how to *seriously* get out of a rut

I'm going to be honest for the past few days I've been in a rut and I don't plan on staying in the Rut for too much longer so allow me to dive back into my experience of falling into the bloody things to outline the eight rules you need to understand in order to get out of the rut you're currently in and then we're going to finalize by covering the one framework which is very much like the burning bush when you see it you cannot unsee it first rule of being in a rut is uh yeah

being in a rut is an act of rebellion Rebellion against what Rebellion from whom uh well the person doing the Rebellion is uh well you might know him he's called yourself and uh one thing about this odd chap is he doesn't like being ignored or she so that is the first rule you need to understand that for whatever reason you've got yourself into a rat I don't care whether you've been fapping your life away for the past few days or something sparked in your environment that just sent you down a Pit of Doom one part

of you which we usually refer to as your chimp brain is rebelling against you in some way but we're going to cover that in a second how to deal with that rule number two is give yourself the benefit of the doubt there's no one easier to hate than yourself and news flash in case you haven't noticed it already this world this modern world that we live in isn't exactly primed for our happiness it's actually primed to exploit our drives and our most impulsive behavior so if you've spent the last few days doing something that you

would usually consider incredibly reprehensible to your normal consistency of who you are for example boom scrolling eating loads of junk food fapping just otherwise destroying your life then understand you're up against a huge enemy or many enemies social media algorithms who want to plunge you into their algorithms and never Escape junk food companies that couldn't give a toss about your health and always present you with the fattiest saltiest and sugariest options which long term will kill you or online pornography which promises to give you everything as a young man when in fact it actually gives

you nothing we are very much like Travelers walking through a desert dying of thirst to which a passer by comes along and offers us a drink but the drink is water laced with salt making us more thirsty that's what the modern world does unfortunately but despite this Doom and Gloom I want to capture the idea that there are more reasons to like yourself than hate yourself for example those days where you manag to do even a two-minute workout when you have the demotivation of a SLO is something to be celebrated the fact that maybe just

maybe depending on your hygiene levels during this run you've actually woken up and brushed your teeth each morning is again something to be Hallelujah to the High Heavens and those days where you decide to not scroll before bed and go to bed early are worthy of a trophy big enough to cuddle asleep so I just want to highlight you're doing your best okay you probably don't feel like it at the moment but you're incredibly outgunned in a world which is just not out to optimize your happiness and your meaning that you feel anyway is there

any more Doom and Gloom uh-huh rule number three what was that acceptance paves the path forward I don't care how long you've been in this rut and I don't care how annoyed you are with the fact that you've got yourself into this rout unless you accept where you currently are you're not going to get out of it you really aren't as K young said condemnation does not liberate it oppresses you can't change your behavior or start moving in an upward trajectory until you have the grace to accept I'm in a rut right now and I'm

not doing too well little diagram for you if I may you cannot transcend your reality to higher Consciousness until you first accept where you are we put HC for higher Consciousness this is where you are right now this is where you would like to be God level but the path of your trajectory is dictated by this word acceptance until you accept where you are you cannot give yourself the navigation of mapping to a higher level of Consciousness also what you need to understand is no event within itself is good or bad it is only our

mind which makes it so this is one of the main things we learn from stoicism shout out Marcus aelius Rome's top boy again you might feel like a reprehensible piece of poo for being in this rut but it's neither good nor bad you are the one who is labeling the experience of this thing as either bad or good I doubt you would label it as good but it depends on how you frame it and when you start to understand it is the labeling that your mind performs which is making this experience either good or bad

for you then you're free to see it as neutral gender neutral like my haircut okay Point number four rule number four is label the Chimp in the room yep no elephants here so we covered rule one which was being in a r is an act of rebellion the thing doing the rebellion in specifics is your chimp brain simplifying Neuroscience it's often said that you have three different types of brains you kind of don't they're just different brain regions but the strongest is the chimp brain which is your otherwise known as your Reptilian Brain that is

