The ‘Stuck in Rut’ Cycle and Its Relation to Confidence
At one point in life, for some mysterious reason, everything seems to come to a halt. An invisible barrier blocks our path, forcing us to pass time in the same spot, confused and frustrated about why moving forward feels impossible.
You know you want to move ahead. After all, you have a reason to do so. Yet, your purpose and intention fail you. Everything swarms in your head—well, everything except ideas. You feel overwhelmed but bored, restless but numb. You believe you deserve something good, yet you speak poorly of yourself. You try not to be bound by results, but you can’t even hold on to progress.
People tell you to embrace each day and trust the process, but what’s there to trust if you’re barely moving at all?
Despite the goals you’ve set, you have found yourself… stuck.
Maybe you’ve been sitting in front of your laptop for hours, and even after two cups of iced coffee, you still can’t write a single paragraph. Maybe you’ve been grinding through a non-stop 9-to-5 for years, yet you’ve never felt genuinely proud of your loyalty to your company.
Maybe you’re starting something new and have prepared for everything other than the execution. The thought of failing at something you’ve poured your heart and soul into is unbearable. So, you lie to yourself, saying you’re not ready when you’re really just procrastinating—losing before even entering the fight.
Whether it’s fatigue, lack of clarity, or fear, we’ve all been blocked by a mysterious cycle of self-doubt. When we feel stuck, we don’t see progress toward our goals, leading us to doubt our abilities and worth (“If I were good enough, I wouldn’t be stuck”).
This article appears on your screen for a reason. I’m here to guide you on a self-reflective journey to conquer stuckness with devotion, presence, and probably a hot cup of coffee.
Types of Feeling Stuck
The good news (and perhaps the bad) is that feeling stuck is far more common than you might think. Not only does it come to everyone, but it also comes to us anytime, at different stages in life. In fact, it’s possible to feel stuck in multiple areas of life simultaneously! No wonder people often say they’re “stuck in a rut.”
Being stuck in a rut refers to feeling trapped or confined within recurring behaviors, mindsets or life circumstances that provide a sense of predictable familiarity but also limit growth and progress. It’s a metaphor for stagnating within set ways.
Try to identify yourself in the types of stuckness based on the diagrams below:
Take a moment to reflect and consider – which description resonates with you? It’s normal to experience all four types of stuckness simultaneously, though it’s subtle. However, one might feel them in an “everything is falling apart and I don’t know what I was made for” kind of way, but more in an “I can’t find an aspect in my today’s life where I go home proud of myself” manner.
The feeling of being stuck brings inertia, stagnation, and a sense of not moving forward or finding fulfillment. Whether it’s in your career, relationships, personal growth, or creativity, being stuck makes you feel like you’re spinning your wheels instead of making progress.
Common signs of stuckness tend to revolve around repetition, without improvement or satisfaction. Routines become stagnant and predictable instead of flexible and stimulating, and tasks seem endless rather than uplifting.
Fear often lies at the heart of being stuck—fear of change, failure, uncertainty about the future, unresolved internal blocks like trauma or mindsets, and vulnerability. This fear stops you from taking risks and making the changes needed to improve your situation.
But sometimes, it goes deeper than you think. The cause can be something unidentifiable like lack of clarity or alignment on your purpose. We might not realize that our day-to-day life can be much more rewarding than it actually is. We settle for an “okay” life instead of reaching for fulfillment.
In summary, while different areas of life may show stuckness in different ways, the overall experience is one of dissatisfaction, lack of progress, and feeling trapped in old habits due to fear and mental barriers.
So, feeling stuck creates a cycle. The lack of progress leads to negative thoughts, which make us less confident, which then makes it even harder to move forward. But the good news is, this cycle can be broken!
How Did Fear Turn Into Stuckness?
We’ve established that stuckness can range from a simple creativity block to a full-blown existential crisis. The real puzzle is: why do we struggle to change even when we know we must? We need a better explanation than “it’s easier said than done.” Here is an insightful article that explains the science behind stuckness.
In essence, the fear response isn’t just triggered by life-or-death situations. Our brains have evolved with a ‘better safe than sorry‘ approach to stress. Fear responses kick in whenever we feel vulnerable, shielding us from potential negative outcomes. Even the slightest threat of failure, shame, or loss can set off a fear or stress response.
Stress responses manifest in four ways: fight, flight, brain freeze, and fawn.
Fight: Being defensive or resistant to avoid addressing vulnerability.
Flight: Withdrawing to avoid stressors.
Brain freeze: Indecisiveness caused by anxiety about committing to a choice.
Fawn: Submission due to fear of taking risks to meet our needs.
Understanding these mechanisms helps shed light on why we find it difficult to change, even when we know change is necessary. It’s not simply a matter of willpower; it’s deeply rooted in our brain’s evolutionary response to stress and vulnerability. Read the full article to explore how to break free from stuckness.
