Getting Unstuck: How Dead Ends Become New Paths

by Timothy Butler

Book Overview

You will experience psychological impasse many times in your life. During these times, you have the sensation that you're stuck or paralyzed. You're convinced that something must change, whether in your work or personal life. Though this feeling is normal, you need to move beyond it. Failure to "get unstuck" can put your career and personal life--as well as the healthy functioning of your team or organization--at risk. In Getting Unstuck , business...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1422102254
• ISBN13: 9781422102251
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.5" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Very Useful

A very useful book, with concepts and practical tools that help understand and get through uncertainty in both the professional and personal aspects of life. I definitely recommend it.

Well researched and simplified

Knowledge is simplification of information. The book is very well written. It distills years of work into a persuasive style for readers. Go through the "deep-dive" and feel refreshed. Strikes a chord deep down - all those examples.

Fantastic read and immensely insightful

This is probably the 50th self help book I've read and it is by far the best one yet. Parts of it remind me of the book "Feel the Fear and do it anyway", another highly recommended book for anyone feeling stuck. I have felt stuck, particularly in my career, for well over 4 years now. However, this book gives me a lot of hope, something I've been missing for a while. The book makes several great points about not over analyzing everything, the danger of your ego/superego and how they holds you back, and fear. One of the most important points the book makes is that right before we are about to take a step forward, the superego comes in and criticizes what we are trying to accomplish, thus holding us back. Lastly, the book helps you tap into and figure out what your passion in life is (career). So if you're feeling stuck in your career or life in general, I highly recommend this book. It beats all the career books I've read, as it delves deeper into your personality and what is holding you back to help you get to the bottom of it. There is a section on personal values and how often times we work for a company that isn't in alignment with our core values, which causes major problems. Overall, very insightful and helpful for anyone in career crisis.

A fresh approach with useful exercises

Tim Butler's latest book addresses takes a creative approach to "getting unstuck", which he calls "impasse," in a clear, engaging and enjoyable read for coaches and clients alike. Butler states that shifting to a new understanding of ourselves `is a "dropping down" into more imaginative and less conditioned ways of looking at ourselves and the world. We shift from cognitive analysis based on an old mental model to information that comes from giving our essence a chance to speak in the fresh language of image and metaphor. . . A new life vision has to come from employing all aspects of our consciousness . . . It has to arise from deep intuition.' [...]., includes access to audio downloads of some of his image gathering exercises. This practical book includes exercises to help clients identify career interest patterns as well as "dynamic tensions," goals or motivations that may appear to be contradictory. Readers can assess themselves based on ten interest patterns, based on Butler's research. The next step is to explore the role of three social motivators: power, affiliation, and achievement and to identify which are most dominant. By working through these exercises, clients assemble a powerful roadmap of life interests, motivators, themes, and dynamic tensions. Much of the books accessibility comes from the numerous examples of how clients resolved dynamic tensions and moved towards new, more fulfilling careers. Clients will find value in these examples and exercises and coaches will enjoy adding this creative approach to their coaching repertoire.

How to avoid a dead end or to find a better path to follow

Well before reading the final chapter of this book, I concluded that Timothy Butler is both a relentless empiricist (i.e. being keenly observant of human experience, especially his own) and a relentless pragmatist (i.e. leveraging this experience to apply lessons learned in terms of what works...and what doesn't). In the Introduction he focuses on the six phases of what he characterizes as "The Cycle of Impasse." They are (1) the arrival of the [given] crisis and impasse, (2) its deepening and the attendant re-emergence of unresolved issues, (3) the dropping of old assumptions and the opening up to new information, (4) the shift to a new way of understanding our situation, (5) the greater recognition of deep patterns of our personality, and eventuaolly (6) the decision to take concrete action." Once having carefully presented the "what," Butler then focuses almost all of his attention on the "how" of "getting unstuck." It is important to keep in mind that as Butler duly acknowledges, crises vary (sometimes significantly) in terms of their relative importance; also, impasses also vary in terms of their nature and extent; moreover, "getting unstuck" from one crisis does not mean that it will never recur; in addition, most people find themselves struggling to cope with more than one crisis at a time; finally, and obviously, its is highly advisable to prevent a crisis, if at all possible, and thus eliminate the need to get "unstuck" from one. The subtitle suggests another interesting aspect of this book's appeal: "How Dead Ends Become New Paths." I am among those who believe that every problem and, especially, every failure offers an invaluable learning opportunity. Long ago, Jack Dempsey suggested that "champions get up when they can't." More recently Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas, in Geeks and Geezers and then in Leading for a Lifetime, assert that most (if not all) great leaders - at one time - experienced a "crucible" which forged qualities of character they would not otherwise develop. In Authentic Leadership and then in True North, Bill George makes essentially the same point. With all due respect to Yogi Berra (reputed to have suggested that "When you get to a fork in the road, take it"), what seem to be "dead ends" can become "new paths" if - huge if -- we can summon the courage and sustain the determination to take "concrete action." To this last point, Butler insists - and I agree - that "our lives do not change without action. The impasse crisis has its resolution in a decision to make specific choices that change our day-to-day reality...Know what the action needs to be, and actually performing it, is what seals the cycle of learning and change and allows us to move forward." I commend Butler for providing three valuable appendices: "Continuing the Journey" (an annotated bibliography), "A Note on Impasse and Depression" (differences between symptoms of clinical depression and symptoms at impasse), and "Scoring the One Hundred J