comes up again, but also because moving from zero to any action is really, really important in getting the bigger action to happen. You have to do that step anyway, and once you start doing it, you're more likely to do more. There's this classic story of Jeff Tweedy, the front man of the band Wilco, who talks about how when he's trying to come up with creative ideas, it's incredibly difficult. And so what he does is this minimally viable action. He says to himself, when I wake up in the morning and I don't want to be creative, he writes books and he writes music. Sometimes he doesn't want to do either one. He says to himself, I'm going to spend 10 minutes coming up with the worst sentences I can, writing the worst, most boring music I can.

 

(40:40):

Because what he's doing is he's lowering the bar all the way to the ground and saying, I'm going to be nonjudgmental. I just need to do something. And that has two effects. One thing is again, it gets the ball rolling, and so when he's trying to do good riding, it's more likely to happen. But the other thing it does is it's sometimes means that the things that you think are not good in those moments actually turn out to be better than you think. They actually are more important than you think. And that process of being nonjudgmental and just letting little things happen and not saying it has to be perfect is a very useful way of moving forward.

 

Mel Robbins (41:14):

I love this 10 minute rule, and I also love assume it's going to be the worst because you've lowered the bar. Do you have other quick examples? I know the person listening is going to be like, okay, so what's an example in a job? What's an example with a relationship? What is the minimal viable action that you could take just to get somebody thinking because based on the research, without doing this, you're going to stay stuck. This is step three.

 

Dr. Adam Alter (41:38):

Yeah, exactly. So this is the thing is the smallest action is the good one. One thing I really like that I find very valuable, and this is what got me unstuck when I was doing a degree I didn't want to do, was experimentation. Figure out the list of options and then start working through them. Compare them to each other. You will never know what is the right option if you dunno what the set looks like and you haven't tasted a little bit of each one. So set up that array and then spend a week on each one and line it up and do that. And maybe that itself won't get you moving forward much, but it will teach you what you do and what you don't like. What does work and what doesn't work. And that's a great minimally viable action is to say, I'm going to treat at least this part of my life, like a long experiment. And then once I figure out the best thing forward, then I can be single-minded and focused on exploiting that one opportunity, that one thing. That's all I'm going to do. But you can't make forward motion until you know what that thing is.

 

Mel Robbins (42:30):

Okay, I want to make sure I translate that. That was genius. So basically let's just say your goal is to start working out. And if you take on the mindset of being curious and don't turn it into, I'm getting six pack abs and i'm exercising seven days a week, create a experiment of curiosity. I'm going to spend the next month figuring out what kind of workout I even like, and i'm only going to spend 10 minutes every other day. I'm going to try jump raking, I'm going to try Pilates, I'm going to try a hit class. And if you turn it into an experiment, this is no longer about getting it right, it's about getting yourself moving.

 

Dr. Adam Alter (43:06):

And you know that when you do an experiment, some conditions are going to be bad, some things will be better than others, and that's good. You've learned what does work and what doesn't work, and actually you appreciate what works more when you've seen and tasted what doesn't.

 

Mel Robbins (43:19):

And I'll give you an example. This podcast is something that I thought about for probably seven years and it haunted me. You want to talk about stuck and feeling like you're not tapping into your potential. There's this thing you want to do and you're not doing it, you're not doing it. I was fully in that mode of the emotion around it, the excuses around it, and it really made me miserable. And it also showed up, by the way, when I did that friction list. And so if I think back, it probably would've been three or more years ago, I made one of those friction lists, which I do all the time now, and right on it was, I haven't started the podcast yet. So the fact that it showed up on the list meant to me that this was an area of my life, an area of potential that I needed to do something about.

 

(44:08):

And I didn't start the podcast that day. I made a decision that I was going to start working on it. In your words. I turned it into an experiment. And it's interesting to point out, I think it's really important for you as you listen and are a fan of this podcast, to know that I didn't even really do anything for a year. I would wake up every day and I would take 15 minutes of action a and the first day the action was I made a decision I was going to launch a podcast in a year or two. The next day I simply made a list of podcasts I was going to listen to. That's it. The next day I listened to a podcast for a little bit of time. The next day I did a Google search and I learned about the kind of equipment that people use for podcasts, and it just went on and on and on for an entire year. I would say that I was so busy almost doing a research project and becoming a student of the thing that I was interested in before I even did any of the actual steps of I guess recording an episode or figuring out what the audio editing software was and simply researching podcasts, simply becoming a student of it every single day when I did something, knowing that it was leading toward this bigger thing, it got me moving. I didn't feel stuck again. And that was years before the podcast actually launched.

 

Dr. Adam Alter (45:31):

That's a great minimally viable action in

 

Mel Robbins (45:33):

Life. So tell us about the role of failure. So terrified of failing at this. How do you reframe the way you think about failure to help yourself get unstuck and be successful?

