Have you ever seen the movie Groundhog Day? In the movie, Bill Murray plays an arrogant weatherman frustrated because he has to cover the silly Groundhog Day story for the fourth year in a row. Upon waking the next morning, he discovers it’s Groundhog Day again and so, is forced to live the exact same day all over again. How maddening! What ultimately happens is he relives Groundhog Day over and over and over again. This a great example of someone stuck in a rut and something we have all encountered.
We all experience ruts both professionally and personally. It is easy to get stuck in them because they are the familiar, secure, comfortable and undemanding routines that we let shape and control us. Unfortunately, ruts are frustrating, draining and unproductive and can be hard to break when it involves making uncomfortable change. Yet, breaking free can be invigorating and liberating…
I was working with a client experiencing a professional rut. The company she worked for was going through a merger and she was part of the skeleton crew left to facilitate the merger. During the process, she lost her motivation and began procrastinating on tasks. She felt drained and sluggish often making her late to work. And, she noticed her thoughts were mainly negative. She was stuck in a rut! Not only was she stuck professionally; it was beginning to affect her personal life as well. She struggled with how to move beyond this.
I told her about my 3-step process to help overcome ruts and gave her my acronym to help her remember it: R.U.T. How original!
R: The first step to overcoming a rut is realizing the source of the rut. You can’t change something if you are not aware of it. So, take the time to reflect and monitor the activities that are draining, taking too much time or aren’t moving your forward. By pinpointing the source, you can get clear on the situation then start to make positive change. After some questioning, my client realized the source of her rut was the fear of not knowing if she was going to have a job once the merger was complete. And she was not getting any answers from her boss or the company. From this realization, she understood what was going on and was ready to look at ways to move beyond it.
U: is uncovering the options to overcome the rut. By considering the possibilities, you stretch yourself to think out of the comfort and familiarity of the unhealthy routine and remind yourself you have a choice in the matter. Choice puts you back in your personal power and gets you moving forward. Two options my client came up with were
- Continue doing the same thing and stay stuck
- Change her focus from what she couldn’t control: the fear of not knowing thefate of her job, to what she could control: herself and her ability to find opportunities available to her.
It didn’t take my client long to choose option 2. This was the empowering choice to move her forward in her career instead of staying stuck.
T: is for taking action and moving beyond the rut. Once you decide on the best option, you create a goal around it and devise a plan to get you into action. Action is the key ingredient since it forces you to take responsibility, makes you commit to your goal and sustains you to your desired outcome. My client’s goal was to now focus on her professional development, and the actions she committed to were taking bi-monthly educational training courses provided by her company, attending 3 networking events a month and contacting influential people for job prospecting. By taking responsibility and getting into action, she changed her mindset to the positive and broke out of her rut.
We all encounter ruts yet we don’t have to relive Groundhog Day every day. Just remember the acronym RUT. By realizing the source of the rut, uncovering the options and taking action, you can move beyond your rut and feel empowered and energized.
By: Megan Walls, CPC, ACC, ELI-MP,Conscious Connection