the part of you which ultimately just wants you to survive and procreate your chimp brain doesn't care whether you label your Bing etin as good or bad nor does it really care whether you waste 4 hours on social media or watching naked women on the internet it just wants to do the most impulsive thing that will gear it towards reproducing and the thing to know about the chimp very much like in real life chimps are strong boys I don't know if you've ever seen chimp Empire or whatever it was called on Netflix they're strong an

average chimp can outow humans it's exactly the same with your chimp brain because it draws you into the present moment which is fueled by the impulsive actions that we take and we're led into with social media eating junk food things that cater to our Here and Now self but there is a way that you can navigate your chimp brain as highlighted in the chimp Paradox by professor Steve Peters I've mentioned in previous videos the utility of labeling your emotions out loud whatever you're doing right now whether you're sat on the sofa whether you're in your

garden looking up at the stars while listening to my voice thinking where did it all go wrong I want you to start speaking to yourself out loud and I want you to say things along this line whenever you notice the impulse to collapse arise oh I feel the urge to self-sabotage oh I feel like scrolling before bed because the thing that doing the Rebellion the chimp just wants attention and you need to I'm being dead serious I don't want you to mistake my enthusiasm for just trying to be funny on camera you genuinely need to

negotiate with this part of your brain because it wants attention and it is like a child if you leave a child in a room with precious objects in it it's going to go haywire and knock some things over it's exactly the same with our chimp brain when it is not governed by the prefrontal cortex that's a brain that's a brain the prefrontal cortex if this person like has eyes and that's its eyes it's like the front part of your brain I don't know why I didn't just point to my forehead that brain region needs to

govern the chimp and it does so by top down processing and what that means is very simply the prefrontal cortex is what governs the chimp and you can do so through language like I said the chimp wants to be paid attention to so you can say things like oh I feel like scrolling before bed open a dialogue with your chimp and say listen I really understand that you want to scroll right now and you want that short-term release because it gives us the feeling of you know being connected to people and being entertained and forgetting

our emotions but I do want you to understand that it would be much better if we go for a walk right now or we do some breathe in because trust me you might not understand this right now but in 10 20 minutes we're going to feel so much better you need to negotiate with your chimp people say sales is the most important skill of all it is because the most important person you need to negotiate with is yourself when you are collapsing so you need to label the Chimp in the room it sounds like it

seems like it feels like oh it seems like I want to start collapsing and going into self-sabotaging behaviors Ah that's my chimp speaking chimp remember what we did last time when we felt this way it didn't go too well and our life ended up being a lot a whole lot harder but remember that one time when we put our phone down and went and did some breath work or some meditation before bed and felt so much better this is what we're going to do now and trust me you're going to feel so much better after

it get to know your chimp I could go into it more here but I would just recommend reading the book The chimp Paradox it's brilliant rule number five multicolors you know what I'm saying you can choose to see this rut as an opportunity sounds weird the one key for getting out of this rut and being a better person after it is you just need to understand what is one little thing thing you can learn as you're collapsing and this all depends on how you frame it the obstacle is the way as the stoics would say

and a little anecdote here I remember probably two years ago now my best friend Joe was really ill for a period of two weeks and interestingly when I met him after he was recovering from the illness he said yeah I just feel like God wanted me to have some Solitude and I thought that's such a powerful way to frame it if you're retreating at the moment socially and you're collapsing into yourself what is it you're trying to tell yourself what downloads are you getting from the universe that maybe you could frame as a way for

your benefit is this an opportunity for you to pull back and reassess some things that you're doing maybe you feel overly tired have you been working too much have you not been sleeping right what has been going on here's a little clip from David Goggins which is a bit vague but I'll explain it after okay I failed but I was right there what did I miss what the [ __ ] did I miss oh that's what I [ __ ] missed and then it happens essentially what he's saying is the nipy hustle principle minor setback

