What makes a rut? If you’ve ever driven on a dirt road in wet weather, you know that drivers tend to aim their wheels at the tracks left by other vehicles. It’s instinctive, because somehow we think, “If others have driven through here without problems, it’s probably safe for me to drive through here too.”

That’s how ruts are made. The deep tracks on the road, left by the repeated passage of the wheels of vehicles. Sure they are often safer. But another characteristic they have is that once you’re in one, it’s hard to get out. That’s why they say, “stuck in a rut”.

The same process can happen in your mind. You can get into a habit, a pattern of behavior, or way of thinking that begins to condition you to always do the same thing. You do it all the time, and you don’t even think about it anymore. You’re on auto-pilot. After a while, it seems like it’s the only way you know to behave, think, or do things. Life is dull, you’re not getting what you want, but at the same time, it’s hard to change. You’re stuck in a mental rut.

Mental ruts, like all ruts, are very tempting to fall into, and very hard to get out of.

It takes a bold driver to get out of the rut and try a new path. To get out of your mental ruts, you need to develop the boldness to think differently; to refuse to stay on the beaten path of your thoughts; to force your eyes to look at all the virgin space on the road, left and right of the rut, and desire touching it.

Say you’re pitying yourself, for example. You’re thinking like a victim and just blaming everyone else for your misfortunes. That’s your mental rut. How do you get out of it?

Just look at all the other options to the way you’re thinking. For example, you can reach for your self-respect and decide not to do things to get the attention and pity of others. You can use whatever happened to you as a motivator to bounce back. You can stop looking at the people who hurt you and start looking at yourself. You can stop paying attention to how you feel and start asking yourself what you can do to get out of your situation.

All these other options are what’s to the right and left of your mental rut. It’s all there, and much more.

You just need to be bold and desire it enough to take action.