#184 You Feel Stuck Because You’re Solving the Wrong Problem
Have you ever reached that particularly frustrating kind of stuck where you’re actually doing everything? You’re reading. Learning. Trying new routines. Taking courses. Talking to people. Maybe you’ve even spent quite a lot of money trying to fix whatever isn’t working.
And every time you find something new, there’s this little spark of hope: Maybe this is it. Maybe this class will finally make everything click. Maybe this new routine will fix the overwhelm. Maybe this person will finally explain you to yourself.
And sometimes it helps … For a while. But then, a few weeks or months later, that familiar feeling shows up again: Something still isn’t right.
That’s what this episode of Molly’s Playground is about. Because maybe the problem isn’t that you’re lazy, undisciplined or not trying hard enough.
Maybe you’re putting enormous amounts of effort into solving something that was never really the problem in the first place.
Why do I still feel stuck even though I’m trying everything?
Because action only helps when it addresses what you actually need. We often mistake the feeling we want to escape stress, boredom, insecurity, overwhelm, for the underlying problem and immediately start looking for relief. But relief and resolution are not always the same thing. Before asking “How do I fix this?”, it can be much more useful to ask: “What is actually happening here?”
What You’ll Learn
Why doing more isn’t always the same as moving forward
How we confuse uncomfortable feelings with the actual problem
The difference between relief and resolution
Why discomfort is information—not an automatic instruction to stop or keep going
How labels like “I’m just a perfectionist” can close questions too early
Why curiosity can be more useful than another five-step plan
How to identify what you actually want more of
Why sometimes you need new experiences rather than more thinking
How small experiments can help you collect information about yourself
Why trusting yourself matters more than perfectly predicting the right choice
A Good Solution to the Wrong Problem Is Still the Wrong Solution
I think one of the most common things we do when something feels wrong is immediately ask: “How do I fix this?”
Stress? Relax more.
Feeling behind? Find a better productivity system.
Insecure in your hobby? Practise more.
Bored? Add something exciting.
And none of those solutions are automatically bad.
The problem is that we often skip the question before the solution: What is actually happening here?
Because if you misdiagnose the problem, a perfectly good solution can still take you nowhere. You can become incredibly good at coping with a situation you don’t actually want. You can spend years improving a skill that isn’t the skill you’re missing. You can optimise your calendar when the actual problem is that you’ve put too much inside it. No calendar system can create a 29-hour day.
Relief and Resolution Aren’t the Same Thing
One reason this happens is that relief is incredibly seductive. Relief is immediate.
You book the massage. Your shoulders drop.
You buy the course. You feel hopeful again.
You create a new plan. Suddenly, you feel like you’re back in control.
Understanding what you actually need can do the opposite at first. Imagine you’re miserable at work. It’s much easier to say: “I’m stressed. I need to manage my stress better.” That gives you something concrete to do like: Meditate, Sleep, Set boundaries, Buy the planner.
But what if the deeper question is: “Do I actually want this career anymore?” Well… shit. Now you have fifty new questions.
That’s exactly why we sometimes unconsciously choose the smaller problem. Even when it isn’t the actual one.
Discomfort Is Information, Not an Instruction
I think this is one of the most important distinctions in the entire episode: Discomfort is information. It is not an instruction. It doesn’t automatically mean: Stop. And it doesn’t automatically mean: Keep going, this is growth.
Sometimes you feel uncomfortable because you’re nervous.
Sometimes because you’re embarrassed to be a beginner.
Sometimes because you expected yourself to be better.
Sometimes because something is challenging an old belief.
And sometimes?
You genuinely don’t want to be there.
Those experiences require very different responses.
That’s why the goal isn’t becoming brilliant at ignoring discomfort.
It’s becoming better at understanding it.
Stop Asking “Why Do I Feel Bad?”
Make the question smaller. Instead of: “Why do I feel like shit?”
Ask:
What happened immediately before I felt this?
What part of the experience bothered me?
Was it the people?
The environment?
What I did?
What I expected myself to do?
Was I disappointed?
Embarrassed?
Afraid of judgment?
Did somebody cross a boundary?
Was there something I wanted from the experience that I didn’t get?
The more precisely you understand the problem, the more precisely you can choose what to do about it.
Sometimes You Don’t Know What You Need Because You Haven’t Found It Yet
And then there’s another possibility. You investigate everything. You pull it apart. And you still think: “I have absolutely no clue what I need.”
Fine.
Maybe you genuinely don’t know yet. But I don’t think that always means you need to sit at home and think harder. Sometimes the information simply isn’t inside your head yet. You cannot think your way into information you’ve never collected. So collect some.
Try something you normally wouldn’t. Talk to somebody different. Take the weird class. Go somewhere alone. Read something that challenges you. Learn a skill that seems completely unrelated.
Not because every experience contains your answer. Most won’t. But every new experience gives you information that wasn’t available before.
The Bachata Lesson That Started This Conversation
That’s exactly what happened with my dancing. I initially thought: I need more bachata. More classes. More combinations. More congresses.
Except when I actually started asking what I wanted, the answer wasn’t: More bachata.
It was: More freedom inside my bachata.
I want more choices.
I want a deeper understanding of how my body moves.
And once I understood that, I could search differently.
Instead of automatically choosing the biggest teacher or the coolest Instagram account, I could ask: How does this person move? How do they teach? Do they understand movement in a way that makes sense to my brain? Can they actually help me develop the quality I’m looking for?
