2 Simple Ways To Get Out Of A Rut

 

Sometimes I feel less than great. Words like low, grouchy, fed-up, and bored could all be used to describe what I’m like on those days, and I’m probably not the best company for other people! Do you have days like these? What we have to remember is that days like these are a normal part of being human. We will always have off days, and that’s okay.

But what happens when we get a whole string of those off-days, maybe lasting weeks, months or even years? Too many of us say that we’re in a rut, feel stuck, fed-up, or bored and admit that we want things to be different, but we either don’t know what to do, or aren’t committed to making the necessary changes. The problem with feeling low or being in a rut, is that when we’re in this state, we don’t feel we have the energy or motivation to change things for the better, and it can often be tough to find the insight or resources that we need to make that jump out of the rut we’ve found ourselves in.

Here are two fun and easy ways you can use right now to climb, or better yet, leap, out of the rut and start to get something better for yourself.

1. Do Something Differently

Being in a routine can be less stressful and seem to make life easier, but when things run too smoothly, we can go through life on auto-pilot and become blinded to the opportunities and choices that sit outside of our routine.

To help get out us get out of our routines, we can start with making one or two simple changes to our day. It doesn’t have to be anything big or significant. It can simply be changing what we have for breakfast or where we have lunch, what music we listen to, a change to a gym routine, or the route we take to work. The change is enough to wake us up out of our routine. Don’t worry about what the changes are or whether they’re right or wrong, just make a couple of simple changes to your day that will serve you well.

Doing something differently or changing parts of your routine, instantly takes you out of your routine and allows you to shake off the things that make you feel confined. Step out of your routine and you’ll be in a position where you’re able to make different choices, see things differently and get a different result. Stepping out of your routine helps you to step out of your comfort zone, which will help you to grow and become more confident when dealing with whatever life throws at you.

2. Use your Intuition

Your intuition is a powerful ally, and we all have it even though we might not recognise it. The Cambridge dictionary defines intuition as:

"(knowledge from) an ability to understand or know something immediately based on your feelings rather than facts.”

Your intuition is one of the best friends you'll ever have in your life, and tuning into it and learning to trust it is something that can have some truly remarkable effects.

Accessing your intuition is a bit like working and developing a muscle, but unfortunately it can be harder to locate than a bicep or quadricep, which tend to stay in the same place.

Here are some quick tips for accessing and trusting your intuition:

• Practice maintaining an open-minded, playful, experimental, non-judgmental attitude. This is the most fertile ground to tap into your intuition.
• Practice making wild guesses in your everyday life. Guess what a salesperson's name is, what a new person or place will look like or who's calling on the phone. Don't worry about whether you get it right or not, you're simply working on improving your intuition muscle.
• Try a few simple observation exercises in your daily life. Whether you're in a restaurant, on a train, in a bar, or out shopping, practice noticing non-verbal behaviour in others. Look to see how they’re walking or standing, look for any shifts in posture, eye movements, vocal tone or tempo, etc. Guess how they're feeling or what they're talking about from the way they look or what they’re doing.

By exercising our intuition on a regular basis, we start to become more aware of ourselves and what’s around us, rather than going through our days on auto-pilot and feeling like we’re stuck in a routine.