You rummage through your closet looking for something to wear and realize it’s all mostly all black clothing (guilty). Sure, that can make you feel like you’re stuck in a rut. But what about the bigger rut, sometimes even a trench, of feeling stuck in your life choices?
Here are three things to inspire you about getting out of a rut. This list is not meant to oversimplify the arduous process of turning around one’s own “Life Titanic.” But maybe something here will re-light that spark you already have, reminding you of truths you already know.
1.”If You Wanna Sing, Out Sing Out” by Cat Stevens
Cat makes it all sound so easy. Maybe it is. Do we over-think, overanalyze, and overcomplicate things? I’ll go ahead and say yes. But when I listen to this song, with its childlike simplicity, it makes me think, “anything’s possible.” And I think that’s something we all want to feel and believe on a daily basis. Go ahead— give it a listen. I’ll wait…
If that song doesn’t feel like a cure for getting out of a rut, you must not be listening. What’s your favorite line? Mine is “you can make it all true.” Oh, and the next line too: “And you can make it undo.” Isn’t that refreshing? We can hit the backspace button, call a do-over, reboot and reframe. Let’s remember this, and when I forget, will you remind me, too? Cat says we all know all of this already: “you know that there are.”
Lyrics:
Well, if you want to sing out, sing out, And if you want to be free, be free
‘Cause there’s a million things to be…You know that there are
And if you want to live high, live high. And if you want to live low, live low.
‘Cause there’s a million ways to go; You know that there are.
You can do what you want. The opportunity’s on.
And if you find a new way, You can do it today.
You can make it all true, And you can make it undo,
You see, ah ah ah, It’s easy, ah ah ah…You only need to know…
Well if you want to say yes, say yes, And if you want to say no, say no.
‘Cause there’s a million ways to go, You know that there are.
And if you want to be me, be me, And if you want to be you, be you.
‘Cause there’s a million things to do, You know that there are..
2. “Unwritten” by Natasha Beddingfield, Danielle Brisbois, and Wayne Rodrigues
Yes, here’s another inspiring song. But this one has the added plus of making you want to dance. The metaphor may not be fresh, but the message is real. Your life is a book and today, you start with a blank page. The rest of your story is still unwritten. So whatever rut you may find yourself in, get out your pen and start writing that story.
I had the privilege of speaking to some teenage young women involved in Epic Girl about positive journaling. When I played this song, a lot of them knew it and we sang on the chorus together. It provided a great example of using the journals to help write the next chapters in their lives. What’s past is past, but the future is unwritten.
More than that message, what I love about the song is the way it talks about you getting to experience you. My favorite line is “no one else can feel it for you.” What’s yours? The whole chorus says, “
Lyrics:
I am unwritten, can’t read my mind. I’m undefined.
I’m just beginning, the pen’s in my hand — Ending unplanned.
Staring at the blank page before you, Open up the dirty window,
Let the sun illuminate the words that you cannot find.
Reaching for something in the distance, So close you can almost taste it,
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in…No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips. Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open; Today is where your book begins,
The rest is still unwritten
I break tradition, Sometimes my tries are outside the lines
We’ve been conditioned to not make mistakes, But I can’t live that way no…
3. You, in your alternate reality
Okay, this one may be getting a little out there, so let me explain. Sometimes when we are stuck in a rut, the imaginative and creative part of our brain is closed for business. Here’s an exercise to shake things up. What would another you be doing in an alternate reality?
I first contemplated this idea when I saw the movie Another Earth. As the title suggests, one day, another Earth appears in the sky. People wonder if there’s another version of themselves on the other planet, “would they have made the same mistakes?” Roger Ebert gave the movie a glowing review.
When I went to a Designing Your Life workshop through the Nashville Institute for Faith and Work, we did a worksheet all about what we might be doing in three alternate realities. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the creators of the Designing Your Life class at Stanford as well as the books, posit that one of the dysfunctional beliefs we hold is that you should try to be “the best version of you that you can be!” In actuality, they say, there are a lot of different “you’s” that are good possibilities
The main idea of their course and book is we should use design thinking to help create our life choices. In the worksheet exercise, called the Odyssey Planning Worksheet, we wrote down three different plans or scenarios for our lives, rating factors such as our confidence in the plan, our resources for the plan, etc.
Go ahead and play with this. You can make some plans that seem wild and unattainable, and some that are more realistic. That’s what the “confidence in the plan” meter is for. The mere exercise of engaging your imagination to picture yourself living different lives helps shake you out of your current rut to see alternate realities and possibilities.
So how do we put all this into practice?
Wouldn’t it be great if all you had to do was put on “If you Want to Sing Out, Sing Out” every morning, and your life would change? I bet there’s been no lab experiment to test the theory. Maybe we can be guinea pigs.
My friend Carrington Fox in her Build Me Up Buttercup Blog recently had a post titled “Ain’t Too Proud.” In it, she talks about the problem of paralysis in not letting the “Great be the Enemy of the Good.” I can relate to her thoughts here as I know I’m guilty of having ideas that I don’t put into action because I don’t know that they’ll be good enough. Good enough for me, or as good as I see them in my mind.
But Carrington’s right — we need to start taking some actionable steps anyway. Start pulling ourselves out of our ruts. Imagine yourself on Another Earth: what are you doing in an alternate reality? Maybe you’re listening to Cat Stevens and not wearing any black.
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To learn more about Epic Girl, read my interview with Executive Director, Stacia Freeman: How To Be An Epic Girl
For my last post, click here: Let’s Stop Saying These 5 Phrases
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