I’m fresh out of a rut so I wanted to share my top tips for getting unstuck with you.
Sometimes things don’t go as planned. We oversleep, it’s raining and we planned a day outside, an appointment gets cancelled…life just happens. It’s easy in these moments to sink in and feel despair. Knowing that our plan can’t go forward as we expected often makes us feel like we have to abandon it completely, and sometimes we do. There are other times when we just need a fresh approach.
Top Tips for Getting Unstuck and Out of Your Rut
- Change location – sometimes taking a break is all you need. Take a bathroom break, or just go do something else for a few minutes. When you return to the task at hand, you may have a fresh view of it.
- Check your fuel gauge – Often when I have a lot to do I get sucked into my work and I forget something very important – food! These are the times when I tend to start feeling stuck and irritable because it’s my body’s way of telling me to refuel. Make sure it’s real food – not just some chips or cookies. Fruit is a great choice because it will often give you a natural boost in energy (try some grapes or a banana).
- Get Moving – Get that stress out of your body! If you can’t make it to a yoga class (my favorite) or the gym, just take a walk for a bit and release some of the tension. This can be especially helpful if you’ve been sitting at a desk for a long time.
- Celebrate What’s Going Well – It’s so easy for us to get quickly swept away with all that we’re not getting done but we tend to forget or ignore our triumphs. Even if they’re small, revel in them! When you break it down, everything is really a small step, without which we’d never reach our big goals.
- Surround Yourself with Love – Find support in your friends when you find yourself in a tough place. They can be a great sounding board for your frustrations, and they can offer suggestions that you may not have thought of on your own. Sometimes putting it out there is all it takes to make it melt away.
- Write It Out – Journaling can be extremely healing and useful. You may start writing about how stressed you are about not being able to get things done, and out of that may spring the idea you’ve been waiting for all along!
- Breathe – Close your eyes. Take a deep breath in through your nose. Exhale through the mouth. Release all that is not serving you. Repeat as needed.
- Take Time for Yourself – We need to remember to slow down and make time for ourselves. It’s easy to get caught up in our responsibilities for work and for others, but we are first and foremost responsible for ourselves. Do something that makes you happy – read, watch a movie, look at pictures that make you smile.
- Be Silly – Even if you don’t feel silly, be silly anyway. Turn up some music and dance around like crazy. Laugh at yourself. Give yourself a funny hairdo or put an outfit together of pieces that just don’t match. Sometimes we need to let loose and embrace the lighter side of life to bring balance back to our lives.
- Sleep – Our bodies heal when we sleep and sometimes when we’re in a rut, we’re in need of healing. If you don’t have the opportunity to nap, try some of the other tips in the meantime and promise yourself that you’ll leave plenty of time for sleep that night. Trust me, you’re likely to feel better in the morning.
Whatever you do to get out of your rut, remember that we all have them and they all pass with time. Sometimes they hang around a bit longer and sometimes they’re gone in a flash.
