A Spell for Getting Out of a Rut

Has anyone ever told you that, in order to break

a harmful pattern, you simply have to

buckle down and have more discipline?

FUCK. THAT.

Stepping on the gas and spinning your wheels

will only dig you in deeper.

Let’s figure out how to build real,

sustainable momentum

and get you back on the road.

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Make Magic:

Remember, my love: sometimes, life is challenging.

If you’re stuck in a low spot,

it’s NOT because you’re lazy or damned.

Patriarchal, white-dominant culture

wants you to blame yourself.

Instead, look for the tools and practices,

the ways of being and believing

that nurture your preferred mode of living.

Transcript: A Spell for Getting Out of a Rut

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello. [laugh] I just had the impulse to call you “pumpkin pie.” Hello, pumpkin pie. [laugh] So, hello, dear listener. Are you a nicknames person? I am such a nicknames and terms of endearment person. And I’m excited to talk to you today, and to give you a spell for getting out of a rut. 

I’ve been thinking about you all morning. That’s what I do before my podcasts. I think about you out there. Some of you write me and tell me that you listen on a walk, or you listen when you’re cooking, or you listen on a drive. I love knowing that you tune into this podcast for support and for grounding. And, yeah, I’ve been excited to talk to you all day.

OK. So, a rut. I think you know what I mean by being in a rut. But it’s basically when you are in a pattern that is undesirable and/or just isn’t serving you. And, so, a lot of times, a rut can be a low-energy kind of place, like in a rut of not really moving your body, or in a rut of watching lots of television, or in a rut of avoiding a project. 

And, like, none of those things in and of themselves are troublesome. It’s fine to not move your body sometimes. It’s fine to watch television sometimes. It’s fine to avoid a project sometimes. But it’s when we get stuck in a pattern, in a rut of those behaviors.

I sort of think that there’s another kind of rut also. It’s a high-gear, wheel-spinning rut, which is where we are stuck in hyperactivity, so stuck in a rut of over work, for example, or stuck in a rut of hyper responsiveness to email, let’s say. So, to me, being stuck in a rut doesn’t only mean that you are inactive. It also could mean that you are in a pattern that is hyperactive and not really serving you.

So, as always, I love to really lean into metaphors when they arise. And in this case, I would love to lean into the idea of having a car stuck in a rut. What do we do when we have a car stuck in a rut? And what wisdom, what approach can we take from that very physical example, and apply to our own kind of like psychobehavioral approach to the undesirable pattern that we find ourselves in?

So, of course, I asked the interwebs what to do when stuck in a rut, and I found some driving advice like for cars, and I also found some coaching advice. And I want to start with the coaching advice because the coaching advice, in my opinion, was really bad. [laugh] 

The coaching advice came from Tony Robbins, who is a very famous coach. And, listen, I’m going to be a little reductive here. An article that he or someone on his team wrote said, “Oh, here’s the things to do when you’re stuck in a rut.” 

But one of them stood out to me as just so perfectly representative of the conventional, patriarchal, white-dominant, capitalistic, individualistic approach that I just—I have to highlight it because, in my experience and in my opinion, it’s exactly what’s wrong with conventional wisdom around getting out of a psychoemotional behavioral rut. This is what he says. 

Turn shoulds into musts, meaning, here, you’re not really exercising, and you’re thinking, oh, I should go for a walk. I should got to the gym. Turn it into a must. Like, all you really need is more willpower and more dedication to your should. But, I have to tell you, if I turned all of my shoulds into musts [laugh], if I as a middle-aged woman turned all of my shoulds into musts, I would collapse under the weight of them. 

I spend a lot of time in my own self-coaching practice, and a lot of time in my professional coaching practice, helping people free themselves from shoulds because, by and large, these shoulds are designed to recruit us into helping to perpetuate systemic oppression. So very many of the shoulds that a woman, that a person of color, that a person with a marginalized identity has are designed to keep us small and quiet and compliant with the standards of the system. So, fuck that. [laugh] Fuck that.

