Climbing Out of a Rut By Turning the Wheel

     Imagine a hill covered in snow. Fresh powder no tracks, footprints, or paw prints. Skip forward after all the sleds in the neighborhoods have had their runs. Deep grooves have been carved into the hill and have iced over as the sun goes down at the end of the day. Now picture yourself trying to control a sled as the last person to hurdle down. Now why is it that you can't control where you are going? You've done this a hundred times before. You lean in harder into your turns, hold your feet out to brake, but suddenly the hill falls out from under you and the world spirals out of control. Gravity hits and takes you down, hard. As you try to catch the wind that was knocked out of your chest, you wonder what happened to the hill you had at day break. You suddenly long for fresh snowfall and know that this may have been the last one for the year, and if you live in South Texas, possibly for the decade.

    Now imagine that hill you pictured is your brain, and the sleds running down it are the daily thoughts coming in and out ad nauseam. Eventually the neuron pathways freeze and we seem to be stuck in the same routines, making the same mistakes, and walking in to the same issues. If you haven't pieced it together yet, this blog is about ruts. A rut has a few definitions, one is a usual or fixed practice and the other is, a channel worn by the continuous passage of a wheel. Do you think that the two definitions are related? The feeling of being is a rut is remarkably similar to the experience of driving in one. When I was 16 I spent ten days in Nicaragua on a mission trip and encountered ruts so deep that if the box truck we were riding in, with two benches and no seat-belts, were to accidentally steer into them the wheels could actually beak off the axle; not to mention the thousands of pot holes requiring the slow speed of ten miles an hour to negotiate. Another time my wife and I visited Honduras during a cruise and encountered similar ruts on the road with men taking tips to fix the ruts and pot holes, we were told they were "private contractors" and not government workers. Even with the slow progress of non sanctioned labor the roads were incredibly bumpy during our tour.

    Our tendency when falling into trouble is over correct by making wide turns and big changes. This is the surest way to go from a rut into a ditch upside down. We are now into January and after making it through one of the widely recognized years on record, the tendency to make big promises to ourselves for 2021 is still in full effect. It is almost like making it through last year wasn't enough, we have to do it better this year. While I am on board with change and growth it seems that this tendency is actually a barrier to natural emotional growth as it ends when we fail, and resolutions don't make sense. Thinking things like this year I am going to be kinder, quit smoking, lose weight, set better boundaries, and start rock climbing are all great goals, but together become a Sisyphean boulder that we quickly become tired of way before eternity. So if big swings often swing back, how do we climb out of the ruts we had from last year? I don't have all the answers for that and if I did, I would be selling them, but there are a few things that can gently ease us out of the rut we're stuck in by gently turning our wheel.

1. Positive Thinking

      Negative thoughts are often the most pervasive. Shame and guilt can often be the rudders our narrative uses to steer our thoughts. While this is all too common it is certainly not healthy. Feeling negatively about ourselves may be a step toward change, but it will never precipitate real long lasting change. We need to have honest positive thoughts as well and in my experience, adding positivity to a routinely negative mind can all to often be the difference maker when change is the goal. Tips for spending more time with positive thinking are, spending time with self talk in the mirror in the morning telling yourself the good things that people see in you. You can write them down with dry erase or place sticky notes on mirror, depending on your humidity and climate. Another way to ramp up your positive thinking is to say one thing you are grateful for every night before bed for at least twenty days. Neuroscientists have studied that there are positive changes in the networks of the brain when we add gratitude habitually into the mix. Meditation on scripture is yet another way to focus on the positive especially when they are verses regarding God's love and high esteem for us as his highest creation.

2. Goal Setting

    Setting realistic goals is an activity done better with close friends, spouses, or mentors. You can set measurable goals that seem just beyond the reach of what you currently can do. Measurable means that there will be an observable sign as to whether you accomplish said goal or goal set, and also an objective means of deciding successes versus failures. This should be something that is regularly pointed back to by those close to you, and evaluated at an agreed upon time. Neglecting those around us that have set goals to "give them space to complete it" is not helpful in the long run. Whether you are the one setting goals or the one helping the goal setter, check in often and validate the feelings around what they are doing differently, but also hold them to their word.

