I originally posted this message in 2010, but I have new insights to add to it now.

When you're in a slump, discouraged by a perceived lack of progress, or when your objectives keep meeting with obstacles, remember these words from a dear mentor of mine who said, “Never say ‘whoa’ in a mud hole.” This principle can change your life… so let’s talk about it.

“Never say 'whoa' in a mud hole.”

What does it even mean?

Well, a few years ago we traded my mini-van in for a Jeep Wrangler, so I could have some adventures to get my mind off of the cancer treatments I'd be facing the next 6 months. We got ourselves into some pretty treacherous predicaments in that Jeep, and it was both a fun challenge but also a little terrifying when we weren't sure how we were going to get out of them.

Watch the video here

We haven't really tested our Jeep in mud, but I don't think it would be a major life-altering setback if we got it stuck in some. Inconvenient, costly, and relatively dangerous, maybe....

But imagine back in the olden-days, driving a horse-drawn wagon and facing a mud hole. Not only would you recognize the potential hazard to your team and yourself, but you'd especially understand how important it would be to commit to it, get a good, running start, and to not stop moving until it was entirely behind you.

You’d be a fool to stop in the middle and bemoan your condition. Your horses could die in it. There's no time to feel sad or discouraged and wallow in it. The longer you hesitate, the deeper you sink, and the harder it becomes to get out.

In mud, momentum is your friend.

If you stop in it, you get stuck. But if you instead maintain or even increase your momentum, you have the greatest chances of getting through.

Ken taught me that when you’re in a mud hole, you don’t slow down—you accelerate. Push through. Remember why you set out on your journey in the first place, and move forward with more energy, not less. That advice has helped me through more discouraging moments than I can count.

But discouragement often shows up disguised.

Sometimes the mud hole isn’t a setback at all - it’s a terror barrier. You’ve been running toward a dream - prosperity, healing, growth - and then suddenly everything appears to be falling apart. That’s when the temptation to stop, retreat, or freeze feels the strongest. Yet that is the very moment when you need to lean into faith, devote more time picturing the results you want, and less time emotionalizing over appearances.

You’ve probably heard it said,

“Fear knocked on the door, Faith answered… and no one was there.”

Most of the time, the thing you fear is nothing more than an illusion - your mind imagining worst-case scenarios that haven’t happened yet, and may never happen at all. It’s using the Law of Attraction against yourself by rehearsing outcomes you don’t want. And while difficult things do happen on our life’s journey - that’s part of the plan - we don’t need to suffer them twice by worrying about them in advance. One of my favorite reminders is:

“You can’t worry enough about a problem to fix it.”

There’s another piece to this that has been life-changing for me:

When you’re down, create.

As our friend Cari Skrdla teaches in Operating in God's Economy, every choice leads toward either life or death - spiritually, emotionally, and sometimes literally. And when we’re hurting, we often reach for choices that numb but don’t nourish. Scrolling, snacking, oversleeping, binging distractions… they offer temporary relief, but they shrink our soul and drain our power.

I used to sleep off my sadness. I could stay in bed for days. But it rarely healed anything. It was a dead-end, go-nowhere road, that just waited for me to pick myself up and get something done.

Now, when discouragement tries to pull me under and I think, “Maybe I could sleep this off…” I no longer can. My mind fills with ideas - things I could write, build, share, or create. It’s like my spirit refuses to lie still anymore, because creation has become the very thing that pulls me through the mud.

So I get up, and create.

• I write.
• I coach myself.
• I draft a blog post about whatever I’m trying to overcome.
• I edit a video.
• I pull an old audio file and turn it into a podcast.
• I build a newsletter.
• I make something.

I'm not prolific because I'm unusually smart or anything, I'm prolific because it's my therapy... over 1000 blog posts to show for it. If I'm not writing my own, sometimes I'm editing an article from one of our facilitators. SO MUCH GOOD CONTENT! So... are you:

Discouraged? Create something.

It’s producing instead of consuming. This is what restores instead of drains. It brings life, not death. Everything in God's creation is designed to multiply. Life ... or death. 

Choose life.

Every time you take creative action - no matter how small - you move the needle forward. That movement shakes off the darkness that tries to interrupt the creation God is trying to bring about through you. And it doesn’t even have to be business-related. Pick up a hobby, paint, crochet, cook, garden, organize a drawer, write a poem - anything that expresses life outward instead of collapsing inward. It resets your spirit more quickly than you might imagine.

Maybe you're building a business and losing confidence that it will ever get off the ground. Then do something - anything - to advance the vision. Brainstorm what might be possible in the next 3 months. Design systems or a structure that brings order out of the chaos. It's a godly thing to do. Tiny actions count. Movement matters. Creativity ignites hope. It reconnects you to the spark of God inside you, reminding you that you’re not alone in the process.

Life is so much better now since I started choosing creation more, instead of sleeping away my sadness, and I encourage you to try it.

It truly shifts things.

And here’s the beautiful promise in all of this: by the Law of Polarity, whenever things look their worst, there is simultaneously an equal and opposite good waiting to emerge.

The darker the mud, the richer the soil.

If you want help understanding this principle and discovering what’s really going on around you when you shift your mindset, join me in Mindset Mastery. There’s a new class starting soon, or you can take it as an independent study.

In the meantime, remember this:

You are not meant to stay stuck in the mud. Creation builds momentum, and that's what makes it easier and faster to get through it.

Keep moving.

Keep creating.