Three Questions For When You Don’t Know What To Do

"Do what you do best. To the best of your ability. For the good of others." ~ Charles Handy

What do you do when you don’t know what to do?

In talking to people recently, the most common thing I hear is, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know where to start.”

For many, this concern is about the suffering that is happening all around us: from increased hatred and harm toward marginalized folks, to the repercussions of climate change, to the degradation of democracy. There is so much that we care about and the sheer magnitude can leave us paralyzed.

And this same “don’t know what to do” feeling can be personal, closer to home. Maybe children are launching. Maybe marriages and jobs are ending. Maybe a diagnosis has us reevaluating our health. Maybe a loss has left us questioning our priorities.

In heavy, confusing times, Glennon Doyle suggests to “just do the next right thing, one thing at a time.” But sometimes, the needs are so pressing and so enormous that we struggle to know what the next right thing even is.

Keep Going Together, a grassroots group supporting non-profit organizations working to reduce harm and suffering in Charlottesville, had its first meeting last week. We began our approach to the staggering need and our passion to be of service with three questions that were inspired, in part, by Charles Handy’s quote above.

Three Questions For When You Don’t Know What To Do:

1. What is good? What is working? What is beautiful?

2. What are you passionate about? What issues or people do you feel compelled to stand up for and take action on?

3. What is your superpower? What makes you come alive? What do you do with joy?

Any time things feel wildly messy and you don’t know what to do, these three questions are a good place to start, and here’s why:

Why These Three Questions When You Don’t Know What To Do?

1. What is good? What is working? What is beautiful?

If things are hard and stuck, it can be easy to mire ourselves even further in every.single.thing. that is wrong and broken and cruel in the world. Because there is so much that is a mess. And. AND there is so much that is good (even people!), working (warm water out of the tap!), and beautiful (the sky! squirrels! hot coffee!).

When you feel paralyzed, the best place to start is not on what needs fixing but what is already whole and amazing. Moving forward in dark times requires us to hold both simultaneously: the beautiful and the horrible, the harmful and the healing, the broken and the fully functioning. This first question helps us open our eyes and take in all of it. It helps us be with the Both/And of living in the world.

2. What are you passionate about? What issues or people do you feel compelled to stand up for and take action on?

There is so much to do in our personal lives and in the larger world. We can’t work on all of it at once. The best place to start is where your passion is. What lights you up? What sets a fire in you? It might be your health or supporting someone in your life or it might be the LBGTQ kids at the local high school or the polluted river that runs through your town or your underfunded city library. Whatever it is, personal or public, start there.

This second question helps us identify your values and what specifically matters to you most right now. And if *everything* fires you up, remember the words of Ursula Wolfe-Rocca:

“It can be overwhelming to witness / experience / take in all the injustices of the moment; the good news is that they’re all connected. So if your little corner of work involves pulling at one of the threads, you’re helping to unravel the whole damn cloth.”

3. What is your SUPERPOWER? What makes you come alive? What do you do with joy?

The second most common thing I hear from folks these days is that they don’t know what their superpower is and don’t know how they can contribute. Maybe “superpower” is too strong a term for some, so let me put it this way, what is the thing that you do easily but when others remark upon its wonder, you say, “Oh that? That’s nothing.”

When you don’t know what to do, trust those things that you do with energy and joy. Twentieth-century philosopher and theologian Howard Thurman said,

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

When you don’t know what to do, start with your own aliveness. Start with what you would do if the world wasn’t burning down. Start with what you love to do and do well ... and go from there.

It’s natural to feel stuck and uncertain about how to proceed in the face of daunting challenges and overwhelming problems. Whether those issues are in the private or public sphere, it makes sense that there are many times when we don’t know what to do.

These three questions can help to unlock our eyes and our energy. They can thaw our frozen parts and invite in some breath and life. Come back to these three questions over and over. The answers might shift over time; they likely will. It’s in the asking that the ice jam shifts and movement happens again.

Morning Mobility Practice

It started when my cast came off. After breaking my 5th left metatarsal (the small bone on the little toe edge of the foot), I’d been in a shin-length cast for more than a month.

