How to Quickly GET OUT OF A RUT if You're Feeling Stuck!

Are you that person… living a seemingly successful life yet you feel a now familiar heaviness and grip in your stomach when you wake up.

You’re bored, find yourself going through the same motions with very little excitement.

You’re becoming more and more aware of the negative thoughts you have that’s just exaggerating the problem - in other words you’re in a rut.

I have certainly gone through my fair share of ruts and low periods in my life before… so what I want to do with this video Aicha is give you a practical guide in how I get myself out of them.

In this video you’re going to learn four strategies that never fail to help me get out of it when I'm feeling stuck:

1. How I utilise the challenge / skill principle.
2. My go to strategies to change how I feel.
3. How I acknowledge it and own it.

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Richard (00:00):
Are you that person, living a seemingly successful life, yet you feel that now familiar heaviness and grip in your stomach when you wake up? You're bored. You find yourself going through the same motions with very little excitement. You're becoming more and more aware of those negative thoughts going through your mind. It's just exaggerating the problem. In other words, you're in a rut. Now a definition a rut, is a habit or pattern of behavior that's become dull and unproductive, but it's hard to change. A further description is, an uncomfortable situation or place of which there is no easy way out. I hate this job, but I just can't find another one. I'm stuck in a rut. I have certainly gone through my fair share of low periods and ruts within my life. So why I want to do this video, is share a very practical guide in how I get myself out of them.

Richard (00:45):
Before we get into it, I want to note that I think there's a huge difference between a temporary rut and actual depression. If you feel like what you're experiencing is actual depression, the tips in this video may end up helping you. But I also don't want to come across like they're the be-all and end-all solutions, because I recognize depression is a much more complicated and serious condition. So in addition to what I'm going to share in this video, I'm also going to put a resource for you below to an organization that are much more qualified, and you may want to check them out.

Richard (01:11):
If you're new to my channel, I'm Richard and I help impact-driven professionals who have lost their of direction in self-doubt, to become clear, effective, and impactful in their life. And our free masterclass, the proven seven step process to becoming clear, effective, and have greater impact in your life, is still open. So if you want to join that masterclass or submit your application for the freedom of being in the program, stay till the end of the masterclass, because there are announcements on how to do both.

Richard (01:39):
The first step that I use when I'm feeling in a rut, is using the challenge skill equation. Now this was first developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and then later adapted by the Flow Genome Project. The challenge skill principle is simply about the challenge versus skill in your life, your skill ability. And so if we are challenged too much, we end up switching off, because we can't cope with it, there's too much to take on. We can't see the steps to progress. If our skills are not being utilized, so we are just cruising by, we end up getting bored and we switch off in that. And so we want to maintain the middle point and that's where flow comes in. Now, the idea of this is, if things are too hard in life, we can regress the challenge. We slow things down. We simply focus on a technique, more than the outcome.

Richard (02:25):
The reverse is true. If we're too easy, if it's too bored, we progress the challenge, mix things up. We either self-handicap ourselves or take something new out. And so when we're in flow, we transgress the challenge. We create something new with those emerging skills and insights.

Richard (02:41):
Now, the way I use this in my life, I use something called MITs, Most Important Tasks, and something called Brain Fm. And so, most important tasks to me are, at the end of each day, what are the three things that I need to achieve the next day to make it a success? If you are in some form of successful job, if you're working for yourself, you'll know that that list of to-dos never stops, does it? It's always getting added to. And so if you always look at that, your day is not going to be successful, because there's always more to do.

Richard (03:11):
So breaking it down to the three clear points. What are the three things that if I achieve tomorrow, tomorrow is success? Because otherwise, when I'm in a rut, I don't want to engage because it just seems too big. I just don't want to tackle it. I've got so much on my plate. What's the point? It's never going to go. And so if I break it down to three clear, most important tasks for your next day, for me, it really engages me in motivation, because I know that I can achieve it. And quite often, I end up doing more.

Richard (03:40):
Now when I'm doing my tasks, especially the creative work that I do, I then use something called Brain Fm. And this is one of the most amazing apps for helping me engage, or helping me get into a flow state when I'm doing creative work. It's specifically designed to work with scientific and evidence-based strategies to change your brainwave state. And so it's like you're getting sucked into this vortex of focus and you're just in the moment and time, hours just fly by. And so it's really helps me become really productive and to achieve those tasks that I set myself to do. If you're interested in that, you can find a link below.

Richard (04:20):
The second strategy I use is to plan, and most importantly, schedule three ways in changing my physiological state. And this is on the day level, the weekly level and on a monthly level.

Richard (04:32):
And so on a daily level, this is about daily practices. What helps you become and feel most energized and vitalized? For me, it's breathwork, and it's meditation first thing in the morning. It's movement, so bare minimum of movement each day, that's a yoga flow. That's something where I'm using my body, changing the axis that I move on, mobilizing all of my major joints. I get into nature. I make sure I see sunshine. I get in the cold water. So in the mornings as well, after I've done that, I'll get in the sea. These are practices that I know are going to fill me with energy, give me clarity, focus and fill me with energy, that I do on a daily basis.

Richard (05:08):
Now my wife will tell you that I can get very consistent, and too consistent in a way sometimes. And so maybe, it's about stopping those for a few days. That works for me at times, to come away from your daily practices, because to me, if they're not giving me anything, then I need to reset. And so, of course there's consistency and sometimes we don't feel like doing it. But the idea of that subtlety, of is this something I still need to do, or is this something I need to break the habit of? Am I just doing it to go through the motions?

