Stuck In A Mental Rut? 3 Steps To Still Get The Job Done (ft. Rosie Bennet)
With it currently being Mental Health Awareness Month, Rosie decided to share her tips for taking care of your mental well-being as well as actionable steps for getting out of a personal rut and avoiding one in the first place!
Things aren’t always easy.
It doesn’t matter how talented you are, how much you enjoy your work, what a beautiful life you have, things can get difficult for all of us.
Sometimes the pressures of life come to a head — we feel fatigued, run down, unable to get out of bed in the morning.
In a creative job where you can’t put ‘showing up’ on your list of requirements for work success, it is even more important that we learn how to tackle these difficult moments so that we can stop letting people down and hold onto the work that we have.
But how exactly?
Step 1: SLEEP
You will need:
- a bed
- patience
- 12 free hours.
Whether you believe you are sleeping enough or not, the first step I suggest in this process of recovering from a rut is to sleep.
Many of us are overworking — be it physically or mentally — without realizing.
Try a full eight hours of undisturbed (if possible) sleep, allowing time for a pre sleeping ritual and a lazy post sleeping ritual.
Try not to bring your phone to bed, unplug all electrical devices and take time to meditate before sleep, try to calm your mind, listen to your breath, allow yourself to feel carefree.
Step 2: DIVIDE AND CONQUER
You will need:
- Paper
- Pen
- Clock
What do you have to do? Perhaps it is a work assignment, learning a new piece or revising for an upcoming exam.
We are used to critiquing our work processes, constantly trying to improve the efficiency of our schedules.
But when you are in a rut, you aren’t working at maximum efficiency anyway, why add work efficiency to your list of stresses?
Divide your goals onto a page; e.g ‘articulation of basses bars 4–12’, ‘left hand slurs’.
Failing that, divide the actions you know you are meant to be doing to achieve your goals on a piece of paper; e.g ‘playing guitar’ ‘writing words’.
Then allocate an amount of time to each, e.g ‘play guitar — 30 minutes.’ ‘write words — 20 minutes’.
Keep the time goals low, and try to get a couple of minutes in whenever you have the energy/patience.
Hang in there with this one, it does go against the grain, but it will keep you moving mentally during this difficult time, and will avoid leaving you feeling guilty once this period has passed.
Step 3: KNOW THIS WILL PASS
You will need:
- Trust
Everything in life passes, every feeling that we experience is only temporary.
Things may currently be difficult, but we have all experienced and survived difficult things in the past, we are made of strong stuff.
If we are to recover fully from the dips in our lives, we must accept that we all experience moments like this and that there is no need for shame or guilt.
Ultimately, we must trust ourselves, forgive this difficult moment and accept that we all need time off from the hustle.
Looking Forward
Things we can actively do to avoid negative repercussions from a rut:
1. KEEP A RESERVE
Cash in while you are ahead. If you are in a job in which you can prepare work in advance, the times that you feel strong are the perfect moments to create a reserve of material for possible moments of low creativity; be it blog posts, lesson plans or music videos.
2. PLAN REST
None of us can go 100 mph constantly and not feel the wrath of hard work. Take time off, even if you feel you don’t need it, your future self will thank you for it! Remember that taking time off, might also mean taking time off of stressing, taking time off of connectivity, or even taking time off of things we perceive to not really be ‘work’.
3. DIVERSIFY
Not all of our work tasks must be active work especially in a creative job. A great deal of our work can be observing the work of others, discovering new material, meeting people within our creative circles or visiting exciting new locations.
If we can find a way to split our work tasks into active and passive elements, perhaps it will be easier for us to find suitable tasks for our down days, where we can still feel that we have accomplished something.
We all experience difficult times where we find ourselves fatigued and confused. Remember — even birds aren’t flying constantly!
Just because now is difficult, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t cut out for this.
Trust the process, have a weekend off!
About Rosie Bennet
Born in London in 1996, Rosie started playing guitar at age seven. She received her early musical education at The Yehudi Menuhin School of Music and went on to study with Zoran Dukic (The Hague, NL), Johan Fostier (Tilburg, NL), Rene Izquierdo (Milwaukee, USA) and Raphaella Smits (Leuven, BE). She has performed in festivals all over Europe, including Open Guitar Festival in Křivoklát, Czech Republic, Glasgow’s Big Guitar Weekend, Scotland, Porziano Music Festival, Italy and the West Dean guitar Festival, UK. Highlights of her concert career include performances at Wigmore Hall, London, The North Wall, Oxford and concerts given on El Camino De Santiago.
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