The muscles in my foot and calf had shrunk down to next to nothing. I had almost no mobility in my feet and ankles. Even before the break, I’d noticed when I first got up in the morning that my movement was clunky and my joints were reluctant to, well, move. But after the surgery, when I first got up I was walking like the Tin Man after a rainstorm.

As soon as the cast came off, I began mobility exercises before I got out of bed in the morning: simple ankle circles and toe stretches to get all those creaky parts oiled up.

Over the coming months, I put together a Morning Mobility Practice that helped get not just my injured foot but all my parts warm and lubricated at the beginning of the day. By investing just a few minutes in the morning, I moved better, more fluidly, and with much less pain all day and I was more inclined to do other kinds of movement during the day.

If you can relate to the “morning creakies,” you can easily create a practice for yourself based on your body, your needs and your abilities. It’s simple!

Making a Morning Mobility Practice is like following the recipe for a soup. The recipe gives you the basic components but if you want to throw in more tomatoes and some kale, use fewer peppers and put squash in instead...COOL!

Just pick a simple movement or two that feel good for each part. Go for dynamic movements, that is, movements that are flowing, not static. This is not about stretching or hanging out in one position for much time. Instead, this is about getting your parts moving. You can do it on the floor, standing, from a chair or a combination.

The 5 Ingredients for A Morning Mobility Practice

1. Spine

2. Hips

3. Knees

4. YOU

5. Strength

Here are some examples of mobility movements for each part (and honestly there are countless ways to do this):

1. Spine

• cat/cow: on all 4s, in a chair or in standing

• cape swirl: a gentle twisting movement around your body from standing or seated with arms heavy, wrapping and unwrapping your torso

• upper spine lengthener: place your hands on a counter or stable table and pull back with your spine long and parallel to the floor, wag your tail a little

2. Hips

• move back and forth between lunge to a hamstring stretch

• squats or chair sits

• 90/90 switch: sit on the floor with your feet flat and your hands behind you on the floor; let your knees fall to one side and then to the other.

3. Knees

• knee extensions: on your back, feet in the air, press palms to your thighs and bend and straighten your legs

• chair lunge: stand in front of a super stable chair or low table and place one foot on the seat of the chair/table; bend and straighten knee. Switch sides.

4. YOU

• What does YOUR body need right now. For me, it’s usually my feet and ankles after my injuries but it could also be

• Shoulders

• Neck

• Hands

• Anything that could use attention and movement

5. Strength

• Keeping muscles both mobile and strong is essential the longer we live in our bodies. I strongly recommend a strength training practice but for the purposes of your Morning Mobility Practice this could be

• Wall sit

• Plank or push ups

• Calf Raises

I’ve even made a short video Create Your Own Morning Mobility Practice: 5 Ingredients to Get Your Body Moving Every Day to walk you through the simple process.

A Morning Mobility Practice has had a profound impact on how I move and feel in my body every day. I hope you’ll experiment with creating one for yourself* that calms your morning creakies.

---

*And if you have any questions or need suggestions for whatever constraints you have, I'd love to help. Just put a comment below or email me at susanjanemcculley@gmail.com.

What Now? Keep Going Together.

“When you’re going through hell, keep going.” ~ Unknown

It happened when my first marriage collapsed.

It happened when 80% of the company I worked for (including me) suddenly got laid off.

It happened when COVID hit.

And it happened after the 2024 election.

Every time, everything that mattered to me was over. Everything I’d structured my life around fell apart or disappeared. Every time, it felt like stumbling unexpectedly into a dark room: disoriented, confused, afraid.

Every time, I said, “Well damn. What now?”

We’ve all had “What now?” times in our lives. In my experience, the short answer to the question is to keep going.

One of my favorite quotes (oft misattributed to Winston Churchill) is “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”

In the mid-90s when about 50 of my colleagues and I were unexpectedly laid off, we created a group to help each other find new jobs. After a day of stunned astonishment and anxiety, we sat at the company conference table and committed to supporting each other. We all shared what we were looking for and connected each other to our contacts in those fields. We read over resumes and cover letters. We arranged meetings and celebrated like crazy when folks landed a new position.

