If you feel lost, this is for you. (How to get out of a rut)

As humans, we’re drawn to progress, order, routine, habits, and direction.

You’re drawn to anything that increases your sense of clarity on what might happen next and your confidence in your chances of survival or prospering.

But there’s a problem here.

Actually, there are 2.

1. Mindlessness

If you don’t mindfully create progress, order, routine, habits, or direction you will mindlessly build it.

And if you mindlessly build it, it lacks meaning and will drag you down the path of least resistance.

Essentially any progress, order, routine, habits, or direction you mindlessly create is pointless.

2. Ruts

When you’re in a rut and you feel lost, it feels almost impossible to get out of it.

You’re in the abyss, it’s grabbed you by your ankles and it’s not letting go.

But it’s all in your head.

There’s nothing grabbing you, chaining you up, and pulling you down but yourself.

Which leads to the question, why do we dig ourselves into these mental holes of nothingness?

How do we end up in ruts and how do we end up feeling lost?

Well, to answer that, we have to diagnose what the words “lost” and “rut” mean.

To feel lost is to have a lack of direction.

To be in a rut is to feel lost with no sign of progress.

But both of these problems aren’t as simple as that, they have multiple layers, so let’s break them down.

Lacking Direction

If you’re in a rut, you feel lost.

So if you want to get out of a rut, you have to stop feeling lost.

So why do you feel lost?

Well, it’s because you don’t have direction.

If you don’t know where you want to go, if you don’t have a direction, if you don’t have GOALS or a VISION for your life, you have no way to judge your behaviours, filter actions or make decisions.

Because that’s what goals do.

Having a vision for your life and goals to strive toward helps you filter everything through the particular lens of a specific outcome.

Without it, you have no filter.

You have no way of knowing what actions to take or what decisions to make to help you get to where you want to go - because you DON’T KNOW where you want to go.

It means no action is more beneficial than another, no action behaviour, or decision is MORE valuable.

If every action has the same level of value, whilst some take less energy to perform (mindless, typical, negative habits such as scrolling/alcohol/drugs/porn etc), you’re going to automatically go down the path of these habits to conserve energy - you have no reason to put in the effort to perform beneficial habits.

And since every action has the same value and you have no direction to use as a filter, it creates another problem.

Absence of Responsibility

Goals and visions for the future create responsibility.

By setting a goal, or in other words, a direction, you take on the responsibility of rising to the level that’s required of you to achieve that goal.

By setting it, you are saying to yourself “This is something I do not yet have, I want to achieve it”.

You are expressing your desires and turning a thought into reality by setting a goal, you have said this is something I want - hence you have a responsibility to respect yourself enough to go and get it, because if you don’t take on that responsibility, you are actively disrespecting yourself by not going and at the very least, pursuing what you want.

Since a goal is something you don’t already have (by its nature, otherwise it wouldn’t be a goal), you have to improve to the level required of you to get it, you have to progress.

If you extrapolate this over the long term, over years of setting goal after goal, and with each goal being bigger than the last (since you have improved to reach that former goal), over time, this pursuit of improvement to achieve each goal, becomes a never-ending pursuit of progress.

It becomes the pursuit of becoming all you could be.

Which, you know by now, I believe to be the meaning of life.

So if you don’t set a goal or vision and don’t create a direction to go in - you abdicate responsibility.

Without responsibility, you have no reason to improve or strive for progress, you have no reason to take beneficial actions.

No mistake you make is your fault.

No failure your own.

And if your downfalls aren’t yours, your improvement isn’t yours to make either.

Which again creates 2 problems;

1. You have no reason to improve

And we humans love progress, we obsess over it - so if you lack progress you’ll get into a rut

2. You get complacent

Complacency

A lack of progress creates complacency.

You get comfortable with staying still and not improving.

Why?

Because you have no direction to filter your behaviours, so you have no responsibility to do those behaviours, so you have no standards.

Remember, goals and visions are great for filtering behaviours.

But you need to have standards which are minimum thresholds that you must meet.

Not just so that you can make progress, get out of a rut, and not feel lost but so that you can feel proud of yourself and respect yourself.

We all have a moral compass.

Things we know are right, things we know are wrong.

When you lack standards (or choose to ignore them) you’re defying this moral compass and doing what you know you shouldn’t.

You end up not respecting yourself.

Since you have less self-respect, you’re not going to set goals, filter your behaviours positively, take on responsibility, or do what you know you need to do - which does only 1 thing.