for major comeback it's my favorite learn something from this Darkness even if it's just one tiny little thing rule number six is the most important one so pay attention get your notes out going to write it in red Bing Bang Boom what was it again yes rule number six you can't control the mind with the Mind look to the body that's the the saying goes you cannot think your way into better action but you can act your way into better thinking first principle I ever learned from Andrew huberman from Neuroscience was Behavior first thoughts and

emotions later your actions dictate how you feel there's a common saying in Neuroscience which is I'm not crying because I'm sad I'm sad because I'm crying which is to say you cannot rationalize yourself out of this rut of course you can do many mental framing things such as not seeing it as a good or a bad thing and all of the rules that we covered before this but at the root of getting out of it you need to understand that you cannot solve a problem with the same thing that created the problem you need a

different resource which is the body you cannot think your way out of depression but you can walk your way out of it you can train your way out of it you can socialize your way out of it you can nutritionally eat your way out of it you can brush your teeth out of it but keep a mental note of this because the framework we're going to finalize with in a second we'll capture all of this rule number seven is break down the ideal I don't know if you've ever seen the animated version of Pinocchio don't

think there's any other version of it but anyway there is a brilliant scene there where after he goes off on one and you could say Pinocchio falls into a bit of a rut by doing delinquent things and joining the island of the Lost Boys there is a scene where one of the characters throws a stone through a stained glass window which is a Mandela which is a very spiritual symbol of the most aligned integrated human being otherwise known as an ideal and the short scene captures something that we do all of the time when we

get into ruts we think of the highest potential that we could arise to and we look at the gap between where we are and what it would take for us to get there and we grow miserable so we think to hell with the ideal because it's too much it is too much so what you need to do is you need to break down your ideal it's very easy when you're in a rat then go on social media and see all of these clips from people who are so happy and they're living great lives yet we

know that is what social media does to us it paints a distorted view of reality and other people's contentment and we think why am I in a rut there's something inherently wrong with me no you just need this I the goals that you want to achieve the type of person you want to be you need to break it down you really need to understand this and break this down to the thing that you can do right now like I said in the rule of giving yourself the benefit of the doubt if you're struggling to wake

up and brush your teeth at the moment celebrate that and keep that as the goal just keep waking up and brushing your teeth doesn't matter how you feel screw your mood stick to the plan brush teeth plus shower if that's what it takes for you to self- celebrate then that is the goal by which you dictate your progress not a 2hour workout Plus 8 hours of studying although having said that if you if you are the type of person who is very ambitious and you're just having a bit of a wobble I would say in

a very paradoxical way you can turn this around in the other direction whereby even though you're in a rut and you're feeling mentally groggy and all of this stuff set really high goals and that will kick your ass into gear but if your psychology doesn't really work that way then break the ideal down but if you want to give yourself a challenge be really outlandish if you usually work out for an hour or a day say today I'm going to work out for 2 hours and then just set that the one goal that you're going

to do be overly ambitious if you're up for the challenge because a lot of the times people say this a lot and a lot and I've just said it there because it is true in the sense of just break down your actions so they're really easy but one of the reasons we get into ruts is because we don't have anything worth striving for we don't have that sense of oh my God I don't have a challenge so I'm just going to lope around because nothing is worth doing set yourself a really really high goal that

you can't even achieve and then you'll start work working towards it and you'll be like oh my God I have Direction now last one more bloody hell it's all kicking off I need to wrap this up more on the self-love side of things cuz we all love a bit of self-love don't we sometimes sometimes not should get the crystals out number eight last one counter your self-critique one of the things that therapists do when their client is barraging themselves with all of these self-critical things which may or may not be true is they just get

them to write up a list of all of the counterarguments if you currently feel unworthy stupid weak unlovable take a moment to genuinely think about periods in your life and things that you've done which would run counter to this so I'll give you an example right when I'm in a rat I feel undisciplined I feel childish unsocialized and guilty I could counter all of these very quickly and disciplined I know I'm quite disciplined childish I'm a mature 24y old man who's lived alone multiple times throughout his life unsocialized young man and I've got a solid

