“I’m stuck” is a complaint I often hear from my clients; they are stuck about their jobs, relationships, making decisions, what they want. They are paralysed with indecision and are feeling hopeless that they have no options that will make them happy.

It happens to all of us at some point in our lives, and if it happens to us while we are living abroad, we can feel even more limited in our options, particularly when it comes to our careers. You might be living in a place where you aren’t fluent in the local language, or maybe it’s been a while since you worked. Maybe you just have no idea what you want or what you could possibly do.

Trust me when I tell you none of these things need stop you from creating the life you want. Yes, there might be obstacles. Yes, things may not be as straight-forward as they might be if you were at home. But it doesn’t matter. Creating the life of your dreams isn’t contingent on where you are currently living. Your address is just a circumstance and all circumstances are neutral – which means that they don’t mean anything until you have a thought about them. So how much power you give your circumstances is completely up to you.

There are many ways working with a life coach can help you manage this situation and provide you with support during this period to help you figure out what it is you do want and going after it.

However, the most important thing I can tell you now, without even knowing your situation, you need to stop telling yourself you’re stuck right now.

Telling yourself you are stuck stops your brain for looking for ways in which to move you forward. Your brain is listening to you and when you say you’re stuck or you don’t know, it stops searching for answers and options. It stops being creative and allows you to continue to wallow in your limiting beliefs.

Your brain is the most powerful tool in the world. We still only understand a small percentage of what the brain is truly capable of, but we do know that it is extremely complex. We have our “primitive” brain, which has kept us alive as a species for over 200,000 years, by being efficient and focused on keeping us safe, conserving energy and pursuing food, shelter, water and warmth.

There is also our prefrontal cortex, our “rational” brain, which allows us to plan ahead and think what we are thinking about. Now this is all a very basic overview of our brain function, and I am by no means a neurologist, but you get my point. The primitive brain likes to repetition and to continue doing what it knows well, but our rational brain likes to have something to have a task and it is very good at being creative and finding solutions, when we let it.

So instead of telling ourselves that we are stuck and we don’t know, we can tell ourselves that we can figure it out. By asking our brains good quality questions it gives it a job that it can spend time figuring out: “What do I want to do?” or “If I did know, what would it look like?”

Give your brain a task. Let it go to work and focus on finding answers for you. Be patient and focus on answers and solutions. Seek possibilities.

There are other steps you can take that will also help move you forward, and I will outline these in coming weeks, but for now, stop telling yourself that you’re stuck and don’t know what you want. This is the first step you must take to start moving you forward towards the life of your dreams.