Richard (05:39):
The weekly levels are, can you develop a deeper breath practice? Can you cook a meal that you've never done before for friends? Or what about your intimacy? How often do you schedule intimacy with your partner or with yourself? Our neurophysiology is hard-wired for orgasm and orgasm gives us so many benefits, well-being benefits. And Jamie Wheal has written a brand new book, Recapture the Rapture, and he dives into that. And this is fascinating. He says, another Kinsey Institute alumni, Dr. Nicole Prause, has taken up the question, how to boost health and well-being, by replacing prescription drugs with orgasm?

Richard (06:13):
Prause was an early protégé, earning her doctorate at the university of Indiana and Kinsey Institute and doing her post-doc work at Harvard. She worked at the veterans administration and landed a research position at UCLA. There, her unapologetic interest in bringing data driven science to the most taboo of topics, ran into political and social reality. The biggest misconception about sex, is that using sex to feel better is unhealthy, Prause explains. We have strong evidence that sex in an excellent method of improving mood, can be a primary method of coping and be engaged in on a regular basis, she says. A recurring theme in our exploration of human sexuality, is that the same experience that can lift us out of our lowest lows, can also provide glimpses of our highest highs. The deep alleviation of suffering, often goes hand in hand with peak experience. The study of women's orgasm looked to see if 15 minutes of manual clitoris stimulation could deliver a similar boost in mood, shifts in time perception, ineffability, and sacredness at a psilocybin studies.

Richard (07:12):
Now they're referring to psilocybin studies by Johns Hopkins University. They took 800 participants of varying ages, ethnicities and gender. The study revealed first, clitoral stimulation can trigger a substantial mystical experience, comparable in strength to a moderate dose of psilocybin. Second, 62% of participants reported complete mystical experience compared to 52% in the Johns Hopkins psilocybin study in 2011. And third, while both partners reported moderate to strong mystical experiences, women reported a stronger mystical response than men. This has meaningful implications for the rest of us. Mystical states, arguably one of the essential yearnings of humans throughout history, and now proven to have a strong correlation with well-being, healing and existential equanimity, are attainable through one of the most accessible methodologies available, that doesn't require specific skills or esoteric practice to get there.

Richard (08:07):
If you are feeling right, and you have a partner, or if you are not having a partner, you're on your own, how can you schedule in that very primal human experience of orgasm? The taboos in society often limit us, because we're people-pleasing, we're trying to stay out the limelight. We don't want to stand out. Yet the more we just have these discussions about connecting, reconnecting to our human nature and the most potent parts to us, that is a powerful step to take.

Richard (08:32):
The third area to change, is the monthly area. And so going deeper, even deeper into this, maybe you could schedule a whole weekend away, looking at intimacy. Maybe you can schedule a weekend away with your family. You can go into nature, go camping, doing something that takes you out of your normal day-to-day, to break that rut, to break that root. These are practices that help both Anna and myself so greatly.

Richard (08:56):
And the third strategy is to acknowledge it and to own it. I know this sounds obvious. You are tired of knowing it. You're tired of knowing that you're in a rut. But for me, acknowledging the rut, acknowledging those changes in mood, that fluctuate, that undulate throughout my life, have turned into a fascinating practice. You begin to feel, and I think that's one of the major things about acknowledging it and owning it. If we don't, we default to numbing, we default to numbing on binge-watching Netflix. We numb on substances, alcohol, on food, maybe on porn for some people. And so you're losing the sacredness and the connection to orgasm or the sacredness to changing your state to one that's just unconscious. You're just doing it to stop feeling.

Richard (09:42):
But what if you could change that? What if you just acknowledged it for once? Well, if you felt it, you were in it, you allowed yourself to feel it, I'm feeling in a rut. How does this feel? Not just in the mind, but within your body, the visceral nature to that. To me, that has been such a powerful practice, and it's opening up this world of curiosity and profound insights into my inner world, my inner landscape, that doesn't have to be associated with spiritual practice, even though I consider it is a spiritual practice, but it's just an amazing way of allowing yourself to feel. And if you're used to pushing things away, to numbing things out, doing something different, allow yourself to be in the rut.

Richard (10:23):
I'm now at a point in my life where I want to free myself as much as I can in this lifetime. And so that requires me to look at myself, to look at how I'm living my life, to what I'm doing, what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, and the actions that I take, and remain curious, remain open to learn about yourself. Really starts with learning to feel, learning to feel your body, learning to feel what's going on below your mind, below your eyes. If you're just stuck here, you mission out a whole load of information that's going on.

Richard (10:54):
Those three strategies have been incredibly powerful for me, to understanding, working with this challenged skill principle, to plan, three ways to change my physiological state, and to acknowledge and own it. To invite that to you, to give that a go, to try to remain open. If you are in a rut and you want to get out of it, you actually want to get out of it, begin to look at these.

Richard (11:14):
And to help you with that, I want to remind you that a free masterclass on the seven improvement steps to become clear, effective, and impactful in your life is still open. So if you want to watch the masterclass, if you want to apply for freedom of being coaching program, stay until the end of that masterclass, and you'll see the steps on how you can do both.

Richard (11:30):
And if you haven't subscribed yet, please click the subscribe button, and click the bell. And that way be notified each and every week when I release new content on how to become clear and effective.

Richard (11:40):
Now I thank you for joining and I see you on another episode.