 

Dr. Adam Alter (45:45):

So very few failures are the be all and end all. It's all about framing and how you think about a failure. Very few failures mean you can never do this thing again. Usually they open up other options, opportunities, a second attempt at the same thing. And so the first thing is to accept that and to recognize that failure is inevitable. It's going to happen as you get better, as you challenge yourself. But usually that's not irrevocable. It's not the end of the world. You can move forward. I think the first very useful thing. The other thing is to figure out what to take away from that failure. There are good failures and bad failures. Bad failure is where you fail. You have no idea why and it doesn't help you move forward and you feel dejected. You don't feel good about it. Good failure is saying, I've learned something.

 

(46:27):

Here is what I've learned. This part of what I did actually worked quite well. Here is where I got close. Here's where I fell short. It may even be a case of learning through that failure that this is not something you should be doing and you can quit. You can move on to something else. There's nothing wrong with doing that. There are a billion things we could be doing with our time, and if failure is teaching you something about what you shouldn't be doing, that's also valuable. So essentially the question that differentiates good failure from bad failure is have I learned what the next thing should be from this failure? And if the answer is yes, then it's good. It helps you.

 

Mel Robbins (47:02):

It wasn't a failure at

 

Dr. Adam Alter (47:03):

All. It wasn't a failure.

 

Mel Robbins (47:04):

I love that. Dr. Alter. So I have another question for you. Who should you talk to when you feel stuck?

 

Dr. Adam Alter (47:09):

There are essentially three kinds of people that are very useful when you're trying to get unstuck. The first kind are people who are like you, who overlap with you, similar backgrounds, similar ideas. They kind of get where you're coming from. Got it. So organizations, when they put teams together will often do this. They'll sort of knit together people who are similar. The second kind of person is someone who is completely different or so I see this happen. When companies come to NYU to recruit, a lot of the best companies will come in and say, we don't are an organization that focuses on say, investing. We don't just want the best finance students want the best two finance students, the two marketing students, the two French literature students, the two organic chemistry students all have a very different idea about the world. And when you put those different ideas together, you get something very useful. So when we're often stuck, we consult with people who are like us and that often further entrenches us. There's something very valuable in going out and speaking to people who are deliberately quite different from you.

 

(48:10):

And then the third kind of person is the black sheep. Someone who actively pushes back against you. So most of us can think about people in our lives who consistently see things not just differently, but actually in opposition. They push us a little bit to sort of challenge the way we see the world. And so Pixar has done this for a while where when they have a team of people working on a film, they will bring in a black sheep. So they might have a whole lot of people who say the most important thing is our animation. That's what sets us apart. But they'll bring in someone who says Animation doesn't matter. Essentially. It's all about narrative. Let's make sure that that first scene in the movie up is the best narrative we can write. If you don't grip people early, then we're never going to get them. So these three kinds of people, everyone should have essentially a brain trust. So once you feel like you're stuck, you go to the people who get you, they really know you. They're a lot. You go to the people who are a bit different, they have different backgrounds and ideas, and then you go to the people who really push back on you. And you are much more likely to succeed in making progress with the influence of those three kinds of people.

 

Mel Robbins (49:12):

And if I were to translate that to the personal life, so it makes perfect sense if you are trying to have a creative breakthrough or a breakthrough in your business or a breakthrough in the way that you're approaching a project, if you were to translate that to personal life, I'm sitting here thinking, I'm like, okay, I got my high school friends and they're kind of like me. I got maybe the college friends or the work friends. There's some diversity there in terms of how people think and problem solving backgrounds. And then I got to find that one outlier that just looks at life differently to bounce this off of. If the person listening were to just do one thing, what is the most important thing that you want them to remember and put into action from this conversation? Dr. Alta,

 

Dr. Adam Alter (49:57):

There are two things that you could do. Two ways of approaching life. There are two ways of approaching a sticking point. The first one is called exploration, where you try different things. The second one is exploitation. Where you drill really deep into one thing. You cannot do both at the same time. You can't both be exploring all your options and really doing as much as you can to make one particular option work for you, figure out which stage you're in, and then bounce between the two. So try different things, figure out which one is best, drill down on that until you hit a wall, and then go back to exploring again and bounce between those two phases and you will effectively get unstuck.

 

Mel Robbins (50:34):

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

 

Dr. Adam Alter (50:37):

Thank you for having me.

 

Mel Robbins (50:39):

Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I also want to thank you for listening today and for sharing this with people that you love, because what a waste it would be to go through your life and not tap into the potential inside of you. And I know that based on what you learned today, you have a roadmap to help you do that. And so I hope you take everything that you learned and you put it into action. And one more thing, in case no one else tells you today, let me be the one to say, I love you and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to change your life. And now you don't have any excuses, because you have the three simple steps based on the research to plant a signal out into the future and wake up every day and start chipping away at it.

 

(51:23):

Okay, so go do it. I know that you're like, okay, what next? What next? What next? Well, first, thank you for subscribing. It really means a lot to me, and it's one way that you can give back to me. It helps us bring you world-class experts at zero cost. Second, thank you for sharing this because one way that you make your life better is by supporting people around you with information that can empower them to change your lives. And third, I know you want more incredible advice from experts that are just extraordinary. So check out this episode next.