group of friends guilty I'm a human being I'm going to mess up sometimes but no amount of guilt is going to get me out of this rut I've also felt very proud of myself because I'm working on long-term projects that's just an example okay let's finalize with Z burning bush right this is the burning bush framework which will get you out of a rat I formulated this about 2 years ago after being in a rat and thinking H how can I actually get out of it and this is a cyclical process which means you have

to follow each step in respectable order number one Behavior first this is what we covered earlier in the sense of you cannot fight the mind with the mind you need to turn to the body this means you just do something whatever it is that you think will give you that forward momentum that will get you out of the rut for me what this looks like is doing some com press UPS drinking a liter of water and then going out and continuing a workout or going on a run putting all of my technology in the garage

outside so I have none in the house and I have to sit with my emotions or meditating journaling going on a walk calling a friend something that gets your mind off your mind and into the flow of activity you cannot think you have to do when you're in a r two earn your dopamine as noval ravikant said the modern devil is cheap dopamine now the main reason we don't feel good after we go on social media or we watch adult content or eat junk food is because we haven't earned the right to have that dopamine

our brain loves dopamine and obviously releases it in order to motivate us to achieve things and get things but there's a reason why after a workout you feel so much more fulfilled after a bout of studying after striving for something for such a long time and achieving it a degree for example why that dopamine relase feels so much better it's because you've earned it it's because you've done the necessary actions in order to reap that reward being in a relationship and actually having sex with your girlfriend is much better than watching some other naked woman

through pixels on a screen because the barrier to entry is much higher when you're with your girlfriend therefore coming back a little bit who got a bit sexual there I've mentioned this before but it's relevant here so guys don't roll your eyes if you watch the video about how to stop relapsing what you have to understand about the brain is there is a homeostatic element of the brain between pain and pleasure meaning that for each ounce of pain you experience there is an equal and opposite feeling of pleasure and vice versa hence when you watch

YouTube for three hours you're tapping on the pleasure side of the equation so much that when you stop your brain has to shift to the pain side so you so you experience the complete opposite of everything you experienced when you was watching YouTube If you do the reverse so you tap on the pain side before you experience the pleasure then it happens in a roundabout way for example you work out you're tapping on the pain side you're feeling oh this is a really tough workout and then you stop oh endorphin release or you're studying and

you're focusing all of your notifications are going off but you're like no I'm going to dedicate my mind to this task for the next hour you stop and you think ah oh that was so good that I focused for that long it's because your brain shifts back to the pleasure side to compensate for the pain earn your dopamine then these two things in conjunction spark momentum which creates a positive flywheel effect you want fly wheels to happen so for example this sets in motion uh I can't help but logic when you work out the next

logical step is to eat well and then the next logical step is I need to drink more then oh if I've worked out I need to give my muscles time to repair that means you sleep and then you work out and it's this positive feedback loop so after you have a shower or after you brush your teeth you then have have that positive momentum which you can carry into other activities and then maybe you do that for the rest of the day despite your grogginess you brush your teeth and you shower in the morning and

then that makes you feel good so then you sit down and you study or you work for 2 hours and then you're like oh I'm feeling like I need a bit of a break so I'm going to do a workout and then you think oh I'm feeling pretty tired then you have enough reason to actually fall asleep at night rather than laying there thinking oh I didn't do too much today I'm not that tired so I can't sleep but the most important thing is to not overdo it you need to rest and replenish before you

become depleted so then it makes it easier to do the same thing tomorrow because sometimes it takes a few days or a week or a few weeks to get out of a rut but if you continue this process ACT first earn your dopamine create your momentum rest and replenish then making it easier to do it all again you'll be out of the rut no doubt about it I would love to hear how you have got yourself out of ruts in the past and if you're in a rut right now how do you plan on getting

out of it or just go down to the comments and vent about being in a rat and how annoying it is sometimes but anyway you're a human being you're going to mess up rats are coming so as long as you understand how to get out of them then that gives you a better chance at getting out of them and raising your vibration I think that's it stay disciplined playful dangerous bit of a different energy in this video but anyway m chos we just and get moving