Don’t get me wrong, it totally sucked. But there was something about taking a deep breath, gathering together, and finding a way through.

Any time I’ve been caught up short by an unexpected and difficult turn of events, any time I’ve asked, “What now?” it’s been similar. I spend a certain amount of time on the floor in child’s pose and then I gingerly look up, find my people and keep going. I never know what the hell I’m doing. I make it up as I go along and then some kind of barely visible path emerges and I just start following it.

This time is no exception.

This election literally brought me to my knees. There was ugly crying and rage screaming. There was a deep desire to rear end cars with certain bumper stickers. There were routes home that I chose not to take so I didn’t have to look at wretched yard signs.

And inevitably, there was “What now?”

This time, the answer is “Keep Going Together.”

Keep Going Together (KGT) is a group of people committed to democratic values, inclusion (particularly of the most marginalized), equity, and local action focused on mitigating harm & suffering in the face of ongoing and increasing oppression in our community.

The mission of this group is to support, protect and provide accountability for each other while also protecting and supporting the most vulnerable and marginalized people and environments in our local area. This is not a group for big national political efforts, organizing protests or boycotts or arguing about political strategy (all worthy things to do!). Instead KGT is a grassroots collective that offers help locally and directly with the intention of reducing harm & suffering.

Our initial idea is to create events and experiences to raise funds and recruit volunteers for local non-profit organizations which will likely be impacted by the incoming political regime.

We have a Facebook group to gather resources and share inspiration and more than 100 of us from all over are there interacting every day. Our first in-person meeting in Charlottesville is on Fri Dec 13 from 4-530pm in the Aldersgate Room at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church* at which we will talk about where to start.

Heaven knows that none of us has a clue what the future holds. Of course we don’t. But this could be a place to begin walking (or staggering or crawling) through the darkness together.

If this sounds like an interesting answer to your “What now?” I hope you’ll join us. Maybe you want to start a group like this in your area. Maybe you want a group of people to volunteer with for a cause you care about. Maybe you want to just feel less alone. If you are aligned with these ideas, you are welcome. Anybody anywhere can join the FB group and/or our email list. And anyone in Charlottesville can join our planning meeting on Fri, Dec 13 at 4-530pm in the Aldersgate Room at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church.*

When faced with “What now?” moments, coach Tiffany Han says, “You’re doing great. You’re not alone. Keep going.”

Yes. Here we are. We can do this together.

---

*The Aldersgate Room at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church is at 1901 Thompson Rd but is accessed also via Emmett Street.

Street parking is not available. Please park in the UVA Garage or at the church in spots 1-4 by the steps leading up to the playground and the spots directly in front of the church, spots 29, 31, 32, 33, 34. All other spots are rented until 6pm so are unavailable.

Many thanks to Jan Rivero for arranging the use of the space!

Please RSVP by responding below or emailing me! I'm looking forward to being together!

Movement is the Point: Alive Stillness

"The entire purpose of the human brain is to produce movement. Movement is the only way we have of interacting with the world." ~ Daniel M. Wolpert, Zoubin Ghahramani and J. Randall Flanagan, neuorscientists

Even after study and leading movement for more than two decades, reading the words of Wolpert, Ghahramani and Flanagan surprised me with their profundity. The whole point of our brain is movement. And like many profound statements, there is a quality of both “Wow” and “Oh yeah, of course.” This is Part 5 in 5-part series, Movement is the Point on movement qualities and how they support the health and functionality of the body and the brain. You can find Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here and Part 4 here.

---

“In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.” Deepak Chopra

When I was a kid, adults mostly wanted me to be still. There were some times when it was OK to run around and get my wiggles out but mostly, I got approval for being still. In school, at the dinner table, at church, at restaurants (especially ones with multiple forks), in my grandmother’s living room: the way to be was to be still.

Sixty years of living and 25 years of guiding movement reveals that human stillness doesn’t actually exist. In the body, stillness is a two-sided paradox.

