 A rut is a grave with the ends kicked out. That is, as someone else said, most men die at 27, but we just bury them at 72. Now, if you're someone who is finding themselves stuck, lost, and in a rut, I think this video is gonna help you. What's up guys? Alex Hein here over at Modern Health Monk. Before we jump into this video on getting out of a rut, put together a seven-day self-growth challenge. It's the first link right below this video, where you'll get an email a day on how to improve your life towards building the dream life that you want. So, check out that free seven-day challenge right below this video, and we'll jump back in. First things first, do not become self-destructive. Sad story here. When I got my first job at 16, I was working in a video store. Now, have you ever seen the movie Empire Records with Renee Zellberger? This was basically what my job was. I was working in a video store. We would basically eat candy, play music, and watch movies all day. I mean, it was basically the dream of a 16-year-old, and it was the last of the actual VHS video stores. Now, one of the girls there that I worked with had ended up dating this new guy. And she was quite a pretty girl, and he seemed a very average Joe-like. He was a new kid from UK. And after a few weeks, he started hanging out in the video store all the time. Now, the video store was called the Roxy. He would always come over to the Roxy and hang out, and we would get pizza from the pizza shop next door, and secretly trade videos for free pizzas. And one time, this guy, Matt, came over and was hanging out, and I could tell they were having a hard time. They were a little bit argumentative in front of people in public. And a few weeks later, went by, and I hadn't seen him in a long time. And then eventually, I got a call from my co-worker, and she said, hey, are you able to cover my shift? And I said, no, not really. I don't really want to. And she said, Matt committed suicide because I broke up with him. And I thought about this a lot because as time goes on and as you live longer, you see more people commit suicide. And for various reasons. Some people I've seen were veterans. Very common to see people in Iraq with PTSD who come back and commit suicide. My best friend committed suicide four years ago. I've seen friends' parents commit suicide at middle age. And I often think about what leads people to that point. And I know this is a video on a rut, but often I'm a big believer what Earl Nightingale said that first quote, a rut is a grave with the ends kicked out. It feels like your life has ended and it is the same and it will never change. And why be alive? If a rut is that bad, that's what you will feel. Now, when I think about Matt, for example, and the other people I know, there's a difference between someone who gets broken up with by the love of their life and does not commit suicide versus someone who does. And you could replace divorce or heartbreak with anything else. They lost their job, their company failed, their mother or their father died, their son, their daughter died. Someone who goes to a really objectively difficult time and pulls through versus someone who finds it catastrophic. I find that a lot of the time, if your life is imbalanced in other areas, let's say you go through a horrible divorce or you lose the person you think you'll never find again. If you have your health, your physical health, if you have a stable job, if you have good friends and family, and you have some degree of purpose in your life, it may devastate you and it may devastate you for years, but it will not be catastrophic. In the same way that a guy that loses his company or his startup fails or his parents die or his significant other is seriously ill and then dies from cancer. If those other pillars of your life are being balanced, then you have other support systems. But for so many people, loss of any kind, even loss of purpose, like in a rut, becomes a significant enough imbalancing factor or unbalancing factor that it pushes people to the edge. And you have people who go through breakups, for example, and they gain 50 pounds, they eat like crap, they stop exercising, they stop showing up to work, they stop taking showers for work, they stop going out with friends, they quit their hobbies, they spend their money, and in general, they begin to unravel and they have a very destructive or maladaptive experience of being broken up with. And you have people who channel that into doing their best they can to be constructive. They don't feel like going to the gym, but they still go four times a week. They don't wanna eat healthy, maybe they don't even feel hungry at all, or maybe they just wanna eat all the time, but they still choose to make those deliberate good choices and diet. They don't wanna go to bed till four in the morning or at all, but they discipline themselves to and they put on their white noise machine or they read a book or they put on a fan to distract them. And in general, if you're in a rut, this is the easiest time to self-destruct. This is the easiest time to fall into these maladaptive patterns that are pathological. They will make you sicker in the long run. They will make you out of shape. They will make you lose money or loose faith in life that life can get better. And I will start by saying this cautionary tale, if you are in a rut, first things first, no matter how hard things are, make the right decisions that you won't regret six months from now, because that will put you in another rut that will be deeper and harder to get out of. That looks a lot like a grave. Let's be real, getting out of the mud is not easy. I've been in ruts in many times, many periods of my life, at least three that took a year or more to begin feeling any positive emotions ever again. And some of those are because I've been an adventurous soul, I've lived on three continents. I've lived in every quadrant of the United States. I've bought one way tickets to China with no return home visit for years. I'm an adventurous soul and it means, yes, there are