Hey friends, it's Rosie here.
Welcome back to Radio Headspace.
Let me tell you what stuck has felt like lately.
It looks like sitting at my desk at 747 pm, highlighter in hand, reading the same paragraph about research methods for the third time.
It looks like writing papers between meetings, reviewing citations while dinner simmers, waking up early to squeeze in study time before the world asks anything of me.
I've been in grad school for years, and I mean that literally.
When you work full-time teach, show up for family, maintain relationships and then add academic writing on top of it, time stretches.
Progress Slows.
Milestones don't feel cinematic.
They feel small and extremely incremental, sometimes even invisible.
There have been so many nights when I've closed my laptop and thought am I even moving or am I just circling?
Have you ever felt like that?
Like you were moving at a glacial pace?
Stuck doesn't always feel dramatic.
Sometimes it feels repetitive, like you're in the middle of something that refuses to become the end of something else.
And here's what I've noticed.
Every time I start to feel stuck, My mind wants to jump ahead.
It wants the diploma.
It wants the next chapter.
It wants the finished version of me.
But life doesn't move in straight lines.
It moves in seasons.
If you've ever watched a tree in winter, you know this.
It looks lifeless.
If you didn't know any better, you might assume it was finished.
But beneath the surface, something is happening.
Roots are strengthening.
Energy is conserving.
A preparation is unfolding in quiet and unseen ways.
There's an old teaching that says everything moves in cycles.
Creation, growth, decay, renewal.
It's not just nature.
Not just seasons.
It's us.
When I zoom out, I can see that this long grad school season isn't stagnation.
It's incubation.
It's the slow work of integration.
Psychology calls this psychological flexibility the ability to adapt to internal and external changes instead of resisting them.
And research shows that when we fight the season we're in, suffering increases.
But when we accept it, Even if we don't love it, the nervous system softens.
What makes us feel stuck isn't always the season itself.
It's the resistance to it.
I used to believe that once I reached a certain level of success, I'd arrive at permanence, that things would just stabilize into this steady upward line.
No more reinvention, no more humbling middle chapters, but nothing escapes cycles.
Not relationships, not identities, not careers, not even the way we see ourselves.
The breakdowns I once feared now feel more like compost, like necessary decay, the end of one way of being, so another can emerge.
And here's the thing about compost.
It smells for a while.
It's messy.
It's not pretty, but it feeds the next bloom.
So when I'm sitting there at 747 pm, 47 minutes past my bedtime, eyes burning, wondering if this will ever end, I try to remember this is a season, not a verdict.
And seasons don't need to be rushed.
They need to be inhabited.
So if you're in a season of beginnings, It may feel tender if you're in a season of middle.
It may feel repetitive if you're in a season of ending.
It may feel disorienting.
None of those are wrong.
The suffering begins when we try to skip.
Mindfulness invites us to stay where we are, not because it's glamorous, but because it's really the only option we have.
So here's something gentle to try.
Pause for a moment and ask yourself, where am I in the cycle right now?
Beginning Middle, ending, resting, rebuilding.
Notice what comes up.
There's nothing wrong with your answer.
You don't have to accelerate it.
You don't have to justify it.
You don't have to glamorize it.
Just let yourself be in it.
The goal isn't to skip phases.
It's to live them fully.
Because even the seasons that feel slow are shaping you in ways you won't understand until later.
Trust the root work.
And if you're looking for some extra support, check out the Approaching Change meditation in the app.
It's a good one.
That's it for today, friends.
If you've been feeling stuck, like progress is slower than you hoped, I want you to know you might not be stuck at all.
If you want to share your thoughts with me, you can find me on Instagram at Rosie Acosta.
I'll see you back here soon.
