Grinding or Drifting - If You’re Still Stuck, This Is Why

Ever feel like you’re just stuck in life, like you’re not making any real progress toward anything meaningful?

While people on the internet keep making insane strides toward new levels, your life today feels no different than it did a year ago. Or even longer.

You’re doing your best to keep things steady, but everywhere you look, it seems like everyone else is accelerating. And deep down, that contrast starts to hurt.

To soften that pain, you might convince yourself that maybe you don’t actually need those things, the goals, the change, the growth. But that quiet resignation slowly shapes your decisions. It holds you back from going after things that matter specifically to you. And that disconnect keeps you stuck… and unfulfilled.

Without the deeper satisfaction that comes from real progress, we start craving quick hits of feeling good.

This is when we begin to slip into habits that comfort us in the moment, but keep us stuck in the bigger picture of life.

Eating food that doesn’t make us leaner. Watching videos that don’t make us sharper. Playing games that don’t teach us how to handle the real challenges we’re avoiding. Spending time with people who, deep down, want you to stay exactly where you are.

Or maybe you’ve achieved a certain level of success, but now you’re stuck under a ceiling, constantly afraid that if you let your guard down, even for a moment, it’ll all start to slip away. That fear keeps you in a state of tension, unable to fully enjoy what you’ve built.

This article is my attempt to build a personal framework for understanding what’s really going on beneath the surface, and how to break out of the cycle of wasted time, missed momentum, and quiet dissatisfaction.

Whether you’re just getting started or already on your way, I hope it helps you make real progress, level up in your own way, and keep moving toward something that actually matters.

What’s Really Holding Us Back

After years of figuring it out, I realized that our biggest obstacle usually comes from how we were raised.

Not just by our parents, although they’re often a big part of it. I’m talking about everyone and everything that shaped us early on, teachers, friends, relatives, even strangers. Every judgment, every dismissive comment, every time we felt like we had to shrink ourselves or act a certain way to be liked, it all left an imprint.

Without knowing it, we built invisible rules: what’s safe or dangerous, what makes us acceptable or a disappointment.

Think about it:

• Maybe you raised your hand in class, got it wrong, and people laughed.
• Maybe someone told you not to “brag” when you were proud of something you made.
• Maybe you picked up the idea that being quiet was safer than being noticed.
• Or maybe you grew up hearing that having “just enough” was more than enough, that real success was growing your own food, fixing things yourself, and not needing much from the outside world. So over time, wanting more started to feel unnecessary… even wrong.

When you combine that early conditioning with your own unfiltered assumptions about the world, you develop a set of unique beliefs, ones that shape the core of your identity.

If we don’t recognize the beliefs shaping our decisions, we won’t change the outcomes, because we’ll just keep following the same internal rules without even realizing it.

For example: You dream of financial security, but deep down, you believe that rich people are selfish, arrogant, or corrupt. Or maybe you see luxury as nothing more than overpriced garbage. How likely are you to feel comfortable building wealth yourself?

Chances are, you’ll downplay financial opportunities, avoid asking for more, or sabotage your own progress, not because you don’t want wealth, but because part of you still believes it would make you someone you don’t want to be.

The tricky part is, you might not even recognize it as a belief. It just feels that way. It’s invisible.

These beliefs influence how you speak, how you carry yourself, what you avoid, what you chase, and most importantly, the kind of people you attract into your life.

How This Shows Up in Everyday Life

If there’s something you don’t like about your current circumstances, about your life today, it’s often the result of choices you made earlier.

Some choices move you forward, some keep you stuck. And while it’s not always clear which belief drives which choice, you can start by noticing your behavioral patterns.

Here are some patterns I’ve managed to recognize in myself:

• Avoiding conflict even when your opinion matters
• Feeling socially awkward or unsure in group settings
• Seeking external validation before making decisions
• Constantly believing you’re not good enough
• Operating with a subordinate mindset, which makes it hard to decide what you truly want in life
• Struggling to handle stress or uncertainty
• Feeling helpless when faced with responsibility
• But also: being deeply empathetic
• Showing resilience in emotionally difficult situations
• Being thoughtful, analytical, and careful before acting

Once you understand your default patterns, you start to predict how you’ll think, feel, and react in different situations, often with great accuracy.

And with that awareness, you gain something powerful: the ability to pause, and make a different choice.

How Change Really Starts

Some patterns are almost universal, and one of the most damaging is holding onto mental clutter like resentment, hatred, and blame.

These emotions drain your energy, cloud your thinking, and quietly keep you stuck.

One of the most common examples? Feeling angry at our parents for something they did, or didn’t do.

For many years, I carried a quiet anger, maybe even a bit of hatred, toward my father. He never taught me how to ride a bike, drive a car, play sports, or understand the importance of basic exercise. Thankfully, a childhood friend helped me catch up on some of that later.

I believed that was the reason I grew up feeling like a boring person at parties, physically weak, bad at sports, which made it hard for me to socialize and stand my ground.

While it might sound simple, even insignificant, compared to what some people went through with their parents, for me it was something heavy to carry.

