It’s really easy to measure the rut you’re in. All you have to do is measure your comfort level there.

How do you measure your comfort level?

It’s easy! Just determine if you were complaining about the same problem, last week, last month, last year or last century.

Your comfort level has increased over the years and is taking you deeper into your rut if you’re still complaining about the same unsolved difficulties that you were in the past.

You’re stuck!

Note: Your comfort level and recognizing your comfort level are two separate things.

Your comfort level is what prevents you from taking steps to free yourself from the thing you’ve been battling for years. We like the comfort of our rut. It’s the only explanation that works for why we don’t extricate ourselves.

Recognizing your comfort level is sensing the uncomfortable feeling of being stuck.

Sensing discomfort is therapeutic; it’s like the old axiom that some people will never start back up until they feel the pain of hitting bottom.

You may recognize the fact of being stuck but that’s not enough because it’s countered by the comfort level you feel while being there.

For example, let’s pretend you know someone who is suffering the pain of drug or alcohol abuse. They may be in public denial about their problem, but in private they know they’re in a deep dark hole. Yet the comfort level they feel with their drug of choice outweighs any search for living comfortably without it. They’re stuck in their comfort zone.

It seems counter-intuitive but you have to get uncomfortable to get to the genuine, soothing comfort of being unstuck.

As noted, you discover the depth of your rut by measuring the duration of your complaints. The longer you’ve been complaining about the same thing, the deeper your rut.

If you want to solve your problem, you have to get uncomfortable.

You have to get out to the edge to learn something new. You don’t have to live there, just visit. Being on the edge is certainly past our comfort zone and it’s necessary to explore that area to have any chance of seeing and experiencing the comfort of being an unstuck you.

We don’t recognize that we’ve been complaining about the same thing for years. We don’t recognize that we’ve decorated our rut with our complaints and made it more homey. We don’t recognize that if we stop complaining and get uncomfortable, it is our ticket out.

Complaining about your problem doesn’t work. If it did, you would have solved your problem years ago. All those chats with your bartender, your well meaning friends or your therapist would have fixed it.

The first step in getting out of a rut is to stop complaining. That alone will get you uncomfortable because complaining has become so comfortable over the years.

Once you stop complaining, you free up some real estate in your mind for some new direction to pop in. It’s at this choice point that we determine how serious we are about solving our problem. Do we have the courage to get more uncomfortable and walk to the edge and see our new horizon, or do we pass on the opportunity and creep back to our comfort zone and choke on our own regurgitation?

There is power in ceasing our complaints. It gets us to focus on solutions rather than problems, and the result is a lighted pathway to the edge.

Your best chance for getting to the edge of discovery is to ask yourself this question: Do I have the courage to stop complaining about the rut I’m in?

All the best,

John

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