What To Do When You’re Stuck?
Life Lesson from a Pigeon…
Have you ever felt stuck on a problem? Have you tried out everything you could, to move ahead, but nothing seemed to work? If yes, here is what you could do…
A few days ago, I met a young Pigeon. I stepped into my balcony and found him trapped. He’d somehow managed to find his way in, past the pigeon net, but could not find his way out of there. He was scared and was determined to get out of the place. So determined, that he was continuously trying to pick and pierce through the net, left and right, up and down, everywhere, but couldn’t find his way out. Trying not to scare him more, I gently opened the net from one corner and pulled it up. But he couldn’t see that. He was just trying so hard to move forward, to the other side of the net, that he limited his view to what was ahead of him.
All he had to do was to step back a little so that he could see the opening on the side! For a moment, I was angry at that stupid bird! But then I realized that he’s just doing what people do when deliberately trying to find a solution to their problem.
This pigeon just made me realize how important it is to step back when we’re stuck. It could give us an expanded view of the world. It could help us see the alternative paths, the other perspectives which we could not see in our previous frame of mind.
You are your greatest source of inspiration. Change your perspective, and you will be your best guide. It can turn your world upside down.
As a software engineer, I encounter numerous errors. Some can be solved by a simple google search, while others are so stubborn that you simply don’t find what caused them. Logic, checked. Syntax, checked. Dependencies, checked. But the error keeps on showing until you press ‘Ctrl+z’ and retype the whole thing. It turns out to be a silly typo! There have been instances when I’ve spent hours solving such errors! Often, I’m too reluctant to press undo because I think it’d be easier to just find the bug and fix it. But as it turns out, undoing actually saves a lot of time and effort in such cases.
The Lesson
Whenever you feel stuck, on anything, just try stepping back and looking at the problem from a different perspective. Trust me, it helps! Personally, I’ve found that viewing your problem from a third person’s point of view helps a lot. Like the majority of people, I am great at giving advice to other people, but fail to do the same for myself. So why not play both the roles yourself? This way, your thinking would not be bounded by self-doubts or any other limits. You just know what to do to get out of the situation, you just have to look at the problem in a different way.
“Sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward.” — Erika Taylor
In case you’re wondering about the pigeon, I guided him out with the help of a newspaper roll… he must now be happy with his family… flying high in the sky!