1. A living body is never truly still.

2. Even in the midst of movement (and even chaos), some part of a living body is always at rest.

Because of this paradoxical double helix, I call human stillness “alive stillness” and it’s something you can feel for yourself whenever you like.

A Living Body Is Never Truly Still

Most of us (with some exceptions) can choose to stop voluntary movement. But even if you are one of those Human Statue street performers, if you are alive you are always moving. Your breath and heart are always expanding and contracting. Your blood and fluids are always flowing. If you get cold, you might get goosebumps and the hair might raise on your arms. If your eyes are open, they blink.

When we stop consciously moving, Alive Stillness has a distinct sensation. For me, I feel a tingling and gentle pulsing that feels both reassuring and dynamic. It feels like a gentle anchor to the life force that has been moving through me since before I was born but that I might not even notice when I’m hustling around.

Check it out for yourself right now: get “still” and see what keeps moving. What do you notice, what is the quality of the sensation and where do you notice it?

Why is this interesting? This half of the Alive Stillness paradox keeps us present when we are in times of stillness. When in meditation, for example, or while sitting with a struggling friend or resting, the sensation of movement within stillness can help keep you connected rather than drifting off into daydreaming or thought spiraling. This half of Alive Stillness reminds you that you are alive.

Even In the Midst of Movement, Some Part of the Body is At Rest

For many of us, modern life is a whirlwind of busyness and activity. We are almost always doing something, ricocheting from one thing to another. Movement can be quick and even frenetic. Imagine dodging and swatting away a couple of yellow jackets, chasing your hat on a windy day, or picking up a wriggling child. Even when you are bobbing and weaving, or running and reaching, for at least a microsecond, some part of you is still.

If you watch Usain Bolt sprinting along the track, it looks like every single bit of him is moving, right? But actually, every time his foot hits the ground, it pauses there – even for a tiny micro second – to push off. You can find this stillness within movement in your body, too. You might notice a small pause at the top or bottom of your breath. You might be typing furiously and notice the stillness in your belly. You might be shaking your whole body, but your eyes are resting steady on the horizon.

Why is this interesting? This half of the Alive Stillness paradox allows us to tap into the calm and presence that is always available, even if you are bolting through your morning. When trying to get to an appointment on time or plowing through a long to-do list or dancing to a fast song, instead of getting agitated or increasingly frantic, shift your attention to the Alive Stillness that is always there. This half of Alive Stillness reminds you that calm us always available.

---

There are all kinds of movements within an apparently placid lake. There is a calm in the midst of the biggest storm. In living systems, movement and stillness are not mutually exclusive but rather coexisting. In your human body there is movement within stillness and stillness within movement. And that, my friends, is aliveness.

Movement is the Point: Air & Breath

"The entire purpose of the human brain is to produce movement. Movement is the only way we have of interacting with the world."

~ Daniel M. Wolpert, Zoubin Ghahramani and J. Randall Flanagan, neuorscientists

Even after study and leading movement for more than two decades, reading the words of Wolpert, Ghahramani and Flanagan surprised me with their profundity. The whole point of our brain is movement. And like many profound statements, there is a quality of both “Wow” and “Oh yeah, of course.” This is Part 4 in 5-part series, Movement is the Point on movement qualities and how they support the health and functionality of the body and the brain. You can find Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

---

“Movement is what we are, not something we do” – Emilie Conrad

All manner of things make me nervous. A volatile and dangerous political regime, sure. And emboldened and increasingly violent populace, absolutely. But also teaching (even after 24 years), posting blog posts, and delivering a pickleball serve.

The signs are familiar: a thrum in my chest, tightness in my shoulders and breath sipped only to my collarbones. These sensations tell me that I need to take steps...or rather, breaths.

Breath is integration. In any moment, breath takes nourishment from outside and releases what I don’t need from inside. Breath drops me in the center of the moment and gives me the resources to be with whatever is happening. What’s more, breath puts me in an integrated relationship with plant life that are breathing out what I need and taking in what I don’t.

