Why You're Stuck in Life – And How to Get Unstuck: The Sideways Eight & 2 Voices

The Sideways Eight & 2 Voices

You know that feeling when you're stuck in a situation that seems to have no way out?

Not because you don't know enough or aren't doing enough. But because your mind is holding you in a loop that keeps going in circles – the same two sides, over and over, the same dilemma, again and again.

I see this every single day in my coaching work. And I have a name for it: the sideways eight.

What Is the Sideways Eight?

Picture the number 8 tipped on its side – like an infinity symbol.

On one end of the sideways eight is what you want. On the other end is the reason you can't have it. Or at least – the reason your mind tells you it's just not possible right now.

And your thoughts run. Back and forth. From one end to the other. And back again.

That's the endless loop of the sideways eight.

It looks something like this:

I don't want to do this job (or this kind of work) anymore. But I desperately need the money.

I want to work less. But if I do, the business will fall apart, and I won't be able to support my life or secure my future.

I want to finally build something new. But right now I just can't afford it – in terms of time, energy, or money.

Your mind presents you with a logic that feels completely airtight. Two things that are mutually exclusive. And that's exactly the problem.

A Smart Woman Who Was Hoping for a No

I'm currently working with a wonderful woman who is building her own business. She comes from a senior leadership position at a larger corporation, where she was successful and well-regarded for her skills.

But that old life – it's not what she wants anymore.

She's building something new right now. A new focus, a new audience, a new offer. It's still in the early stages. She's not being paid for it yet.

And then, again and again, inquiries come in from her old world. Things she's good at, things she knows, work that promises security.

Her rational mind (the first voice) says:

"You have to take this. You need the money. This is realism. This makes sense."

Her deeper knowing (the second voice) says:

"No. This is not the path you want to take."

Recently, she sat with me in a session and described a specific job request. I could hear her wincing on the inside just talking about it. It wasn't her thing anymore. She knew that clearly.

And then she said something that really made me think:

"I'm hoping they'll say no. Then I won't have to do it."

I asked her: "And if they say yes?"

She answered: "Then I'd do it anyway."

Interesting, I thought…

She's waiting for a no from the outside, because she hasn't yet allowed herself the real no from within.

I don't want to. But I have to. I could. But I don't really want to. Into the loop, out of the loop, back in again.

That's the sideways eight.

A Business Owner Who Was Longing for More Personal Freedom

Another coaching client of mine has been running his own business for many years. He's very successful at it. He loves what he does. But he works too much. Way too much.

He wants to work less. He wants to go home earlier, be more present with his family, and have more time for himself. For his health, for his friends, for the life that exists outside of his business.

His thought loop looks like this:

I want to work less and actually live my real life. But if I turn down clients and projects, revenue drops, my employees are at risk, and my reputation suffers.

For a long time, he kept going the way he always had. All while longing for the healthy, vibrant life he actually wanted to be living.

The loop kept spinning. Over and over. Back and forth.

That's the sideways eight.

What the Mind Suggests as a Way Out

At some point, the loop gets so tight that the mind says: We need a radical solution!

So you start rebuilding everything in your mind. New systems, new processes, new structures. How you will delegate, reorganize, and optimize. You go looking for the big breakthrough. Some kind of change on the outside.

And for a while – a few days, maybe a few weeks – everything feels a little better. Like there is hope on the horizon.

Until you realize: you're back in the loop. Just on a different level now. Because the mind has already folded the new solution into the sideways eight, too:

I want to make these radical changes. But if I do, I'll disappoint my business partners, unsettle my team, lose clients, and put the whole existence at risk.

You're right back where you started, only bigger.

This isn't a personal weakness. It's simply how the intellectual mind works. It tries to solve problems at the same level it created them. And that's exactly why pure thinking can't get you out of the loop.

In the Three Principles, we call this "thinking that gets in its own way." We live inside our thinking – and as long as we can't see that, it feels like reality.

The Breakthrough – When Something Finally Shifted

I want to tell you how this entrepreneur's story continued. Because he didn't stay stuck in the sideways eight forever.

At a certain point in our coaching work together, I tried something unusual. Instead of having another conversation, I wrote him a story.

A story about a man who holds everything together. Who is reliable, who never lets anything drop, who carries and carries and carries – barely noticing how little of his own life is left.

He recognized himself in it. And that was the beginning.

Something in him began to shift. Through what he himself described as small adjustments, he started acting differently whenever he noticed that something was weighing on him that didn't need to be.