How To Overcome Feeling of Stuckness
The main question I kept asking while reading various articles and research on stuckness is, “Is stuckness really just about mindset? If it’s just a cycle of self-doubt, then shouldn’t confidence do the trick?” Okay. Did I really spend four hours researching only to be told to change my perspective? I don’t think so.
Blind belief won’t get us anywhere. Sure, at times, we should embrace our daily achievements and appreciate even the smallest steps we take. But if we consider the bare minimum as fulfillment, we’ll just end up aging without truly growing. We’ll only be surviving instead of fighting, winning, and living a life. Eventually, the optimistic mantra will wear off, and we’ll have to face our lack of progress.
Yes, you are stuck. But no, it is not your fault.
It is, however, your responsibility to get over it.
The first step is becoming aware of where your energy is going. To overcome feeling stuck, we need to take the energy we’ve used worrying about the past or future, and focus it on the present moment instead.
If your mind is busy thinking about what happened before or what might happen later, you won’t have much energy left to improve your current situation. You end up using your power for negative emotions like stress, self-doubt, or fear, instead of moving forward.
Shifting your focus to the present gives you back the power to create what you want in life rather than ruminating on why things went the way it did. It’s about choosing possibility over problems.
“Will this work?” Maybe.
“What if it messes me up?” It’s alright. Your old life needs to make space for the new one!
“What if I hit rock bottom?” Then the only direction left is up.
If you don’t sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice.
I understand that different types of stuckness require different treatments, as they stem from various causes. However, I’ve learned that constantly searching for a reason behind everything can trap us in a never-ending cycle. When everything seems to fall apart, all we want is to make some sense of it, just to make it easier to accept. But there’s just no stopping our obsession with patterns and reason.
Things don’t always happen for a reason. Sometimes, things happen just because.
We need to accept that there might not be a definite answer to why we’re stuck in a rut for so long. This makes it difficult to find a universal solution or quick fix to make everything better.
One thing I can say is that self-awareness is a good starting point. We need to make peace with the uncertainty and move forward from there.
Conquering Stuckness Through Devotion and Presence
Once we’ve fully accepted our stuckness (along with our cluelessness), we find it easier to adopt a fake it ‘til you make it attitude. It doesn’t matter that we feel creatively deprived. It doesn’t matter that we don’t feel good enough. We’re doing it anyway. This is who we are today, and unless we do something about it, it will be who we are tomorrow.
So we’re doing something about it. We’re showing up. We’re feeling the fear and doing it anyway. We open ourselves up and commit to our practice, consistently, without judgment. We try to remain engaged and fully focused, training our ability to become non-reactive.
That’s the fundamental idea of devotion.
We give our whole selves to serve a higher purpose. Our whole selves–meaning our imperfect selves. Let me give you an example. Since I am a writer, I am committed to writing a certain number of words every day. It doesn’t matter if the words don’t rhyme, it doesn’t matter if my vocabulary sucks–I can always fix it later. Like the wise words of Ernest Hemingway: write drunk, edit sober.
Now let me tell you why this works. Our minds have a natural tendency to get “stuck” mentally replaying past events or imagining hypothetical future scenarios. This mental time travel is often dwelling on negative thoughts – mistakes we’ve made, things we should have done differently, potential bad outcomes down the road, etc.
Ruminating in this way sucks our energy and prevents us from fully engaging with the present. It keeps us trapped mentally in a past we can’t change or an uncertain future we can’t control.
However, when we devote ourselves wholeheartedly to something in the here and now – whether spiritual practice, a hobby, exercise, creativity – it requires our full presence and attention. There’s no bandwidth left for mental time travel down unhelpful rumination roads.
Being completely absorbed in the current activity dampens those habitual thought patterns that usually loop in the past or future. It brings us back to a state of flow, engagement and mindfulness in the present moment rather than a state of “stuckness.”
Afterthought
While feelings of being stuck can seem stagnant and discouraging, they are usually just a temporary phase in our evolution. Life is constant growth and change, even if nonlinear at times.
When we feel blocked, it means we are ready to expand to the next level – we’ve outgrown where we’ve been but not fully integrated where we’re going.
The antidote to stuckness is action. Small steps, started consistently each day with compassion for ourselves, lead to breakthroughs over time. If it feels like you’re not doing enough, then simply stop feeling. Stop ruminating and just do it.
Confidence is essentially having low self-esteem and putting on a show anyway. It comes from knowledge and practice; therefore, the more experience we have in something, the more confident we become. (Though of course, coffee helps.)
Who knows–maybe beneath our perceived limits lie untapped strength, creativity, and even joy.
Karma Wisdom | Curated research written by Anya Junor