these adventures where you get to see El Dorado, the city of gold, and there are also years where you are utterly alone in a new country where you're a foreign animal and no one speaks your language. Those are intensely isolating. But one thing I found is what I call breaking the ice. If you are in a phase of life where nothing makes you happy, you have no reason to get out of bed in the morning. And in fact, the morning getting out of bed is the hardest phase of your life because you literally have no reason to be alive. That's the story you tell yourself. I find that this idea of breaking the ice for 10 minutes a day, that is pick a 10 minute habit that will make your life better and literally view it like you are breaking ice. You tell yourself, this is going to be hard, but I'm just gonna do it for 10 minutes. For me, the hardest phases of my life, I would wake up and I would put a self growth audio book on anything that talked about how to live a better life. And I would listen to that every day for years. And that for me was breaking the ice, breaking the ice meaning you're cold, you're frozen, you're locked, you're immobile. Breaking the ice is like you literally have to headbutt that window of ice. You have to punch your way through it because you don't feel like it. You don't wanna do anything. You don't wanna get out of bed. You can hardly even, just a thought of having a future is not possible because you can't even get through the morning. Break the ice. What is a 10 minute habit that will make you better and healthier and force yourself to do that every morning when it is often the hardest? I would recommend a self growth audio book, something instructional like Earl Nightingale or something that's trending right now on the New York Times list that will help you feel better, but think of it as breaking the ice. I'm gonna push for 10 minutes that I can wallow in misery the rest of the day. The second thing is to find a bigger and better future. Now, if you're in a deep rut or feeling deeply unhappy, you can't even think about the future because your day to day is so unhappy. But I think a lot about Paulo Coelho, the author of The Alchemist. When he was interviewed by Oprah, he said that he and his wife one day had woken up even though he had a book. And I think The Alchemist had already been out. And he said to his wife, do you have any joy in life? And she said, no. And then he realized he didn't have any joy in life. He hadn't felt happy in a long time. And that inspired him to go walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain. And that was one of those experiences that brought back that vitality and that energy in his life and made him feel happy again. And I think for so many people, we're often stuck in an event because we've lost sight of a bigger and better future. When you have a new person you're dating and you feel the potential of this being a serious relationship, it fills you with energy and anxiety, but energy. And when you're about to go on a trip, you feel that same potential, I can't wait, this is gonna be amazing. It's gonna be so fun to go on this trip. I absolutely cannot wait. When you lose sight of something that drives you and excites you, something to grow towards, you often will lose hunger for life. You will lose the desire to improve yourself at all or do anything different. So, if you can't just sit down and think, what would really, really, really, really excite me this year? Let's say three things if they happened would be the best year ever. If that doesn't work, then I would recommend for the next year, keep a journal and just write down what makes you happy. What little experience is big things? What could you look forward to that would be your bigger and better future? That would involve growth and change, variety and something new. That will pull you towards a future vision. That will pull you again instead of you having to push all the time. Of all else fails, I would recommend one final thing, which is the 100 day challenge. There have been phases of my life where none of this has worked, where everything is humdrum and the most dangerous part of ruts, you can get to a rut when your life is good. You married the dream person. You date the dream person. You have a great job. You make a good income. You have a nice family around you. Everyone's safe and healthy and you still feel like you're in a rut. So sometimes that just happens and you have to just push. So during the worst ruts of my life, what I've done is I say, okay, nothing excites me. Technically everything's good. I just don't feel excited anymore about life. So for the next 100 days, I'm just gonna tell myself, I'm just in a hard phase of life and I'm just gonna have to push. I'm just gonna have to literally head but my way through life for one season of the year, a quarter and I know that after a year, if I get back on my fitness routines, if I start meditating every day, if I pick up new hobbies that energize me and try to hang out with friends more and take a vacation, then I know I'm gonna be feeling better after this 100 days. It may take the entire time but I'm just for the next 100 days, I'm going to push and every day is literally not a sage mode day. It's a soldier mode day. I'm gonna have to get up like a warrior does, take my shower even though I don't want to, make my healthy breakfast even though I don't want to, go to the gym even though I don't want to, journal even though I don't want to because I know that in 100 days, I'm probably gonna feel better and maybe this was just a little phase of life or a rut and something will open up over those next 100 days that will help me feel better. So worst comes the worst, go beast mode for 100 days and it is sometimes something that can help you get through those really, really tough phases of your life. So that's my two cents on getting over or getting through a rut that happens from time to time in life. But try those out, download that free seven day self growth email challenge and I will see you guys soon, all right? Take it easy.