One day, he said no to a new project that didn't feel right – and the world didn't fall apart.

He went home early one evening and sat quietly with his wife, while his intellectual mind (the first voice) whispered in his ear: "You can't just sit here. There's still so much work waiting for you at the office."

He stayed anyway.

He started handing over responsibility to someone on his team. Someone he'd trusted for a long time with more than he'd ever actually given them. And to his own surprise, it felt easy.

What had changed?

The external circumstances were the same. The structure of his business was the same. The pressure from outside was the same.

It was the place inside him from which he was making decisions.

As long as he decided from fear – from the feeling that everything would fall apart if he let go – the work, the responsibility, and the exhaustion kept growing.

When he started deciding from inner calm – following the second voice instead of the first – the system began to redistribute itself on its own.

He put it this way in one of our last sessions:

"I always thought I was holding everything together. But really, I was just listening to the wrong voice."

And then, after a short pause:

"When I started making small decisions from my inner knowing, more changed than I ever could have achieved through any kind of radical overhaul."

This isn't a fairy tale. It's what happens when the second voice takes the wheel. Not once, not dramatically, but a hundred times, in the small moments of everyday life.

That's how he broke out of the sideways eight.

There Are Literally Two Voices

Now we get to the part that changes everything, and I've already been pointing to it throughout this article.

There isn't just one voice inside you. There are two.

The first voice is the voice of the intellectual mind. It's loud, it's logical, it sounds reasonable. It talks about security, risk, consequences, and what you can and can't afford. It means well. It wants to protect you.

But it also keeps you in the loop.

The second voice is quieter. Deeper. It's neither loud nor logical, at least not in the way the mind understands logic.

It's the voice of your deepest truth. Your inner wisdom. What some people call a gut feeling, and others simply: your clear knowing.

And this voice – it knows. You feel it.

My coaching client felt it the whole time: "I don't want to do contract work from my old life." She just knew. She felt it. It wasn't her path.

How You Get Out of the Loop

The way out of the sideways eight is not to optimize the loop further. It's to hear the second voice. To honor it. And to follow it.

That sounds simple. And at the same time, it's one of the hardest things I know – especially for people who have spent their whole lives learning to trust the intellectual mind.

We were taught: be rational, be reasonable, decide with your head. Nobody taught us to listen to our deeper, second voice. And yet it's there. Always. In every single moment.

It comes down to three steps – and all three are necessary:

Hear it. Notice the second voice. Become aware that it's there.

Honor it. Respect it. Don't let the mind immediately drown it out.

Follow it. This is the decisive step. Hearing and honoring alone aren't enough. You have to follow it. In the tiny, everyday moments of your life.

In the Three Principles, we talk about wisdom being available at all times. It's not something we have to earn or work toward. It's already inside us. It always was since the day we were born.

What changes is our state of consciousness. And the quieter our mind becomes, the more clearly we can hear that deeper voice.

It Really Is the Small Moments

Please don't wait for the one big breakthrough.

It's not one massive decision that changes everything. It's a thousand small moments in a month.

It's the moment my coaching client gets a new inquiry – and this time says no. Because she follows her inner voice before the mind can build its case for why she has to say yes.

It's the moment the wise entrepreneur closes his laptop and goes home. No, not everything is finished. But he hears his inner voice clearly: "That's enough for today."

It's the moment you notice: I'm in the loop again. And just noticing that already opens a small window.

This isn't a linear process. It's not a method you apply once, and then you're done. It's a daily practice. A practice of listening. Of pausing. Of trusting.

And the more you follow the second voice, the more familiar it becomes. The clearer it gets.

What This Has to Do with Freedom

Freedom doesn't come from changing your external circumstances.

Freedom comes from stopping to follow only the voice of the intellectual mind, and beginning to trust the deeper voice within you.

This isn't naive romanticism. It's the most straightforward truth I know.

Because as long as we're stuck in the sideways eight, waiting for an outside solution – for the other side to say no, for the right moment, for the perfect circumstances – we're handing over the responsibility for our own lives.

Our inner wisdom gives it back to us.

One small step at a time.

Are you stuck in your own sideways eight right now?
Write to me – I personally read and respond to every message:
[email protected]

And if you're curious about what coaching might look like for you,
take a look here: Life Coaching Frankfurt

Shailia Stephens is a Life & Business Coach based near Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She guides leaders, entrepreneurs, and perfectly ordinary people in the middle of their wonderful lives back to inner calm and effortless success – grounded in the Three Principles of Sydney Banks.