Getting Out of Being Stuck In A Rut & Focusing On Positivity

If any of you are like me, you’ve days, weeks, and sometimes months where you just feel stuck in a rut.  Its like no matter what you do, you feel like you can’t catch a break.  Many times, its not actually that you’re in a rut, in that the universe is against you.  It really boils down to your mindset, and the place you’ve allowed it to go.  A positive mindset breeds positive outcomes.  If you are constantly thinking negative and as if the odds are always against you, then those are exactly the results you will get.  I’ve been there, in that not so good place where I thought everything was working against me.  No matter how positive I tried to be, that little voice in the back of my mind kept telling me otherwise.  It was my mindset, my conscious, and it was effecting everything I laid my hands on.  I did a lot of self-reflection and introspection to come to realization that I needed a mindset overhaul, and that I needed one soon.  If you’ve found yourself in place or want to prevent getting in this place, this post will provide you with some tools to get out of being stuck in a rut and focusing on positivity.

Reflect on Yourself

One way to figure out why you’re stuck in a rut in the first place is to meditate or think seriously about your character, motives, and actions.  Living up to the core values that have been instilled in you will help guide you to make wise decisions.  Many times its the poor decisions that we’ve made that put us in unhealthy places mentally.  Forgiving yourself for these decisions and coming to terms with the outcomes allow you to move positively, and not make the same mistakes again.  When you know better you do better!

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Do Some Introspection

When you examine and observe your own mental state and emotional processes, you can better understand the place you’re in.  Introspection allows you to determine your sensory, bodily, cognitive, and and emotional states.  Since our mental states generally affect our emotional state, by doing some introspective you allow yourself to get a better gist of what’s going on with you emotionally.  When you can accurately decipher the emotions that you’re feeling, and better yet know where they’re coming from, you can better gain back control of your mental state.

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Change Your Environment

Engage yourself in activities that foster positivity, so that your mind and body can reap the benefits. If you spend most of your day inside, go outside and enjoy some fresh air.  It amazing what a little sunshine and time with nature can do for the mind.  Hearing the birds chirp, seeing the ripples in a pond, or watching the clouds can put your mind at such ease that you may just get some new prospective on whatever’s weighing heavily on you.  Even more so, you may be inspired to do something amazing that will change your entire situation.

Get Coached

This is the perfect time to reach out to others and ask for help.  Whether its a family member, friend, or peer, this individual can help bring a new perspective on whatever it is you feel isn’t working out the way you would like it to.  They may be able to offer helpful tips or a fresh look at your idea, helping it to actually come to fruition…or changing it altogether.

If you’re a business-owner or entrepreneur this is a wonderful time to educate yourself.  Enroll in a class relevant to business or your niche/industry, go to conferences and seminars, or hire a business coach to help better define the ideas you have for your business.  The time to invest is in when you’re in the trough, so that you can ride the crest when things start to look up.  Investing in yourself is one of the best things you can do, and you can gain so much insight and purpose through doing it by educating yourself.

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Put Yourself to Work

We’ve all heard it before, that sage old advice of staying busy keeps your mind off the bad stuff.  Its true, however, and you shouldn’t discount staying busy as a way to deal with being stuck in a rut.  This is not to say that you should ever suppress your feelings during this time.  Displacing your feelings will not help you get out of the rut, but refocusing your energy will.  Its important that you understand this prior to delving into a new task to stay busy.  It’s one thing to refocus your energy and pour it into something positive, and another to completely ignore your emotions and never deal with them.  Unfortunately, life has a funny way of making us deal with the things we try not to, so you don’t want that negatively popping back up later.  Even worst sometimes, those negative feelings can manifest themselves in the things you do and how you run your business or interact with others.

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Seek Positive Interaction

During a downtrodden time, its important that you surround yourself with those who are supportive and lift you up.  If you have someone in your life that isn’t, you may need to distance yourself from them or reevaluate your relationship with them.  Your interactions on social media are no exception to the rule, so insure that your taking heed to those interactions as well.  Social media can be a trigger for making you feel worst, since it tends to be the world of the perfect and pretty.  Its hard to appreciate the perfect and pretty when things in your life don’t appear that way.  Use social media to inspire and motivate you, and not as a tool for comparison.  If this means you need to clean up your following or take a break from a particular platform, do it!  Sometimes we have to remove certain things from our psyche in order to get into a good place, social media included.

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Being stuck in a rut is no fun, but as I always say ‘nothing last forever’!  Everything has its season, and I strongly believe that when one door closes another opens.  Just as the universe appears to work against us sometimes, it also works for us a lot of the time.  Remember that the universe seeks balance, so things will eventually level out, no matter how bad the outlook may be.  The more positivity you can foster during this time, the better your chances of getting out of that rut feeling better than ever.  You’ll be able to pour that new motivation and energy into your goals, and work that much harder (and focused) on your success.

Have you ever been stuck in a rut? – What were some of the ways you got yourself out of it?

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