At some point, while trying to make sense of things, I came to a realization: His actions, or inactions, were shaped by how he was raised. He actually did the best he can with the knowledge he had.

Eventually, I told him all of this directly, and I forgave him.

It’s wild to think how long I fixated on those gaps, wasting so much energy holding onto pain, as if that would somehow change something.

If you can, forgive the people you still carry resentment toward, whether from the past or present, so you have the energy and clarity to build the kind of character who doesn’t pass that same weight on.

Limit your obvious distractions

The next kind of change starts with something simple: noticing your distractions.

You probably already know what they are. The late-night scrolling. The “just one more episode” routine. The constant refreshing. The snacks. The mindless YouTube loops. The endless notifications.

These things don’t just eat up your time, they erode your clarity, drain your focus, and pull you back into the same patterns you’re trying to break.

Just imagine how much time is spent in those activities every day, month, year. Time that can be directed to projects that make a difference in your life.

But cutting them out isn’t easy. Most of these habits started as ways to cope, to avoid stress, boredom, or uncomfortable emotions.

And since you probably weren’t equipped to handle life’s challenges back when those habits first formed, they became your default “solutions”, your way to self-soothe, escape, or feel a sense of control.

Right now, you’re much more capable of handling your problems, but your brain hasn’t fully caught up to that yet. It’s like that elephant tied to a rope: strong enough to break free, but conditioned to believe it can’t.

But you can, and you will.

What about skipping that beer or ice cream tonight? Deleting the YouTube app from your phone? Disabling Instagram notifications?

Figure out creative ways to deal with those cravings, when they show up, or even before they do.

Pay close attention to how you feel, and try to pinpoint what exactly is driving the urge to escape. You might uncover some of your deeper limiting beliefs.

Habits For Clarity

Practicing forgiveness and cutting out distractions can be challenging, but it gives you a solid foundation for making the kind of decisions that truly move you forward, instead of just escaping discomfort.

You can build on that foundation with the next set of simple but powerful habits, things like meditation, journaling, reading, exercising, or taking daily walks.

These habits create space, mentally and emotionally. They quiet the noise, lower stress, and give your mind room to breathe. And in that space, clarity starts to show up. Clarity about what actually matters, what’s been draining you, and what direction feels right to explore next.

That clarity will eventually lead you to make different decisions, not necessarily better or worse, just different. It’s like taking a new route to work: you notice things you’ve never seen before. Everything feels a little unfamiliar, a little fresh. And with that comes a new perspective, one you couldn’t access while stuck in the same loops.

Also important to mention: Over time, as these habits become part of your routine, they might start to feel… invisible. Like they’re not doing much anymore. But that’s a trap. The truth is, these habits don’t shout. Their benefits build slowly. And when you stop, the decline is just as quiet. One day you feel a little more irritable. A little foggier. A little more stuck. Weeks pass before you realize, you drifted back to where you started.

Whether you feel that clarity yet or not, you can already begin blending in habits from the next layer, habits that add more structure, direction, and intention to your day.

Habits for structure

Chances are, you’re living your life based on how you feel in the moment. Where the wind blows, you follow, avoiding resistance, never really challenging the status quo.

It’s like you’re holding onto a straw, hoping nothing disrupts this fragile but familiar state. Always waiting for something to shake it, an unexpected bill, a tough conversation, a bad day.

Even if you’ve found some success or stability, the fear of losing it might still be sitting quietly in the background.

If you don’t actively use goal setting, planning, prioritization, and execution, then most of what you’ve achieved probably feels like it just “happened.” Not through control, but through circumstance. Right place, right time. A push from someone else.

And because of that, it doesn’t feel like you chose your path, it feels like you just ended up here.

Yes, you might’ve wanted something and even made it happen. But if you didn’t own the process, if it can’t be repeated with other goals, it doesn’t feel reliable. It doesn’t feel like control.

That’s where structure comes in, not to make life rigid, but to give you the power to aim on purpose, and hit the target you actually care about.

Create a structure in your life with these habits:

• Goal setting - give you a sense of where you want to go.
• Planning (Daily, weekly, monthly etc.) - shows you how to get there.
• Prioritization - helps you stay on course without getting distracted.
• Execution - is what actually moves you forward.

To show how structure works in action, here’s an example that can apply whether you’re starting something entirely new or trying to build momentum in something you’ve already begun.

Structure in action

Let’s say your goal is to become a YouTuber, and your first milestone is hitting 1,000 subscribers.

Thanks to the habits for clarity, you already have a better sense of what’s stopped you in the past. Maybe you deal with social anxiety. Maybe you don’t like how you look or sound. Use it as data for your plan.

So you work with what you’ve got:

• Don’t show your face? Use subtitles or voiceovers.
• Don’t like your voice? Try AI voice or no narration at all.
• Don’t want to interact with people? Make content that doesn’t rely on it.

Not sure what your niche or topic should be? Start with the kind of content you already enjoy. Sure, there are tons of channels like that, it doesn’t matter. Every niche is saturated, but nobody else can make it your way.

