Hey there,

I've been stuck in a rut for about month now. I don't mean the type of muddy rut where you get jammed with your feet or tyres. Rather, I've been wrestling with its far more challenging cousin: The mental rut -- also known as the slump or the funk.

Writing has been feeling like walking over chewing gum. Getting out of bed like climbing Mount Everest without oxygen. Ideas have been nebulous. Motivation scarce.

And yet, after spending all this time in my rut, I've come to see it differently. I realized there's an art to embracing a rut.

The art of embracing a rut

Why does being in a rut feel so distressing? I think it's because it has this bitter flavor of FOMO. There's so much we want to achieve in life but alas, here we are, jammed and downcast.

People who never got into one of these ruts will offer the ingenious solution to "just snap out of it." But of course, it's not that easy. When our mind is in a rut, we can't pull our feet back out of the sludge, hop in the shower, and forget about the incident. No -- mental ruts are sneaky. Treacherous. Sticky.

Worse, ruts are self-reinforcing. Throughout my rut, for instance, I experienced writer's block so harsh, it felt like a slap in the face: painful, degrading, discouraging. This, in turn, made me moody and less likely to exercise and go outside. And that made me see even more obstacles, and down the spiral I went...

It's only natural, then, that mountains of advice have piled up on the internet, promising us quick solutions and easy steps to get out of a rut. "Leave your comfort zone," they argue. "Set small goals." "Remember self care."

Ugh.

To me, all this soulless advice made everything worse. For one thing, because it spawns the illusion that the only goal in life is to become a productivity machine. For another, because it induces the subtext -- be it intentional or not -- that there's something fundamentally wrong with being in a rut. Most advice argues that ruts are problems to be fixed. Diseases to be cured.

But what if we got it all wrong? What if a rut isn't a problem but the first step of a solution?

Luckily, we can learn from someone who has perfected the art of embracing ruts: nature. Take trees. How do they handle the worst rut of their life (aka a long, icy winter)? Do they squeeze sprouts out of their branches? Do they desperately hold on to their leaves?

Nope.

They just chill out for a while (literally). They flow with the course of their circumstances. Winter is for rest, fall is a time to let go, spring is rejuvenating, and summer fruitful. Once we learn from a tree's approach to dealing with a rut, it becomes obvious that we can't pump out apples during winter -- no matter how hard we try.

In this sense, we'd do us a great favor if we stopped focusing on the question "how do I get out of the rut?" and instead, turned to an alternative: "What's the most worthwhile thing I can do in this rut?" In other words, how can we act in accordance to the rut, rather than resist it?

For me, this meant to stop forcing myself to churn out articles, go to lectures that drained me, or be out and about. Conversely, it meant respecting my sleep schedule and meditating more often. I found that having low energy wasn't the problem; the problem was having low energy while pretending I was the indefatigable Hercules.

With that in mind, here's another question that helped me embrace my rut: "What might my mind/body be trying to achieve by sending me into a rut?" In my case the answer has been shockingly simple: rest. Ruts are simply how my mind responds to overstimulation. And so, I allowed myself to became naturally unproductive, like a frozen apple tree.

And then, of course, there's the fear that a rut won't pass, that it's an eternal winter. But I drew a lot of hope from reading this passage in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring:

How do we know a rut will pass? Because the proof is all around us. Bees stream out of their hive, seeds pierce through the ground, trees sprout fruit. (And let's not forget: I'm writing these lines -- a task that seemed impossible two weeks ago.)

Ultimately, ruts deserve greater dignity. They're not a sign of weakness or defeat. Instead, they're an invitation to pause and draw new strength for a new season.

Until next time,

Stephan

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