Stuck - a feeling, or rather a sensation, that will find itself creeping into your life every so often. Usually, you don’t see it coming. But you’ve become complacent in your routine and the repetition of your daily habits has left you feeling uninspired, tired, and hopeless. You’re not moving forward and you’re repeatedly racking your brain to figure out how to get out of a rut.
Sometimes we become stuck after a major life change. Grief from events such as bereavement, the dissolution of a marriage, or your children leaving for college, can overtake your entire system. Once the intense feelings have subsided, we are left feeling empty, simply treading water as we wait for life’s next chapter. This leaves us weary, unphased by our regular routine, and stagnant in body, mind, and soul.
The first step in how to get out of a rut is to figure out what led you there in the first place.
Why We Get Stuck in Ruts
“They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.” ― Tara Gentile, Quiet Power Strategy
Like all introspective work, we need to turn toward our daily behavioural patterns to examine why a looming sense of unease prevails throughout our day. We build our day to day schedules based on work needs, family time, and of course, errands. If you’re feeling stuck, it might be that there’s no longer any room for spontaneity in your schedule. But more likely than that, it goes even deeper. We build habits and routines based on our experiences and what we think is acceptable behaviour. We may have been taught that running is the best cardiovascular exercise for weight loss and maintenance, but the act in and of itself might feel suffocating, unenjoyable, and borderline masochistic for someone who feels obligated to it but doesn’t actually enjoy it. Yet, we might continue to run because that’s how we’ve programmed our days. Feeling stuck in an exercise rut like this can be caused by so many emotional factors - from feeling the shame of being unable to maintain a youthful body, to feeling the need to use exercise as punishment. Regardless, we continue to do it because we don’t want to feel the negative emotions bubbling under the surface. Sometimes we stay busy so we don’t feel our feelings.
Sometimes ruts come after a big emotional purge. Major life changes like a divorce, often leave people feeling emotionally stagnant and depressed. While grief is a necessary part of a break-up, sometimes we get stuck in a pain rut. An obsessive painful thought process can dull out everything you used to enjoy. If this thought pattern continues, you may stop expressing the emotion all together and instead push it inward, where it overtakes your emotional landscape, leaving room for little else. You’re convinced you’ll feel this way forever.
Getting stuck in a rut is your true self telling you that you are doing something that you should not be doing, that there is more out there.
Making Friends with Your Rut
The first step in how to get out of a rut is to surrender to it. Don’t fight the feeling. The more you thrash, the deeper down the rabbit hole you’ll go. Like all difficult emotions, we have to give this uneasiness a space to be heard. Give your emotions a name. The feeling of being in a rut evokes plenty of sensations - from shame and regret over the past, to anxiety about the future. When you feel trapped in your life, check in with the exact emotions coming up.
Almost everyone who feels stuck feels tired. Exhaustion is a surefire sign of burnout or lack of engagement with your daily activities. This may also manifest as a lack of motivation or prolonged periods of procrastination. It may present itself in routine escapism, whether that’s fantasizing or habitually drinking your emotions away. It could be as serious as depression and as seemingly light as daydreaming throughout the day. Pay attention to what your feelings are telling you.
Make friends with your stuck emotions. Once you’re prepared to give your rut a voice, you’ll be amazed at how quickly the problematic areas of your life will be highlighted to you.
How Did I Get Here?
At the bottom of our most challenging emotions is fear. You can lighten up your idea of fear by remembering that is an inherent trait of being alive. Fear helps us to survive. Making friends with your emotions will help you identify when you’re reacting out of fear.
Fear gets you stuck in a rut because it has you repeating the same tasks, behaviours, relationships, and dynamics you’ve had since your childhood. It ensures that you don’t fail and that you don’t try new things so that you can stay psychologically safe.
Fear can manifest in many ways, including limiting beliefs about yourself and what you’re capable of. It conditions you to believe that you’re not good enough to execute some of your greatest thoughts. It clouds your perception of yourself and has you deprioritizing your goals.
Past experiences can also keep you from reaching your full potential. We all often make decisions based on painful history instead of the present reality. All of your most shameful and painful moments are on a pedestal in your memory bank and are the first file you pull when you think of trying something new. The weight of these memories can distort how you see yourself and what you’re capable of.
How Do I Move Forward?
Giving your emotions space to breathe is the first step. When you start exploring how to get out of a rut, it is important to take plenty of self-care steps while you work through your emotions.
