What to do when you’re in a rut

Setting goals

You’ve got to set goals so that you’ve got something to measure against. If you don’t aim at something, guess what? You’ll hit it. You’ll hit nothing if you aim at nothing.

You’ve got to set little milestones to reach.

Setting and reaching milestones gives you a sense of achievement, a sense of accomplishment. It gets you to the next stage of whatever it might be that you’re wanting to do, whatever you’re going for in life. It gets you out of that rut.

I see people today that are just stuck in a rut. For them, everyday is Groundhog day.

They get up each morning and its the same. What’s happened in the past dictates how they move forward today. Generally they wake up thinking about the problems that they’ve got rather than imagining the future that they can have, which I think is more important.

We should define ourselves by the vision of our future, not by the memories of the past, because for a lot of us, the memories that come to mind are often not the best memories. This is not me having a go at anybody, but it just seems to be human nature that unless we actively think of something positive, we gravitate towards the negative.

Changing your habits

These negative thoughts seem to pop up all the time. So if you’re wanting to change your lifestyle, to be healthier, happier and fitter, you need to focus on changing your habits. I think if you can do that, if you can change your habits, then you’ll be healthier. You’ll be fitter. You’ll be happy.

I often think of my time at The Shake Up. I’ll look at us here and how often do we see people get started and they come for a couple of weeks and then a few weeks in you go, “Hey, where’s Joe? Joe’s not here anymore.” You see, as many people do, Joe’s kind of slipped back into old habits and every so often he gets a reminder by looking at his bank statement going, “oh, I paid for shake up this week but I didn’t go.”

It’s not great, but it just happens, doesn’t it?

It’s something that we need to focus on and for whoever is reading this, I can promise you that if you can replace your bad habits with good ones, then you will be healthier. You’ll be happier. You’ll be fitter. If you can just put into place a couple of just simple steps.

Schedules & Accountability

You’ve got to schedule those workouts. You can’t just fit it in and go “oh well, you know, if I’ve got time I’ll do it this week”. Instead you’ve got go “Hey, you know what, Monday morning, 5:00 AM I’m going to do a workout.”

The other thing you need to do is have someone to be accountable to. If you’re going to do something, for example – doing a beep test. Rather than just saying to yoursefl that you’re going to turn up and do the beep test on Monday morning, Wednesday morning, Friday morning, say to somebody else, “Hey, how about I do the beep test with you?”

That way you can’t get up in the morning and go “oh, I don’t feel like going” – because you’ve committed. having agreed to meet someone there will make you go.

I think it’s so important to have someone to be accountable to, because the thing is you’ll do it more for a mate who’s going to do it with you. A lot of the times were more motivated to do something for somebody else than we are to do for ourselves. Crazy huh?

So in everything you want to do, whatever that goal might be, if you can bring someone in on that journey with you then you’re far more likely to do it and far morelikely to continue doing it.

Start the night before

Another big one is that your workout starts the night before. Before you close your eyes at night, go, “Hey, you know what? When that alarm goes off in the morning. I’m just going to jump straight out of bed.”

Don’t give yourself the time to think about it. Just go. It seems to be human nature to wake up and not feel like doing what we had intended to do, so you’ve got to prepare yourself mentally or that. Preparation is key to anything.

So prepare the night before. Whether that means you having your gym clothes on the ready, or maybe even sleeping in your gym gear. Be prepared to just jump straight out of bed.

Do you need help with accountability?

If you feel like you’ve been in a rut and you want some help with changing your habits then please reach out to me. Let’s have a chat about where you are now, and where you want to be in the future.