The hardest part for me was to realize that it was stuck.

I thought I could adjust my car to proper parking position by reversing and forwarding around the curb, if I could do it right. If I had realized that was something impossible, I would have easily thought of backing out completely and then redo it.

After I finally got things straightened, I recalled quite a few similar scenarios in my life, inluding one or two in accent reduction. Then I started to wonder: how can we quickly and effectively identify if we are stuck and a change of approach (rather than trying all the possibilityies within the old one) is needed?