Lower your self-respect even further, causing you to sink deeper and deeper into a rut and perform worse and worse actions.

It’s a downward spiral that starts either because you lack standards, but more likely, because you lack direction, and you end up lost and in a rut.

How To Stop Feeling Lost (and get out of a rut)

You feel lost and are in a rut because you lack direction and responsibility, you’re complacent and you’re not making progress.

But remember, this isn’t some demon in the abyss grabbing you by the ankles - this is your mind, and that my friend, means you’re in control.

Solve A Damn Problem 

If you want to get out of a rut, you need to solve 2 problems - you feeling lost and your lack of progress.

Solving your feeling of being lost is powerful, but if you feel useless, you’ll struggle to do anything about it.

So you need to create some sense of progress and momentum so that you feel useful and actually respect yourself enough to do something about your situation.

The best way to do that is to solve a problem.

What problem?

Any problem.

Look in the damn mirror, see what the problem stares back and solve it.

And don’t let your ego get in the way.

Don’t look at a problem and think you’re above it, don’t look at a problem and think it’s too small for you to solve.

This is what everyone does and it’s why everyone stays where they are.

They try to solve the biggest problem in their life when they can’t even make their bed - it’s no wonder they fail.

START SMALL.

I don’t care if the first problem you solve is that your room is a mess and you tidy it.

I don’t care if the first problem you solve is brushing your damn teeth.

Solving any problem will create progress - and you’re not above progress, no matter how small it is.

If you’re in a rut, you also don’t have a damn choice.

If you tried to solve the most monumental problem in your life today, chances are you’ll fall flat on your face and fail.

Why?

Because you’re in a rut. You feel lost. You don’t have momentum. You don’t respect yourself. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in a rut in the first place.

But if you start small, so small that you’re sure it’s something you could do, then you build that momentum and tomorrow you can solve a bigger problem.

Look at yourself in the damn mirror and ask yourself “What can I improve that I know if I improved, would improve my life”

Start there. Start small.

Create A Vision For Your Life

Once you have this sense of progress under your belt, you can craft a vision.

Figure out where you want to go in life - what do you want to achieve, who do you want to become and what impact do you want to make?

And then figure out where you would end up if you kept going down the path you’re on now.

This way you have something to run toward and something to run from, creating motivation and MEANING in both directions.

Because that’s what vision does.

A vision creates meaning, it’s you saying “In this 1 life I have, this is how I want to live it” - and if that isn’t meaningful, I don’t know what is.

With this vision, you can then create goals that over time add up to you achieving that vision and daily actions that add up to you achieving those goals.

You’ve created a meaningful vision for the long term.

You’ve set a goal for the short term (which is meaningful since it adds up to your vision)

You’ve crafted daily actions for the day-to-day (which are meaningful since they add up to your meaningful goals)

You’ve created DIRECTION for the long term and the short term.

You have something to aim toward, you have something to set your sights on and you’ll no longer feel lost.

But, if you want it to stay that way, you have to;

Voluntarily Shoulder Responsibility

By setting a meaningful vision and then creating meaningful goals and daily actions, you’re creating responsibility.

Meaning and responsibility come hand in hand, you cannot have 1 without the other.

The question now is will you rise to that responsibility?

Will you rise to the level that’s required of you to achieve your goals?

Will you do the work that you know you need to do?

If you want to get out of a rut, stop feeling lost and stay that way - then you’ve no choice, you have to rise to the challenge.

You have to set standards that demand your all, you have to set and create non-negotiables, you have to do your daily tasks.

Luckily, because responsibility and meaning come together, with meaning you have a reason to do the work.

You have a reason to put in the effort and go down this harder path.

If you do the work, if you shoulder the responsibility, you will achieve your goals.

If you achieve your goals, you’ll achieve your vision.

Yes, it takes time.

Yes, it’ll be tough.

But what other choice do you have?

If you set a goal but don’t accept the responsibility of achieving it, what’s the point?

Voluntarily shoulder the responsibility and do the work that you know you need to do.

If you feel lost and are in a rut, do this right now;

• Choose a problem and solve it 

• Create a vision for your life, goals, and daily actions

• Rise to the challenge of doing the damn work that you know you need to do

- Ross.

And when you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:

• Achieve Self-Mastery, unlock your true potential, and smash every goal you set with MasteryOS

• Join the waitlist for cohort 2 of Done In 4

• Learn how to build a multi-6-figure audience and business with Personal BrandBldr