3. Doing One Thing Today

    Not all of us face an obstacle when it comes to respecting ourselves. We had parents that instilled in us a work ethic to be proud of and lots of security to be ourselves and valued. But in this blog we are talking about ruts that we get into and that often means falling short of what we see our capabilities. This does not describe all of us, but for the ways we are disappointed in ourselves, or the insecurities that crop up every time we threaten change, there is a technique that can pull us out of victimhood and back into the drivers seat. I work with teenagers and the ability and capability among them differs as much as you might suspect, but there is a common thread. There is often an underlying thread to the teenage experience and that is finding out the ways people tell you, "you are not enough" or "you are too much." Those messages over time accumulate and rather than having the desired affect of motivation, they tend to become barriers to the success. So here is a solution, not the solution, but a good step. Do something you respect today and recognize it with your self, whether that was making your bed or doing a load of laundry. It was something that needed to be done and you did it. They don't have to do with your goals, but will start reminding you that you are capable and that barriers of desire and stagnation can certainly be surmounted. Just do one thing today that you respect.

4. Allowing for Deviations

    My dad often quotes John Lennon when talking about how things are going, and he says, "life is what happens when you are busy making other plans." Allowing for deviations to your path to happen without abandoning yourself in the process, is essential to a long term turning out of the rut. People with substance addictions know that relapse is often part of the story, but it is up to them to make sure that it isn't the end of the story. Hope is the ability to believe that life can be better even without evidence to the contrary. Even when we fall back into old routines, hope can be the catalyst to initiate change again. It is only when we fall to despair that we begin to accept that "it is what it is" and we cannot change it. Often the most uncomfortable conversations are close relatives or friends trying to rescue you from despair and remind you that either life was better before or that it can be better with effort and time.

5. Get Motivated, Don't Get Hungry

    A piece of wisdom I have heard from the AA community is to never let yourself go hungry. This is not a dietary statement, but covers much more about self care than it appears to. We fall into ruts whenever self protection becomes more important than self improvement. Coping strategies and self care are integral to turning the wheel and affecting positive change. It takes a certain amount of planning and decisiveness to place ourselves in a position to "never be hungry." We must know what we will need, plan for contingencies, and not put ourselves in situations where we will swept up into a survival mindset. On Maslow's hierarchy of needs our physical needs our at the bottom of the pyramid. It means that our brains do not concern themselves with higher functioning to respond well to the challenges of the day, when our physiological needs take a hit, i.e. getting hungry. If we are more purposed and reflective of our day, and caring for ourselves, the curve balls are not so big. When the brain is in survival mode, the big things are even bigger deals and often the small things that really make a difference between a positive change and more of the same go unnoticed or ignored. It really is like the snickers commercial, "you're not you, when you're hungry."

      Our minds are responsible for quite a lot. Much of our culture is geared towards ignoring issues of the mind and rather allowing for the next book, movie, or car to break us out of our rut. Maybe the next thing I consume will help fill the void. But as a friend of mine Ted used to say, "you change your mind and you can change the world." For Ted the state of the world did not change on a reality basis, but on a perspective level. Scripture actually speaks to this in Romans 12:2, "2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." (ESV) Scripture calls for us to not take the easy path of sticking to the ruts, but to turn the wheel through scripture, relationships, and prayer in order to change our minds. If there is someone who is an expert at changing minds it is God, because the man that wrote the verse in Romans, changed his career to professional Christian prosecutor and persecutor to a humble and zealous missionary for Jesus. Start with a prayer to God acknowledging your stuckness and asking him to begin the process to change your mind and ultimately change your heart. You don't have to climb a mountain for God to get started, just turn your wheel a bit and move forward, you'll make it out.

Happy New Years Everyone!

In Jesus Christ,

 Marshall