Turning a should into a must is (a) unhelpful in that so many of the shoulds are not actually coming from a place that helps us to thrive as individuals. And even if the should is one that might help us thrive as individuals—so, let’s go back to moving my body, yeah, moving my body more, which, for me, will help me thrive as an individual—turning that should—I should move my body daily—into a must, to me, is akin to slamming my foot on the gas pedal. 

And this is where we look at the car in the rut. The very last thing you want to do if your vehicle is stuck in the mud, in the snow, if it’s stuck in a rut, is to put your foot on the gas because it will only dig you deeper into the rut you find yourself in, right? It’ll spin your wheels. You can even imagine it, right, imagine the car stuck in the mud, gas pedal down, back wheels spinning, mud flying everywhere, and the car just sinks a little further down.

So, conventional wisdom—I really want to acknowledge—tells us (a) you find yourself in a rut because you are lazy, because you don’t have willpower, because you don’t really care, because you aren’t committed. I think in the little Tony Robbins article, he actually says something like, “Your life could be extraordinary if only you would turn your should into a must.” 

So (a) you’re to blame for the rut that you’re in. And then (b) conventional wisdom says, if you want out of the rut, just put your foot on the gas, and get up out of it, right? Summon the willpower. Summon the goodness, the virtuousness. 

Just decide to be good, and start being good—not at all acknowledging the context that we find ourselves in, which is, at this moment, in 2022, the mud and muck of having lived through two years of a pandemic, the mud and muck of having lived through almost a decade of harrowing political circumstances, the mud and the muck of the various systemic oppressions that surround us, ignoring the context ignores how we got into the rut in the first place, which is not actually—I believe—that we’re lazy and bad and damned, by the way, because all of this is puritan logic. 

But it’s rather to say, wow, you know, spending years, decades, lifetimes driving [laugh] these roads that are soaked in challenge, yeah, I’ve found myself in a bit of a rut. And it’s not because I’m bad or lazy or damned. It’s not because I don’t want the extraordinary life enough. It is because sometimes life is challenging; because sometimes when it rains, it pours; and my road is not necessarily perfectly paved with power and privilege.

This piece is really, really, really, really important because there is perhaps nothing less empowering. There is perhaps nothing more harmful than being in a rut, and blaming ourselves for it. It’s very difficult to move in the direction of positive change when we are blaming and criticizing ourselves.

OK. So, how do we get out of a rut? Let’s return again to the car metaphor. Indeed, what I found in my research, the worst thing to do is to step on the gas. And what does that look like? 

Well, in the example of moving your body, it might be like, OK, I’m doing it. I’m going to the gym. And, so, one morning, I wake up at 5:30, and I put on my shoes, and I go to the gym, and I feel great, and I end up spending an hour and a half there. I have an amazing workout. And I get home, and I think, all right, I’m up and out of that rut. 

But [laugh] then the next morning, I’m so sore, I can’t imagine going into the gym. And then the day after that, I realize that I’ve just got so much to do today and, you know, I did have a really good workout on Monday, so it’s probably fine. And then Thursday, I find I’m right back in the rut again.

Maybe you resonate with this. We do a giant, big move toward getting out of the rut, and it doesn’t actually help us out. So, there are three things that I found in my research recommended again and again to get your car out of a rut. And I love them. They all correspond to the approaches that I have found helpful as a coach and as a person myself.

So, one is tools—tools. There are like things you can buy to put underneath your back wheels that help you to get out of a rut, or even, in a pinch, you could use something like a piece of cardboard. There are tools in your car. Like, there are ways that you can adjust the way that you’re using your car. You can shift it into a lower gear, for example. You can turn off the traction control, apparently. Like, you can shift how you are using the tools at your disposal.