The design of our human bodies is incredible (so says Susan for the many-eth time). Unlike other life-giving processes in our bodies, our breath is BOTH autonomic (that is, it does it on its own) and voluntary (we can change it when we need to).

If I was designing a body, knowing that it couldn’t survive without breath for more than a minute or so, I would make that function auto-freaking-matic. Just like the heart beats, our eyes dilate, and our gall bladder does its gall bladdery thing without our intervention, breath should do the same, right? And it is auto-freaking-matic, of course. Purely voluntary breathing would tax the brain unnecessarily and sleep would be impossible.

But what about when we jump into deep water? Or want to blow on the embers of a fire? Or calm ourselves down? The breath allows us to control it, too. Breath is both/and. It’s an integrated function.

A quick Google search will offer eleventy billion breath practices – everything from alternate nostril breathing to Wim Hof’s famous deep hold series. I’ve used lots of them in different situations. Here, however, are 4 breath techniques to use out in the world which need no hands, no special body position and don’t leave you looking kind of kooky in a Zoom meeting.

1. For Calming the Jitters: Get On Top of It / Double Exhale

When I’m about to make that tricky phone call or deliver a pickleball serve, I use the Get On Top of It / Double Exhale breath (I made up the name, can you tell?). Take a full breath in through your nose and at the top, take another sip of air. It might feel like you’ve fully inhaled but (just like my Grampa would say about Jello), there’s always room for a little more. Once you’ve “gotten on top of it,” then fully let go with two big forceful exhales. You can do this a few times in a row, but for me, even one of these settles the jittery jitters.

2. Scattered Mind: 1 To 5 Breath

When my mind is ping-ponging all over the place, I use the 1 to 5 breath that I learned from Josh Korda on his DharmaPunx podcast. Simply inhale and silently say to yourself, “One.” Exhale and say, “Two.” Inhale, “Three.” Exhale, “Four.” Inhale, “Five.” THEN exhale, “Four.” Inhale, “Three.” Exhale, “Two.” Inhale, “One” and repeat the pattern. Inhaling on odd numbers, exhaling on even. It’s not complicated but it’s enough to engage my jumpy brain and settle her down.

3. Just Saw or Read Something Upsetting: Square Breath.

I have cut my news consumption way back in recent weeks, but inevitably, I read a headline or a story or an email that is upsetting. When I feel myself get activated, I often use the Square Breath (or what the military calls Tactical Breath). Simply inhale through your nose for 4 counts or heartbeats, hold for four 4, exhale for 4 and hold at the bottom for 4.

4. Getting to Sleep: Ted Lasso’s 4-7-8

One of the many things I love about the Ted Lasso series is its skillful treatment of mental health. In one scene, Ted is on the phone with his therapist in the middle of a panic attack. She assures him that she’s there for him and asks, “Are you doing your 4-7-8 breath?”

The 4-7-8 breath is a particularly calming breath that I use when I’m having trouble sleeping. Breathe in for 4 counts or heartbeats, hold for 7 and breathe out for 8. Repeat as often as you like. Then you and Ted and I can all relax.

BONUS: When in Doubt, Breathe More Out

These simple techniques are all well and good but the truth is that sometimes, I just can’t think of a single one of them. When that happens, I remind myself, “When in doubt, breathe more out.” Extending your exhale even just a liiiittle longer than your inhale, reassures your nervous system that it can downshift and settle. Even a little makes a big difference.

Of all the movements that our bodies do, breath is the one that embodies who we are. It indicates when we feel under stress, it supports us without us thinking about it and also allows us to choose how we show up.

When you think about it, breath and air integrate our insides with the environment around us. But what breath really invites is for us to think about it less and feel what it feels like to settle into and tend to whatever is unfolding.

---

Related Posts & Resources:

Settle: 3 Ways to Build Capacity for Presence in Upsetting Times

Stay in Your Boat: An Embodied Approach for Difficult Times

How Not To Make Stress Worse from the Happier App

Breathe to Calm Your Nerves ~ a video short from Yoga Body