So you’re in a rut.

You’re not exactly sure how it happened. A few weeks, months or years ago, you decided to allow yourself to relax just a little bit and take an off day. But now, you have been in bed all day for the past week and your room is in a mess. Your dishes have piled up. Your work has been ignored or forgotten despite looming deadlines. If you are a university student, your books lay tucked away on a shelf and you cannot remember the last time you voluntarily woke up early and went for your lectures except when pushed to by impending quizzes, tests etc. You spend a good chunk of your time swamped on your bed, binge-watching movies or scrolling mindlessly on social media. You lack the energy and motivation to push yourself to do anything productive. In fact, the thought of picking yourself up and getting back on track with your goals fills you with so much dread, it is paralysing. And the further you slide into this rut, the harder it is to come out of it.

At this point, you might be feeling a strong desire to move forward, to push past the state of lethargy that you might be experiencing, but such feeling would be met with an equally strong, if not stronger compulsion to stay fixed to where you are. You want to improve, but your limbic system is in overdrive, making the desire to indulge in momentary pleasures stronger than the desire to change for the better.

And here’s the thing. You know about self-improvement. You have seen the results of it. In fact, you might have been the most productive you had ever been just a month ago. But currently, you’re in a pit and you are absolutely sick of it. The messy room and the approaching work or school deadlines are starting to give you anxiety and are putting you in a depressive state. However, no matter what you do, you cannot seem to break out of your rut. You may try to pull yourself out and be successful for a day or two, but eventually, you find yourself falling back into that pit.

So why? You may ask yourself. Why am I in a rut?

BURNOUT

In my personal opinion, falling into a rut often comes right after a long stretch of overworking and not getting appropriate levels of rest, completely neglecting the need to take care of yourself and being very stressed. The rut you have fallen into comes simply as a response to the chronic stress that you have been experiencing and neglecting. In other words, you’re not in a rut because you are lazy, you are in a rut because you are spent. You are severely burnt out.

Due to your burnout, you find yourself losing the joy and passion for your work, being completely apathetic towards any productive endeavours and feeling the desire to just curl up in your bed and never move. Your energy has been depleted, the passion long gone, but because you used to be so productive and something within you craves to get back into place, you might find yourself hating yourself for letting yourself go.

 

STAGNANT ROUTINES

More often than not, it is easy to get sucked into a life bedevilled with rote routines, where you can begin to operate on mindless autopilot and fail to enjoy the nuances of life. This can often lead to a life rid of any form of excitement, which strips away the joy of life, making life feel monotonous. Because daily life has become uninspiring, you can begin to lose joy in activities that once brought you enjoyment, leading to a feeling of dissatisfaction. When life feels monotonous, it’s easy to begin to rely more heavily on bad habits that give you the release of dopamine and provide some escape from your routine, otherwise, boring life. Soon, you can find yourself deep in a rut, and not particularly having any motivation to go back to your mindless, repetitive routines.

 

PERFECTIONISM

If you have grown to believe that perfectionism is somehow the secret to success, you might be surprised to find out that that trait might be sabotaging your success. Perfectionists usually believe that anything less than perfect is unacceptable. Therefore, they often tend to unconsciously reject making any form of effort towards their dreams and aspirations, operating under the misguided belief that it is better not to do anything at all than to produce results that do not meet the high standards that they set for themselves. Furthermore, perfectionists are often over-thinkers and this trait can lead to a condition known as paralysis by analysis where the need to make a perfect choice could lead to them not making a choice at all. Additionally, the need to avoid making mistakes could lead to a reluctance to take risks at all and with a combination of all these toxic traits, it is easy to slip into a rut, choosing to do nothing at all rather than do anything that would not be perfect.

 

LACK OF PURPOSE OR DIRECTION

A life without purpose or direction is a rut in itself. As sentient, rational humans, it is all but impossible to live a life lacking any meaning without experiencing feelings of emptiness, boredom and dissatisfaction. Such a life can lead a person to spiral into a depressive cycle, entrenching them in a rut. Furthermore, a life without purpose is devoid of motivation, and without such, it is difficult to find the incentive to pursue new opportunities, leading into a rut where a person simply flows through life, directionless and without a care to change the trajectory of their life.

 

These are just a few of the most common reasons why you might be stuck in a rut. You could also be stuck in a rut due to the environment you find yourself in, your fear of change, your self-limiting beliefs, your fixed mindset or even your low self-esteem amongst many other reasons.

 

So how exactly can you get out of this rut?

SELF-LOATHING ISN’T THE ANSWER

In times when I have fallen into a rut, which has been a couple of times, I have often fallen into the habit of being hard on myself. I define myself as someone who is highly motivated and ambitious and I have feelings of intense guilt whenever I waste away my time. So when I find myself rotting in bed for an entire day, scrolling through my phone and doing other mindless activities, I end up feeling terrible about myself, which drains me of my energy, and which means that I spend even more hours wasting away my time while guilt and shame literally eat me alive. This becomes a toxic cycle that can last for weeks.

When in a rut, especially as a person who knows that they can be better, accomplish more, as a person who actually wants to do a lot more with their life and dominate the world, it is easy to reach a point where you are overwhelmed by the feelings of self-loathing and uselessness. Because if you can identify the things you need to do to become the person you want to be and you consistently don’t do them, it is easy to see yourself in a very negative light. You can become resigned and very critical of yourself.