Maybe you decide to document your cat’s daily adventures, using subtitles to show what your cat is “thinking”. One video a week.

Only have your phone? Perfect. Use your camera app and publish it raw. Or start learning basic editing when you’ve got time. Keep it light and doable.

Worried about negative comments? Turn them off. Worried you won’t get noticed? Repurpose clips for TikTok, Instagram, or Shorts. Pay attention to what gets views. Look at where viewers drop off. Study similar channels. Adapt as you go.

Think it’s not good enough? Then define what “good enough” means. Create a short checklist, just a few things each video should include or achieve. That way, you’ll know how close you are… or whether it’s time to lower the bar slightly so you can keep moving instead of getting stuck.

Your goal is to reach your goal, and you do that by continuously learning, adjusting your plan, and following through on those adjustments.

Even if this example comes from a place of self-doubt, structure works just as well when you’re building from confidence. The bolder your aim, the more noticeable the progress.

That being said there will always be moments when you have to push through resistance and emotional discomfort. But that’s how you level up.

So, how do you actually prioritize?

Let’s say you’ve defined two of your core goals:

• Lose weight
• Get 1,000 subscribers on your channel.

Once you’ve clearly committed to these goals, you start bringing them to mind whenever you face distractions.

Now picture this: You’re deciding whether to go to bed at 10 p.m. or stay up watching your favorite show until 5 a.m.

That’s a real decision point. Bring your focus back to your goals.

If you say yes to another episode, you already know how it ends: You’ll wake up anxious, exhausted, with less energy and even less free time. You might skip your workout. You might not work on your videos. You might not even have the willpower to resist another snack.

You’re not just tired, you’re off track.

You might think, “Just one episode.” But be honest, has that ever worked?

Has “just one” ever actually meant one… and then happily off to bed?

And it’s not just about video. This trick works with almost any habit:

• Open a pack of candy thinking you’ll eat just one? You know how that ends.
• Start a game for “just 30 minutes”? Good luck.

In moments like these, prioritize progress on your core goals, not instant gratification.

And for even more leverage, connect those goals to their ripple effect. Achieving them won’t just change your life, it will affect the lives of people around you. The better you are, the more you can offer. The more control you gain, the more others benefit too.

What about anxiety, procrastination, avoidance Seeking external validation and so on?

What about the deep stuff? What about the real internal struggle?

After spending so much time trying to fix my flaws, trying to find the perfect way to erase old patterns, I realized something: Focusing on fighting those parts of yourself won’t bring you happiness.

What actually helps is shifting your focus. Start with your goals. Focus on where you want to go, and figure out how to get there with what you already have. You might be surprised how many of those old patterns start to fade, not because you fought them, but because you stopped feeding them.

Some traits might never disappear. That’s okay. The goal isn’t to become flawless. The goal is to stop drifting, to keep moving toward something real, even if it’s slow, even if you’re not ready yet.

Because if you sit around waiting for a breakthrough or a miracle, chances are… you won’t even be in a position to handle it when it comes. (Remember any of those lottery winner stories? Or some missed opportunities you 100% had at some point in your life.)

The problem with constantly fighting your flaws is that you keep them in focus. The traits you hate, the fear, the insecurity, the old scripts, they stay front and center, because you’re always thinking about them. And the more you focus on what’s wrong with you, the longer you stay unhappy.

You tell yourself you’re trying to improve, but really you’re just building your identity around what you think is broken.

That mindset never delivers the peace you’re chasing. There’s always more to fix. More to erase. And in the process, your goals, the things that actually give life meaning, get pushed to the background.

It’s not just that you’re hiding your flaws from the world, you’re also hiding yourself. Ever notice how so-called “stupid” people seem to get further while the “smart” ones stay stuck? Maybe it’s because the former don’t waste time trying to fix every flaw. They don’t overthink the perfect plan. They just act. Meanwhile, the rest of us stay busy obsessing, polishing, preparing, and get nowhere.

That being said, knowing your flaws, really understanding how they show up, is useful. Not for obsessing over them, but for planning around them.

If you know you tend to avoid conflict, overthink, chase approval, or get overwhelmed easily, you can design your system with those tendencies in mind. You can also spot when other people try to exploit them, and protect your energy accordingly.

And when you start moving forward, even in small ways, something else happens. You begin to collect wins. And those wins give you courage. Courage to do the things your flaws once held you back from. It’s not about becoming fearless. It’s about proving to yourself, day by day, that you’re more than the patterns you’ve outgrown.

What is the actual framework for getting out of the loop?

Recognize where you are on the map of your life. Become aware of your surroundings, the habits, beliefs, and patterns that keep you stuck. Then define the place you actually want to reach. Plan how to get there using everything you know about yourself and your environment. Use prioritization as your compass.

And just keep going. Reach your goals, then set new ones that feel even more ambitious and exciting.

That’s what makes life truly interesting, continually moving toward what matters to you, exploring the direction that feels like yours, and expanding what you’re capable of along the way.