Over the past year, I’ve noticed a pattern online and through my research: people everywhere are feeling stuck. Career crossroads, relationship decisions, life transitions … feeling stuck can show up in every area of life and often comes with a significant emotional toll.

To help, I’ve developed a suite of tools, inspired by my engineering background, that are really effective at helping people understand why they’re stuck and how to get unstuck. I call this process mindset engineering, and I love sharing these tools with others.

A few months ago, I started writing detailed, structured, and compassionate replies to “help! I’m stuck” questions I came across online. I quickly realized that online groups aren’t always built for long-form guidance and I strongly believe these situations deserve thoughtful, practical responses.

So I decided to start Ask Dr. Ada: a place where real questions about feeling stuck are explored in depth. Each post shows how mindset engineering principles can help unpack what’s holding someone back, get clarity on what they really want, and create a path forward. My goal with Ask Dr. Ada is to show you how mindset engineering can be applied in your life, in addition to helping the person who asked the question.

Here’s how it works:
Each post features a real question, sometimes from an online forum, sometimes submitted directly to me. I use my mindset engineering toolkit to help the person understand why they feel stuck and how they can identify new pathways forward.

✨ You can already see two examples here:

• How Do I Change Industries at 40 Without Feeling Like a 22-Year-Old Intern? | Feeling Stuck in Your Career
• How do I get over the mental block and just get a divorce? | Feeling Stuck in Your Relationship

And you can read all of the Ask Dr. Ada posts here.

Over time, I’ll continue to add to this collection with posts I come across online and submissions I receive via Spec It Out (feel free to submit your own!). My hope is that these posts will serve as both guidance and inspiration.

If you’ve ever felt stuck, perhaps you’ll see yourself in these questions — and more importantly, I hope you’ll discover a way to get unstuck.