There is a version of stuck that is real. And there is a version that is a story we keep telling ourselves because the story is easier than the move.
The real version sounds like this. You have done the work. You have looked at the options. You have weighed the costs. There is a genuine constraint, a financial obligation, a family situation, a market reality, that is keeping you in place for now. You are not stuck. You are managing real limits with clear eyes.
The other version sounds different. You have been "thinking about" the move for two years. You have a friend who is tired of hearing about it. You have already convinced yourself that everyone else has options you do not have. You can list the reasons it is not the right time, but if you are honest, you have been listing those same reasons for a while now.
That is the version this post is for.
Stuck, as most people use the word, is not a condition. It is a story. And the story is doing something for you, which is why you have not stopped telling it.
What the Story Protects
The story of being stuck has a job. It is not random.
For most people, the story is protecting one of three things.
It is protecting an identity you are not ready to give up. The version of yourself that is talented but underutilized. The one who could have been a contender if circumstances had been different. The one who is "almost there." Moving forward means giving up the almost-there identity and finding out what actually-there looks like. That is scarier than it sounds.
It is protecting you from a verdict. As long as you are stuck, you have not failed. You are also not succeeding, but the failure case is the one you are avoiding. The story of stuck holds you in suspended animation. No win, no loss, no verdict. The minute you move, the verdict comes. Most people would rather stay in the gray than find out.
It is protecting a version of someone else's expectations. Your parents, your partner, your old team, your former self. The story of stuck means you have not had to disappoint anyone yet. Moving forward means picking a direction, and picking a direction means some of those people will not approve. Stuck is what we call the place we go to avoid that.
One note before we go further. Real constraints and chosen constraints can look identical from the outside. The people who have been telling you that you are stuck might be wrong, and the people who have been telling you that you are choosing might be wrong. The only person who can tell the difference is you, and only if you are willing to ask the hard question.
The Hard Question
Here is the question I ask coaching clients when I think they are in the second version of stuck, not the first.
If I gave you the next move right now, fully resourced, fully supported, no risk to your income or your family, would you take it?
Most people who tell me they are stuck pause on that question. Some of them eventually say yes. Those people are usually genuinely stuck in the real way. They have constraints. The constraints are real. We work on the constraints.
The other ones, more than I expected when I started coaching, say something else. They start to talk about why even that version of the move would be complicated. About what they would lose. About whether it was really what they wanted in the first place.
That is the tell. If a fully resourced, fully supported version of the move still does not appeal, the problem was never the resources or the support. The problem is that you do not actually want the move. You want the option to want the move. Those are different things.
What Choosing Looks Like
You are not stuck. You are choosing.
You are choosing the version of yourself that has not failed yet. You are choosing the relationships that do not require you to disappoint anyone. You are choosing the comfort of the story over the cost of the move. None of those are wrong. They are just choices, and they are yours.
The freedom is in naming them. Once you say "I am choosing to stay in this role because the alternative requires giving up something I am not ready to give up," you have stopped being stuck. You are now a person making a choice. You can stay with the choice, or you can decide it is no longer the right one. Either way, you are no longer the victim of a story.
The people I have watched move out of long-term stuck do not start by changing their circumstances. They start by changing the word. They stop saying I am stuck and start saying I have been choosing. The shift is small. It changes everything.
The Third Option Most People Pick
Most people do not pick between keeping the story and making the move. They pick a third option, and it is the one that costs them the most.
They keep the story and the resentment that comes with it.
They keep telling themselves they are stuck. They keep collecting evidence that the world is harder for them than for everyone else. They keep ignoring the question of whether they actually want what they say they want, because the question is uncomfortable. The resentment grows because it is easier to be angry at the constraint than to look at the choice underneath it.
You cannot do that without paying a real cost. The resentment eats at you. It changes how you show up at work, with your family, with yourself. It poisons the very life you are claiming you cannot leave.
You have two honest choices.
Keep the story. Find peace with it. Stop telling people you are stuck if you are not planning to do anything about it, because the story you tell starts to shape what you believe is possible. If you are choosing the current path, own it. Speak about it like a person who is choosing, not a person who is trapped.
Or make the move. Smaller than you think it has to be. The first step is almost never the dramatic one. It is the conversation, the application, the email, the half-hour of research you keep skipping. Run the smallest version of the move that gets you out of the story.
You are not stuck. You are choosing.
If you have been calling yourself stuck for longer than the situation deserves, that is usually a Blueprint Call conversation. We work out what the story is protecting and what the actual next move looks like. calendly.com/unapologeticallymichelle
Michelle Odhiambo is a leadership coach and the author of Unapologetically Quiet: Leadership Without the Noise. She works with high-performing professionals who are done performing and ready to lead.