However, one thing that helps is understanding that a lot of people experience periods in their life where all motivation seems to have been sucked out of their body and they visibly lack the ability to put in any effort anymore. Being in a rut does not necessarily mean that you are stupid, lazy, that you have issues and that you inherently lack the ability to make a name for yourself in life.

 

DON’T BE HARSH ON YOURSELF, BUT DON’T SETTLE

Nevertheless, you need to realise that the state that you are in is not okay. It’s not alright to live life on autopilot, to spend days and weeks unmotivated and unproductive. If you decide that you are fine in the position that you are in, you will become complacent and dwell in the comfort of your rut. However, when you acknowledge that the position you are in is not normal or fine, you can then begin to generate the emotional impetus to force yourself out of the rut. That feeling of being unsatisfied you get when you realise that things are not okay the way that they are will give you all that you need to propel yourself forward.

 

REST FOR THE BURNT OUT

Photo by madison lavern on Unsplash

When you are in a rut because of burnout, before you begin to seek ways to propel yourself out of the rut, the best way to get back into shape is to take the time to actually rest, not just rot in bed and feel guilty about your lack of productivity. You see, when you are burnt out, it may look like you are resting because you are not actually doing anything productive but the reality is that you are just so stressed and overwhelmed that you are paralysing yourself and that doesn’t count as rest.

When you are going through this, you have to remind yourself that resting and taking an off day to take adequate care of yourself is the most productive thing that you can do. Your goals can wait. Your to-do list can wait. Take some time to have a factory reset.

 

BABY STEPS

Most people wait for motivation to hit them for them to begin to climb upwards and whilst the negative emotions you feel about your situation might serve as adequate motivation, if you wait around for the motivation for change to hit you like a bomb before you begin to take the right actions towards change, you might end up waiting forever. This is because motivation follows action. Sometimes, what you need to get the motivation to change your life is actually to begin to take steps to turn your life around. Just take one step, a simple step like finally getting around to doing your chores and making your environment look like a nice, breathable space, and watch as motivation propels you forward to finally open your laptop or book or send that application you have been hesitating to send. Therefore, instead of waiting around for your motivation to suddenly appear, try taking action first instead. Once you take action, there is a very high chance that you will discover motivation along the way to keep going.

However, if you still need some more motivation, you can go out of your way to read self-improvement books or you can watch some inspirational videos (not recommended if you have a YouTube addiction), or perhaps listen to some motivational podcasts.

 

DON’T EXPECT YOUR REBOUND TO HAPPEN IN ONE DAY

In reconnecting to the old productive version of yourself, you have to realise that you cannot go from zero to a hundred in a moment. Focus on getting on track one step at a time. You don’t need to create an elaborate routine, delete all apps instantly and think that you can just take a crash course towards recovery. You might be able to pull that sort of stunt for one day, perhaps two, perhaps even a week. But because your body has not yet acclimatised to that sort of routine and lifestyle, you would eventually revert to square one. You don’t force yourself out of your comfort zone, but push yourself out of your comfort zone slowly. If you decide, perhaps in one 2 a.m. burst of motivation, that you are going to get out of your comfort zone by doing things that you know very well that you will not be able to do long-term at the level you are in at the moment, you are setting yourself up for failure. You are going to reach a point in which you scare yourself back into the rut.

So perhaps your rut has you scrolling for hours on end on social media apps. Getting out of the rut does not mean instantly deleting the apps and thinking that you will suddenly transform into the productive person that you once were or that you have always aspired to be. Trust me, I have tried that. Eventually, you find yourself reverting, or finding some other app that replaces the one that you discarded because you have not yet built yourself up to be the kind of person that is no longer addicted to social media. So you delete YouTube because your phone tells you that it is the app that you spend the most amount of time on. Suddenly, TikTok, an app that you have probably never had an interest in, becomes the most interesting thing to you. After a few weeks, you realise that TikTok has taken the place of YouTube and you delete it. Guess what? Instagram and Facebook become captivating to you. And even if you manage to delete those apps, guess what? You find a couple of websites and blogs on Google that occupy that vacant time that you used to spend mindlessly scrolling on social media apps. And even if you stop purchasing data, the games on your phone take that place until you get completely fed up and find yourself pining for the apps you deleted. And the cycle goes on. This is because you have not levelled yourself to the point where you are freed of your addictions. Going cold turkey is not the way. You just don’t have enough willpower to pull off that stunt.

Here’s a better way to tackle this. Don’t delete those apps. Get a tracker that monitors the amount of time that you spend on those apps. Then strategically decrease the amount of time you spend. What happens when you do that gradually is that you slowly recharge your willpower to desist from those bad habits that have placed you in the rut that you are in. You slowly train your willpower whilst looking for productive activities that you can use to replace the times that you have spent indulging yourself.

 

YOU’VE GOT THIS!

The thing is, most times, people fall into a rut because their limbic system loves the dose of dopamine it gets from being unproductive, lazy and lethargic. That dopamine addiction that you have gained is very hard to quit and removing all sources of dopamine from your life all at once is really not the answer because you would eventually relapse. Getting out of a rut is not going to happen overnight. It takes time, patience, and the ability to be gentle with yourself. Don’t expect yourself to get back to your best self immediately. Reward yourself for the little accomplishments you make along the way as you slowly climb back up.

And with increasing focus, determination and effort, you will be able to get out of your rut. I assure you