The correspondence here, of course, for me, is that you can use your mind in a different way, and you can employ tools—tools like a planner or a journal or self-reflection prompts—you can use tools that can help you to get out of the rut. So, really importantly, this does not mean just turning the switch on your willpower. 

So, for example, one tool that I have shared with you before is asking yourself at the beginning of every day, “How do I want to feel today?” So, what are my desired feelings? And then what are the things that I can believe about myself, about my life? What are the things that I can do today? How can I approach my day in a way that conjures more of those feelings? 

So, it’s not a simple flip-the-switch. Rather, it’s a shift in orientation. I’m going to shift toward this other kind of way of being. So, that would be an example of a tool. And there are lots of tools. Meditation is a tool. Podcasts, like this one, and books are tools. For me, my planner and my journal are tools. So, how do I get out of a rut? Let me use some of the tools at my disposal, including my own mind. 

OK. Number two, when we’re getting out of a rut, it’s not about just slamming on the gas, and coming out of it. It’s about rocking back and forth. We go a little forward, a little back, a little forward, a little back, a little forward, a little back. 

So, there’s a way that I love to think about this, and it is that a rut, we can also think of as a vicious cycle—a vicious cycle, right. So, back to the example of I’m not moving my body as much as I want to. What’s happening? Well, I’m waking up a little late, and I’m feeling a little flustered in the morning. And, so, I drink a lot of coffee, and I don’t take time to sit with my planner and my journal, and think about how I want to feel for the day. 

And I pick up my phone, I dive straight into my email, and I start the day distracted. And I realize around 11, I never ate anything, and I have a really big brunch, and then I crash around 2 p.m. because I just had such a busy morning. 

I don’t get everything done that I wanted to at work, and so I go home and, instead of going for a walk, I try to finish up the project that I didn’t do during the afternoon because I couldn’t concentrate. And then I have a later dinner than I’d like because I was working, and then I am sort of wound up and stressed. 

And, so, to destress, I end up sitting on the couch and watching several episodes of a show I really like, and I stay up a little later than I should. But I just have had such a busy day that I end up going to bed a lot later than I wanted to. And, so, the next morning, I wake up late again, right? That is a vicious cycle, and if you wonder how I was able to describe it so well, well, darling, I have lived that. [laugh] Right? I have lived that. 

So, if that is—and I’m calling it the vicious cycle because we know that terminology—the vicious cycle, then what I want to do when I’m getting out of a rut is I want to orient toward a vivacious cycle, out of the vicious cycle and into the vivacious cycle. And how do we do that? It is just choice-by-choice. Remember, we’re getting out of a rut, a little forward, a little back, a little forward, a little back. 

So, how do I get out of the vicious cycle I just talked about? Well, I might in the morning when I’m rushed and running late, I might choose not to dive straight into my email. I might take just a moment to sit with my cup of coffee, and think about how I want to feel today about what’s most important before I jump into my day. 

Now, I might still have a pretty hectic day. That could totally still happen. I might still not eat till 11. I might still end up not being able to concentrate around 2. But maybe around 2, instead of—I don’t know—shopping on the internet—that’s what I usually do when I’m in a brain fog. I go and look at linen sheets or sundresses [laugh] at this time of year. 

Maybe instead of doing that, I might remember, oh, you know, I really—I wanted to feel vibrant today. I’m going to go for a walk, and I might go outside at 2, and I might go for a 15-minute walk, a 10-minute walk. I might even just walk down the stairs to my mailbox, grab my mail, look at the daffodils, and then come back upstairs. 

But, you see, I’ve rocked a little forward. I’ve taken myself a little bit in the direction of the vivacious cycle, yeah, because what happens next? Well, I come back in from my five-minute walk, and I feel a little refreshed. And, so, I make myself a sparkly beverage, I sit down, and I work just a little more efficiently. And I feel less sluggish and less resentful about it, so that instead of working way too late, I’m able to stop, and I’m able to eat dinner just a little bit earlier.

