Have you ever felt completely stuck? Like no matter what you do, you can’t seem to get ahead. And every time you try to figure out why, you end up more frustrated than when you started.

I’ve been there too.

For a long time, I was asking all the wrong questions. Why is this happening to me? When am I finally going to catch a break? Why doesn’t anyone get what I’m going through?

Those questions feel valid. They feel like the natural response to struggle. But here’s what I didn’t see at the time: they were keeping me locked in place.

Victim mode. Every single time. And victim mode only ever leads to more suffering.

The one thing I changed

The turning point didn’t come from working harder or pushing through. It came from changing one thing. Just one.

The question.

Instead of why is this happening to me, I started asking, what if this is happening for me? And what clues am I missing?

That’s it. That one reframe changed everything.

Suddenly I wasn’t a prisoner anymore. I was a player. A willing participant in my own life. And instead of banging on the walls waiting to be rescued, I started scanning the room for the clues that were already there.

The clues were there the whole time

I used to be a chronic people pleaser. I wanted to do everything for everyone, just to be liked, just to be accepted. So I overthought everything. If someone said something even mildly off to me, I’d replay it forever.

As a mom, I second-guessed myself constantly. I had no experience. I always landed on the same thought: I’m not a good enough mom. I could be doing better.

One day a friend was visiting and I made a sly little comment about it, not really saying it directly. She looked at me and said, “Are you crazy? If I was half as good a mom as you, I’d be thrilled with myself.”

It stopped me. This was a friend working full time, struggling to find time for her kids, carrying her own guilt. Her view of my motherhood was completely different from my own.

And it made me look at the evidence more clearly. I wasn’t a bad mom. I just wasn’t looking for the clues that said so. I was only collecting evidence of how I was failing. Not the proof of everything I was doing right.

Then something interesting happened. One clue led to another. And another. Before long, I didn’t have enough evidence to support the story I’d been telling myself.

The patterns start to repeat

After moving through a few of life’s escape rooms, I started noticing patterns. The same kinds of clues. The same traps. The same moment where people get close to the exit and give up right before they find it.

I had a client who dreaded every tough meeting. “It’s going to be awful. I’m going to do terribly.” So I asked him to look for the clues. Think about all the meetings you’ve failed in. How often have you actually seen evidence of that?

He couldn’t come up with many. Because he wasn’t bad at meetings. He held his own. He spoke up. He got his point across. What was getting him wasn’t the meeting. It was the anxiety of walking in unprepared, telling him a story that wasn’t true.

Another client was raising teenagers. (If you’ve got teens, you know.) She kept saying her kids were out to press her buttons, trying to make her crazy on purpose.

So I asked her: do you really think your teenagers wake up every morning planning how to make you feel like the worst mom on earth?

“Whoa,” she said. “No. That’s not what’s happening.”

Then we looked at the clues. If her kid was struggling with homework, maybe that said more about him than about her. If the room was always messy, maybe there was something underneath it that had nothing to do with making her mad.

So many times we skip the evidence in front of us. We make an assumption, and the assumption makes us feel worse, and we never go back to check if it was even true.

Here’s what I want you to take with you

Stop treating your struggles like solitary confinement, like you’ve been locked away and your only option is to wait it out.

Start treating them like escape rooms.

Because in an escape room, nothing is random. Nothing is permanent. Every weird detail, every frustrating dead end, every moment that makes no sense, it’s all part of the puzzle.

Your life works the same way.

And just like in an escape room, when you can’t figure it out, there’s a call button. Someone outside can see what you can’t, and they’ll help you.

In life, that’s what a coach is. Someone who can see the patterns faster than you can, because they’re not standing inside your problem. I work with clients all the time who can’t see their own patterns. They’re too close. But coming in with a bird’s eye view and less emotional attachment, I can spot the clues much faster.

You don’t have to suffer through that time in your life’s escape room. Save the suffering for the fun ones.

One question to sit with

I’ll leave you with this, and I’d genuinely love for you to sit with it.

What escape room are you navigating right now?

Not vague. Specific. What’s the situation, the pattern, the wall you keep hitting?

Is it something at work you can’t get past? A relationship that’s gone toxic and you can’t find the way out? Your health, the same things recurring with no clear reason?

Our systems are all connected. Mind, body, soul. And once you start seeing the clues, life gets easier, because you train your brain to spot them faster the next time around.

So whatever your escape room looks like, know this: you’re not alone in it. And you can ask for help.

You can start by pressing the call button.

Until next time, stay aligned.

If you’re ready to find the clues faster, let’s work together. You can also join the ALIGN community or listen to The Warrior Mindset Podcast.

Get full access to Chitra Rochlani at thewarriormindset.substack.com/subscribe