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Hey there,

There’s a version of stuck that nobody talks about. Not the dramatic kind — not a crisis, not a breakdown. The kind where everything looks fine from the outside, but inside, the thing you’re trying to move just won’t move. You’ve worked on it. You’ve thought about it more than you should. And it sits there like it’s made of concrete.

I spent over a year like that. I’d moved to Thailand with a head full of plans for my coaching business & for finally finishing the first thriller novel I started drafting 8 years ago. And none of them were moving. Not slowly — not at all. I was showing up every day, working the problem, and the problem didn’t care.

Then my wife Anja flew back to Switzerland for a couple months, and a stray dog named Blondie needed someone.

Blondie had blood parasites. She was living under an improvised metal shack with a family who had almost nothing. She needed medicine every day for 30 days to survive. Someone had to show up.

So I did. Not because it was part of some plan. Because she needed it and I was there.

The first few days felt like an interruption. A couple of hours each day preparing and driving out. By the second week, I was bringing food for every dog in the area, not just Blondie. I watched her get stronger. I found that I loved doing this — the rhythm of it, the simplicity of showing up because something alive needed you to.

And here’s the part I didn’t expect.

The drive home was on Ko Samui’s busiest roads — the route I’d been dreading. But somewhere in that commute, with the day’s work behind me and the windows down, I started dictating notes. Ideas for the business. Scenes for my writing project. Things that had been locked up for months just started coming loose. Almost every evening. That dreaded drive became the most creative hour of my day.

I wasn’t trying to get unstuck. I’d stopped thinking about being stuck entirely. I’d given my focus to something that needed it more than my plans did.

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Here’s what I think happened, and I think you’ll recognize it.

Every time I’ve been truly stuck — in my coaching career, in my training, in life — I eventually got moving again. And the thing that got me moving was almost never the thing I was stuck on. It was committing to something else entirely: a course, a project, a race, a daily practice. And then, without permission, momentum showed up in the places I’d stopped expecting it.

Momentum doesn’t care where it starts. But it tends to spread once you spark it.

If you’re circling something right now, I’m not going to tell you what to do. But I will say this: the answer might not be in the thing you’re staring at. It might be in a parallel action, and it might be a smaller action than you imagine is required.

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Until next time,
Jeff

— Coach Jeff Grant (Hilly)
Hillseeker | Ko Samui, Thailand

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