And maybe because I don’t feel like I had such a terrible day, when I’m watching my shows in the evening, instead of sitting and like revenge-relaxing [laugh] through four episodes, I watch two, and then I realize, you know, I’m actually kind of sleepy. Maybe I’ll go take a bath. And then I end up in bed just a little earlier, and maybe I rest just a little better.

And, so, I am on my way to the feelings to the life that I want; not because I hit the gym at 5:30 a.m. but because choice-by-choice in my day, I started to orient in a new direction and, I will add, in a new, sustainable direction. And that is how, in my experience, it is actually possible to get out of a rut; not by slamming on the gas but by shifting incrementally in small moments toward what I want, toward vivacity. 

So, how do we do that? Well, we really do just remember we’re always existing at choice—we’re always existing at choice—and it is choice-by-choice that we are contributing to the vicious cycle or the vivacious cycle. And it is the small moves toward vivacity [laugh], the small moves toward how I want to feel, that make the difference. We begin to pattern in slowly and sustainably, right, the new feeling. 

We get out of the rut not by just launching out of it but, rather, by rocking back and forth to ease our way out of it—because, really, for so many of us, it’s ease and freedom that we’re really longing for. Why do I want to move my body? For ease and freedom. Why do I want to get better sleep? For ease and freedom. [laugh] Yeah?

OK. One more way to get out of a rut, and this way is really important: with support—with support. Like, get your friends to gather round the back of your car. Let the car rock back, and then when the car is pushing forward, get them to push. Right? Call a tow truck, and get them to help you out of this situation you find yourself in.

Get support. It is not all up to you. Now, what does that support look like? I think that’s actually highly individual. So, for me, for example, working out with someone else is really supportive and helpful. I love group exercise classes. That’s been one of the toughest things about the pandemic for me is not having as much access to group exercise.

I love working out with my trainer. Like [laugh], when she is expecting me on Wednesdays and Saturdays, I am going to show up for her. Now, would I show up for me? Hmm, some days, I would. But some days, I wouldn’t. But I will show up for her.

I know there are some people for whom some of the newer apps and tools have been really helpful. So, there are some people that love Peloton, right, like the app and the classes. And for some people, that is really, really supportive. And if you’ve tried that, and it’s not working, that’s not on you. It’s not that you are wrong. It’s that those particular tools and support aren’t the right ones to help you out of your rut, yeah?

I know one friend who walks because she walks her dog. The dog supports her in walking several miles a day. I have another friend who depends on a walking partner. She’s not going to show up to walk for herself, but she will totally show up and meet her partner at 6 a.m.

And I have another friend who prefers to walk alone, and is super into bird-watching. So, why does she walk? She walks so that she can be with the birds. The key is figuring out what is the support that’s right for me? What are the tools that help me to get out of my rut? 

And, really, what does my own version of a vivacious cycle feel like? What are the vibes I want to orient toward? This, to me, is the opposite of should. It’s not about should. It’s about want. It’s not about what I should be doing. It’s about how I want to be feeling. And there’s so much more creativity and flexibility available when we are orienting toward the vibes and feelings that we want.

OK. So, this is your multiplex, your many-sided spell for getting out of rut. I want to end by saying that the surest way to keep yourself in a vicious cycle is to be vicious in the way you think about and talk to yourself. Blaming and shaming yourself, being vicious in your inner dialog is a surefire way to stay stuck in a rut. 

To get out, it’s about finding and using tools that help. It’s about accepting support that helps you particularly, that really works for you, because you are the star of this show. And it’s about rocking choice-by-choice, step-by-step toward a more vivacious cycle, toward the way that you want to be and feel in the world.

All right, my love, I hope you’ve found this helpful. And if you find yourself in a rut, wherever it is, if you find yourself stuck, if you find yourself spinning your wheels, I hope you’ll look at that place and see what are the tools and the support that can help me rock my way out of this. Thank you so much for listening, as always. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

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