Getting Out of a Rut
The fourth quarter of the year is upon us, and that brings a mixture of feelings depending on how well life is going. For some people, December is fast approaching with a sense of dread and feeling stuck. The gap between expectation and reality at the end of (yet) another year going by can get unbearable, particularly if the same long-held goals and desires are not being achieved. The inconvenient truth of adulting reminds you you need to save yourself, but how? Time feels limited to change anything and inspiration is low - where do you go from here?
The positive side to this is the awareness that your best life is yet to come and you’re uncomfortable with being “less than”. Feeling stuck is the flash signal you need to zoom out, do things differently and pursue energising goals that get you out of the mental cage you’re in.
Zoom out
We are not the best adjudicators of our successes, failures and pending achievements over an extended period of time when we are feeling low. The mind has a niggly habit of defaulting to recency bias, meaning recent events outweigh past ones. All those great things you got right in the first or second quarter are somewhere in your memory but down in your rut, all you can think of is the disproportionate importance of the pending items.
If you’re willing to make the deeply reflective time, the Year Compass booklet is a great resource to go over the multi-faceted parts of your life for an objective review of the full year. You’ll see you got more things right than you give yourself credit for. And yes, some gaps might remain but that’s all they are. Gaps in an otherwise full life. I promote this booklet so much - one would think I get royalties! (I don’t😅 ) I’m just a fan of its simplicity and how it gets us to move beyond the recency bias and siloed thinking that frame our ruts.
Share your struggles discerningly
Identify a couple of people who have the empathy and experience to help you with the issues you are facing with the aim of 1) finding solutions or 2) reframing the problem so you’re closer to a solution. In the early stages of a rut, it might be comforting to discuss your problems to a sympathetic person who will listen but can’t help. The danger is this can quickly turn into a series of conversations which go nowhere except to leave you feeling even more helpless and could turn you into a complainer rather than a solver. Sometimes the people closest to us are not best-equipped to support us in this trouble-shooting phase. However, they will be there to encourage us once we have a plan and are climbing out of the hole, racing toward the light.
“The past is where you learned the lesson. The future is where you apply the lesson. Don’t give up in the middle.”
Do things differently
Getting unstuck requires the future you to do things differently to generate better results and get your mental and physical energy levels up.
Shonda Rhimes talked about a “Year of Yes” where she decided to shake up her life by saying yes to every new challenge and opportunity for a solid year. I like this idea although I haven’t gone a whole year of saying yes to everything. What I do instead is try to live in a permanent state of saying yes to things that scare me but stretch me whilst also being unrelenting with saying “no” to the things that don’t serve me or distract me. In order to get unstuck, in what ways must you use the words “yes” and “no” more advantageously?
Oftentimes we wait for a social event or holiday here and there to escape our problems, only to find them waiting for us upon our return. It’s ineffective and unsustainable. Rather ask yourself what new routine you need that day or that week to break the monotony. If you are tired of writing job application after job application, challenge yourself to get a few meetings (virtually or in-person) with executives of the company you want to work for. It moves you towards your goal by learning more about the company, networking with the people who could influence a job offer and you can sell yourself more robustly in person than in writing. If you are having lots of meetings which don’t convert, are you getting feedback on why you are not being selected so that you can adjust your game plan? Sounds simple - but are you doing it, or things like this if you find that your original strategy isn’t working?
What do you see when you audit your energy levels? Are you exercising? That morning workout does a lot for setting a positive expectation that we can achieve more for the rest of the day. Consider a high intensity cardio routine: all those endorphins get you positively itching for more things to do afterwards. Sure it’s great for the body but when you are in a rut, your mind needs this!
What bad habits have been reinforcing this sense of feeling stuck? I could list a bunch of things that are part of our factory settings but the specifics don’t really matter. The little I know about hacking human behaviour is that it’s not enough to decide to stop a bad habit. You have to intentionally replace it with a good habit. If you feel the urge to complain about what’s going wrong, list instead something you’re grateful for. When you’re tempted to tell yourself you can’t get your dream job after a series of rejections, channel your energy into your own side-hustle where you get to do what you love even if you aren’t paid for it. “Atomic Habits” by James Clear is a helpful read if you think this needs a detailed intervention - our self-talk and resultant habits can get pretty dark so dive deep on this and root it out.
It’s okay to let go of old dreams
Some of the ruts we experience stem from a sense of under-achievement versus dreams and goals that were set a long time ago, and were potentially ill-informed or influenced by societal pressure. Those lofty 5 or 10-year plans we subscribe to can turn out to be more oppressive than inspirational. Give yourself permission to change direction if you are feeling overwhelmed. It’s a reckoning with the notion that not everything that can be done, should be done. The sooner we let go of old dreams, the sooner we can be energised by new ones.
Final thoughts
December is almost here and it has its own kind of energy that’s distinct to any other time of year. It carries a solid dose of relief that the year is coming to a close, a hint of relaxation as various activities wind down and a sprinkle of hope that the coming year will indeed be better than the one we’ve just had. My hope for you is that you use December as a month to:
reflect on the year that has passed,
refresh your mind and body so that you can finish the year strong, and
reset your priorities so you kickstart January 2022 ready to pursue your goals.
Unpack all the baggage that’s been slowing you down and acquire a new state of mind this December - don’t wait until January. Let’s travel light as we enter the new year.