Once you feel ready to start overhauling some portions of your life, it is important to make sure you’re well supported. For professional help in identifying and achieving your goals, a life coach is a crucial asset to propelling you forward. A life coach helps you become accountable to yourself as you make the necessary steps to your future. Turning Tides Today offers online coaching to help get you out of the sinking quicksand and creating your best future.
Identify What Keeps You Stuck
A life coach will help you recognize some of your self-defeating and problematic patterns in your daily life. As you work through this process, it is best to check-in with your emotions several times a day. Create a journal for this particular type of self-development. When you feel the uneasy emotions of a deep discomfort, take note of what is happening, where you are, who you’re with, and the various feelings that are bubbling up. Acknowledge them and then gently question them. Are these incidents bringing up feelings of self-doubt or limitations? A journal will be your log of these moments and you’ll see patterns emerge in terms of behaviours. Knowledge is power and by shining light on the part of you that is uncomfortable, you gain more control over your own thoughts. This control will help you feel empowered and informed; it will guide you to your best self.
Don’t be hard on yourself if you can’t pull the answers out readily. A life coach is your best support system in working through the psychological roadblocks keeping you in your rut.
Mindset Coaching
It’s time to change your mind.
If you read that statement and feel that it’s impossible, that “people don’t change”, ask yourself what personal belief makes you think that. Examine the caverns of your mind closely and you’ll realize that that specific mindset has been indoctrinated into you by your parents, society, painful experiences, etc. Trust your gut. You wouldn’t be reading this article if you didn’t inherently believe that you are worthy and capable of change.
Mental barriers can be brutal to overcome and take focused effort. Therapy and counselling can be very effective in helping you get over self-limiting beliefs and victim mindsets. Life coaches are a great support here if you’re looking to get more than an examination of your behaviours. They help you learn techniques to remove you from the past and into the present, assist you in creating strategies for when you encounter limiting thought patterns, and teach you how to be accountable to yourself.
Accountability
Accountability is a scary word. It reminds you that you are responsible for yourself, the quality of your life, and the quality of your thoughts. Some of us might even want to skim through this section because we believe that we are already responsible.
But true responsibility comes in the moment when you become your own leader, taking full charge of your day and your destiny. If you’re stuck, you must know that the only person who can save you is you.
You need to make the mental shift that accountability does not mean punishment, criticism, or shame, to a mindset that says accountability starts with promising yourself to be good and true to you. You are accountable for the decisions you make to either enhance your life or to keep you complacent.
To really embrace life changes and reinvent yourself, you have to be willing to get uncomfortable. Accountability can, at times, feel distressing.. But in reality, accountability is a system that you create for yourself to keep your goals in check. It’s an ally.
You can start your accountability journey by clearly defining your goals. Mentors and life coaches are handy here as they are equipped to help you design action plans, and small steps that'll take you to your desired destination. Accountability means looking at alternate ways to get to where you’re going when the road gets rough; it does not let you give up once you hit a large bump. Accountability means taking at least one action every day to help you get toward your goals.
If the word accountability still gives you anxiety then your journey might begin in smaller steps as you learn how to balance your true needs. Rome was not built in a day and people can get very overwhelmed by the idea of changing their life. At this stage, you will once again need to question your mindset. If you are finding it painful to work toward your dreams, you might need to re-assess if your goals align with your values. Maybe you’re not reaching for your authentic goal.
You are meant to enjoy yourself in the re-shaping of your life. As you check-in with yourself daily, notice the good emotions too. What are you doing when you feel your best? Spend more time with those activities and nurture your joy. You will find what you’re looking for there.
Take Care of Yourself
Always. If while you’re soul searching, you feel frustrated and uninspired by everything around you, then take a step back and rest. Exhaustion builds up in all of us and manifests itself in dozens of ways. Curing burnout and lack of motivation will not be fixed by sleeping well a few nights in a row. You have to sleep well as much as possible. You have to walk as much as possible. You need to nourish yourself as much as possible.
Shake up your routine. Remove the thing you like doing least just once this week and sleep in instead, or take yourself on a nice walk. Reward yourself. Rest. And then look inward. Getting out of a rut does not have to be a sprint. In fact, it should be approached with a careful, personalized methodology to ensure you’re creating sustainable changes.
Getting out of a rut can be a challenging journey. With optimism and a true desire for something new, you can find your way out. However, if you find it emotionally challenging or draining to even think about how to get out of a rut, there might be more at play. If you are feeling overwhelmed, plagued by sadness or numbness, and have lost interest in things you once enjoyed, you might be exhibiting symptoms of depression. If these are persistent and pervasive feelings in your life, connect with your doctor right away.
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