Different need.
Different search.
Different solution.
The Label Closes the Question
This applies to the stories we tell about ourselves too. “I’m a perfectionist.” That sounds wonderfully concrete. But compare it with: “I notice that I become incredibly controlling in certain situations, and I wonder what’s happening there.”
Or: “I’m just bad at dancing.” versus: “Maybe the way I’ve been learning doesn’t match what I actually want to learn.”
The label gives certainty.
But it can also close the investigation.
Curiosity opens it again.
You Don’t Have to Move Into Every Room
One of the reasons curiosity feels frightening is because we make every experiment incredibly permanent.
You try boxing? Suddenly your brain wants to know whether you are officially a boxing person now.
You explore another career? What if you leave your current one and ruin your entire life?
But that isn’t what exploration requires. Opening a door does not mean signing a lease on whatever is behind it. You can look. You can try. You can hate it. You can come back. You can change your mind.
And that leads to what I think is actually one of the deepest messages in this episode:
We don’t need to become better at predicting which choices will be right. We need to become better at trusting ourselves with what happens after we make them.
Curiosity Is Not Endless Research
There is, however, a trap. You can turn curiosity into another form of avoidance. Read everything. Ask twelve people. Take every course. Research every option. And never actually choose.
At some point, curiosity has done its job. You have enough information to make a decision. Not the objectively perfect decision. Just the next one.
You choose.
Then you see what happens.
Then you learn again.
You Don’t Need to Know Yet
This is perhaps the most freeing part. You don’t need to leave this episode knowing exactly what your life needs. Not knowing isn’t necessarily the problem. Sometimes it’s where something new begins.
Your imagination is currently limited by what you’ve already experienced. There are people you haven’t met. Places you haven’t been. Ideas you haven’t heard. Parts of yourself you haven’t had a reason to discover yet.
So when you reach the edge of what you know, don’t automatically assume you’ve reached the edge of what’s possible.
Maybe you’ve simply reached the place where you need some new information.
Key Takeaways
A good solution to the wrong problem is still the wrong solution.
The feeling you want to escape isn’t necessarily the underlying problem.
Relief feels good immediately; resolution may create more uncertainty before it creates clarity.
Discomfort is information, not an instruction.
Labels can create certainty while stopping curiosity.
You cannot think your way into information you’ve never collected.
Not every new experience has to become your new identity.
You can open a door without promising to stay in the room.
Curiosity eventually has to turn into a choice.
You don’t need to perfectly predict what will work—you need to trust yourself to respond to what you discover.
Not knowing can be the beginning of discovery rather than evidence that you’re failing.
Listen If...
you feel stuck even though you’re actively trying to change
you keep buying courses, planners, systems or services hoping something will finally click
you repeatedly end up with the same frustration in different forms
you keep assuming that “more” is the solution
you feel like something is missing but can’t quite explain what
you tend to interpret discomfort as proof you should stop
you push through everything uncomfortable because you’ve been told that discomfort equals growth
you’re constantly asking other people what you should do
you struggle with not knowing
you’ve started defining yourself through labels like “I’m just not creative” or “I’m just like this”
FAQ
Why do I still feel stuck even though I’m trying everything?
Because effort only creates useful movement when it addresses what you actually need. If you’ve misidentified the underlying problem, you can work incredibly hard without resolving the thing that keeps creating the frustration.
How do I know if I’m solving the wrong problem?
Look at what keeps returning. If a solution repeatedly gives temporary relief but the same feeling comes back, get curious about what the solution is actually addressing - and what it might be missing.
Does feeling uncomfortable mean I should push through it?
No. Discomfort can mean many things. It might be nervousness, frustration, embarrassment, growth, a crossed boundary or simply “I don’t want this.” The feeling itself doesn’t tell you what action to take. Investigate it first.
What’s the difference between relief and resolution?
Relief reduces discomfort now. Resolution addresses the underlying reason the discomfort keeps appearing. Sometimes the same action does both. Sometimes it doesn’t.
What if I genuinely don’t know what I need?
Then stop demanding an immediate answer from yourself and start collecting information. Try something small, meet different people, expose yourself to new ideas and notice what you learn.
How do I become more comfortable with uncertainty?
Start with low-stakes experiments. Try a class. Go somewhere new. Do something you may be bad at. The goal is to learn that you can enter uncertainty, gather information and change your mind afterwards.
Further Reflection
Before you move on, I’d leave you with these three questions:
1. Where in my life am I repeatedly trying to fix the feeling instead of investigating what’s creating it?
2. What do I actually want more of - not just what do I want to stop feeling?
3. If the answer isn’t somewhere I’ve already looked, what is one small door I could open simply to collect new information?
You don’t need to know what’s behind the door.
That’s kind of the point.
About Molly’s Playground
Molly’s Playground is a podcast about mindset, identity, creativity and self-worth - told through the perspective of a life coach, professional dancer and human who’s still figuring life out.
We explore the invisible stories, habits and assumptions shaping the way we think, move and live. Not because life needs to become one endless self-development project, but because sometimes understanding ourselves a little better gives us more freedom to choose what we actually want.
If this episode made you think of someone who keeps saying: “I don’t know what I want.” “I just feel stuck.” or “Something is missing, but I don’t know what…” send it to them.
Not because you’ve diagnosed their life. Please don’t make me part of that. Send it because maybe they don’t need another person to give them an answer. Maybe they just need someone to show them somewhere new to look.
