I am writing this to help a friend. They are where many of us have found ourselves at different times of our lives. Lost, discouraged, feeling alone, and thinking every direction only leads uphill.
I understand, I have been there and I want to offer what helped me when I needed to find my way back to who I am and where I belonged.
It doesn’t matter how you got to where you are now. You are here now. You may have lost someone important in your life, you may have been fired from your job, you may have experienced a traumatic event, or you may be experiencing an addiction or mental health experience. What has happened until now cannot be changed, no matter how much we wish it to be so.
What matters is what you do now and moving forward.
It’s not going to be easy. It is a cliché, but to get to where you belong or where you would like to be is going to be difficult. Remember though, it is not impossible.
Start by asking for help because nobody can do what you need to do alone. You may blame yourself; you may feel some guilt about how everything led to this point, and you may feel shame for your decisions, and you may even believe that you “made your bed and now you have to sleep in it.” Remember the first point, how and why you got to where you are doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters now is what you do moving forward from here.
Ask for help. Begin with friends and family, call 211 as they can help. Many people are not familiar with 211, it is a free service that can help, these people can answer questions and start you on a path. If you are experiencing mental health or addiction issues, there is help available, seek out emergency health lines, help from your doctor, or even online. When you are in a “rut” oftentimes simply relying on yourself only makes the rut deeper and more difficult to escape.
Find a person you trust to be your “recovery buddy.” Your path to recovery is not likely going to be a straight line. You are going to falter, you are going to slide backward; and having someone you trust, someone with your best interests at heart to talk to may make all the difference. It might be a parent, a family member, a friend, a worker, or a boss; but calling them when you start to slip can help you from bottoming out. You may have to find multiple “buddies” throughout your journey. Whoever you have, you should call them whenever you need them, regardless of the time of day.
Remember not anyone can be a “recovery buddy.” Some people who might seem like good candidates are not; choose carefully; some people may not want you to change for any number of reasons. Be careful of people who tell you that you don’t have to do anything different because your situation will not improve unless you change the things that put you in the rut. Additionally appreciate that people who distract you from doing what you know you need to do are not helping you.
Find a place to start. When we are free-falling or emotionally at “rock bottom,” we can feel helpless and hopeless. One of the first casualties of being in this situation is the loss of our self-confidence. Begin by taking stock of the skills, traits, and experience you have to help you make a plan to escape your rut.
Get organized. Often pressure makes people caught in a rut feel overly stressed. The stress can get so overwhelming you can become paralyzed, losing your ability to do even the simplest task. Things you once did with ease seem like monstrous obstacles. Once in a rut, people often turn away to avoid their obstacles for avoidance and lose themselves even more by constantly searching for an easier path instead of dealing with their obstacles.
Start and finish things, even small things. From experience, avoiding obstacles, especially the small ones, only makes life more difficult. My advice is to look at the obstacles or obstacles and use a simple tool, a post-it note, to break the obstacles down. Start by writing down what you can about the obstacle (one point per post-it) and break it into the smallest chunks or elements possible. This method is called “Kanban,” and then prioritize the urgency of each task relative to each other. Then starting with the top three to five priorities start working to eliminate them. Not only will this method help, but it will also visually help you deal with your obstacles in small, more easily managed pieces. When a post-it is completed, keep it so you can see what you have accomplished, and start again.
When some people are in a rut, it is easy to forget how important the feeling of completion or closure is. Completing anything will begin to help rebuild your self-confidence, which is one of the major elements in boosting yourself out of your rut.
When you fail at something, it doesn’t mean you are a failure. As adults collectively we don’t handle failure at anything well. Failing is something we all will experience and this is especially important when you are in a figurative “rut.” Failing is hard but staying in your rut is even worse. My advice is to ask “What did you do right? What did you do wrong? What did you learn? Each time you fail and then try again. It is hard but very necessary.
You are going to have to make decisions. Regardless of whether in a rut or when you are not, every day you are faced with decisions. In the time available, use this process: what are the facts available to you, what are the alternatives you have, then you make the best decision you can. Avoiding making a decision is a decision and likely the worst thing you can do because you abdicate your ability to influence outcomes. The best decision is to make the right decision, the second best is to make the wrong decision. Either way, you are taking control of your path and at worst you will learn something you didn’t know before because you cannot stay where you are.
Set some goals for yourself. Try with just a few to begin, divide them into three main categories. Short-term – start with surviving, paying your bills, and putting food on your table, i.e. basic survival. Next, consider medium-term goals. Medium-term goals should be the building blocks for getting to your long-term goals, even if those goals are pretty fuzzy right now. Your goals and your priorities can and will change; however, if you can keep all three types of goals in mind as you make decisions and keep them within a 20-degree arc, everything you do will bring you closer to where and who you want to be.
You are going to feel alone and lost. Many times, on my journey I have felt alone even when I have been surrounded by people. You are not the first, you will not be the last, but what is important to realize is that this feeling will not last forever. When you start recognizing this feeling, call someone, call your recovery buddy, call 211; they can help realize you are not alone and you are going to get through this.
Don’t hide and withdraw from your world. Similar to the above point, when in a personal rut, being around and engaging with people is something you know at a high level that you need but at the moment you neither have the energy nor the will make to it happen. Being isolated and alone will not help you, make yourself call your recovery buddy, a helpline, 211, and find ways to be around people, it will not be easy, but it is very necessary for you each time it happens.
Your appearance. Along with self-confidence and feeling alone or lost, often times people in a rut will ignore or let their appearance slide. As you let your appearance slide, the downward slope of your self-image can increase and become a vicious spiral. How you present yourself to your world may be one of the easiest fixes, even if you don’t necessarily feel that way in the beginning. Treat how you look just like another obstacle to overcome, have post-it notes for your clothes, how you take care of your hair, and for other things. If you are looking for work, you are hoping to keep your job, or you simply want to feel better about yourself, appreciate the importance of taking care of yourself.
Time. Getting into your personal rut did not happen overnight nor will you getting out of it happen quickly. You will have to work hard to overcome your obstacles but always remember what you desire is waiting for you on the other side of those same obstacles. Your sense of self-worth, self-accomplishment, self-image, and confidence all will increase with every obstacle you put behind you. Patience and determination will make it so, with a little help from those people you trust.
This post outlines some of the major waypoints on a journey back to who and what you want to be. It is impossible to gauge how long it will take you, it will likely take longer than you think, but your efforts will be worth the time. No matter how hopeless and alone you feel, there is always a way forward. I know, that although our obstacles may be different, learning and using the tools in this post will help, they are an introduction, a start. I highly recommend everyone take a Mental Health First Aid Course to learn even more about these tools and others that are available.
Have faith in yourself, it is not a race, take the steps, be patient but determined, you owe it to yourself to try.
Good luck,
Paul.