Resist the Rut

When monotony begins to cast a dull shadow on our day, most of us find it hard to muster the energy required to get back on our feet and make the changes necessary to usher in some light. 

Metaphors are woefully inadequate to capture the bleakness with which many of us have to associate with our routines. In many cases, the rut is just tedious enough to make us feel that our hours are humdrum, but not intense enough to cause us to actively decide to fight it with enthusiasm. Wistful thinking about how life might suddenly decide to cut us some slack for some reason and the sunk-cost fallacy, which is when we reflect on how we've already spent a lot of time and effort into initiating something and hence must proceed with that course of action hold us back from thinking of a way to alleviate what has become painfully mundane. 

What exactly can we do to resist the rut and seek a breath of fresh air? An effective technique to do so would be the employment of positive or upward counterfactual thinking. Whether we may be familiar with the term or not, all of us have indulged in the cooking up of alternative scenarios within our minds when things are not going as well as we would like them to be. Perhaps if we had simply taken a cab rather than wait for the bus that never showed up, we could have caught up with our departing friend on time. Perhaps if we had signed up for the course that we had found vaguely interesting, we could have learned something useful and developed more perspectives. Perhaps if we had taken some alone time and introspected a bit earlier in the day, we'd have had fewer thoughts cluttered within our heads during the evening.

In many ways, this is synonymous with a sense of regret. But when it comes to being struck in a rut, regret just might be the one emotion that we need that would come to the rescue. Instead of accepting the unpleasantness that has come to permeate our lives with a resigned expression, the urge to make a difference and seek something much more worthwhile and healthier for our state of mind is one that most of us would benefit heeding to. It is true that there are many activities and habits that we must simply live with because they are a part and parcel of our lifestyle, but when a choice is available to us to remove a thorn or add a dash of excitement to any aspect of our day and we can afford to do something about it, well, common sense dictates that we should simply go for it. 

- Nikhil