Move your Pooh Stick

Remember Pooh-sticks? The game Winnie the Pooh and friends played where they drop a stick into the water on one side of the bridge, and the first stick to reach the other side wins. Now, imagine that life is like a game of Pooh sticks…and you are the stick. The stick is happily floating downstream in the river of life…until it gets stuck. Maybe it’s wedged in with a bunch of other sticks, maybe it’s caught in a little eddy, going round and round and round.

Does this sound like your life? Is your stick stuck? Does it help your stick to complain about being stuck to all the other sticks? Does it help to moan that your stick is too fat, too stupid, too stuck? No. Your stick is still stuck. The stick isn’t a bad stick for getting stuck – it just got stuck. It happens in the river of life. Some sticks float down the river without ever getting stuck (although I’ve not once met one!), but most get stuck sometimes.

Now imagine that all you have to do is get your stick unstuck…that’s your only task. See the thing about getting stuck is that you don’t have to stay stuck. Sometimes you will need to move a load of other sticks around you to be able to move, sometimes it’s just a matter of pointing the stick back downstream, and sometimes you have to throw a rock at the stick to get it moving.

Again, the stick isn’t bad…no matter what it takes to get it moving again, the stick is just stuck. No more, no less. Are you getting the relevance of this metaphor to your life? Maybe you are not stuck right now…if not, great! Remember to enjoy the flow of life, and notice what is going on around you. Maybe you can avoid getting stuck for a while. When (if) you do get stuck, and if you are stuck now, your only task is to get unstuck.

My stick gets stuck on a regular basis – it might be a business challenge, or relationships, or outside influences, or health trouble, or writing, or any other ‘obstacle’ in life. I don’t mind getting stuck anymore, because I know lots of tools that will help me move my stick – coaching, journalling, gratitude, vision, friends, colleagues, clients, the list is endless. A few years ago the only way I knew was to throw a rock at the stick!

I want you to know that you don’t have to throw a rock at the stick – life change doesn’t have to be shocking and hard, and totally disorientating. You can let it be easy. As long as you are working on getting your stick back into the flow of life, it’s all good. And where is the flow going? Well, Nirvana of course. The joyful life. It’s not that far away…you just might get stuck a time or two. But your only job is to keep your stick unstuck and flowing.

Something to play with
Where are you stuck in your life? How could you unstuck your stick? Who can support you to do this? Want to share what’s going on for you? E-mail me.