Don't Quit In the Rut: "How did I get here" I Part 1

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Foreign. Welcome to the Uphill Community Podcast. Your source of inspiration to gain clarity, elevate your standards and embrace your to more.

Together we choose the uphill climb. Pursuing the hard best over the easy good. And discovering the extraordinary life waiting to be lived in community. So welcome to the show.

I'm so glad you can join me. It has been a crazy week, or last week was a crazy week. It's been a crazy couple of two weeks, but good, crazy, good stuff. I went out west.

I had a presentation to do with a client, which was pretty fun. It was pretty cool. Yeah, it was. Took a red eye back. It was like one of those things that just happened really, really fast.

But when I was leaving and coming out of Vegas, Google was having a big festival or conference or something out there, and. And, man, the Killers were closing out their. Their festival, which. They're a pretty cool band to me. I like the Killers and some buddies of.

Of mine and. And another friend that has a business, they do a block party every year. And.

And so me and my buddies got together to do the music for them and to do some songs. And one of the songs was by the Killers that I got to sing as, you know, somebody told me. And really cool song anyways, made me think of it.

And then I'm laughing right now because on my microphone, if you're watching this on YouTube, there's this little Jesus. You see him? I'm putting him up to the camera, so he's taped to my microphone. And the reason he's taped to my microphone is because.

So I did a conference a while back and. And one of the participants came to me and they brought me this because I think they could tell my faith and stuff.

But they brought me this little Jesus and said, here, I give these. I give these out to people. And it really touched me, a little Jesus. You know, hey, everybody needs a little Jesus.

So, I mean, I need a lot of Jesus, but just, you know, just the thought, which I thought was really cool. So anyways, I ordered a whole bunch of these little Jesus. I got a big gigantic pack of little Jesus.

I know sometimes people put them in Easter eggs for Easter egg hunts and stuff like that, but what I do is in my house with my wife and my daughter, I like to hide them around different places. So I will put them on my wife's coffee cup. I put them in the refrigerator. I put different ones, different places. Put them in the shoe.

She's put them in my shoe, but we've been doing that. And so she taped little Jesus to my microphone today, so. All right, shout out to my bride. Catching me off guard like that. That's pretty good.

Pretty good. She, she rocked it out. Needless to say, I'm gonna keep moving.

So if you've been listening to the show, you know that I just wrapped up a five week series around Dreams. This week I'm gonna get into ruts and lulz. I'm so excited about this.

So I'm gonna do like a series of four around, you know, basically Don't Quit in the Rut. That's what it is. It's just a new series, don't quit in the Rut. Focusing on ruts, lulls and dips and things that happen.

Because, you know, I talk about that stuff. People get excited and then all of a sudden, boom, they run into a wal. You crash.

It's like the sugar crash or, you know, you, you just run out, you just gas out. So I'm going to get into that. So I'm really excited about it. I've had some conversations around it and people are saying, man, yeah, do that.

That's a really good thing. And I'm also doing that within the uphill community, so.

And if you're interested in learning more about the uphill community, you know, don't hesitate. Go, go check it out. Find, get on a browser. The it's theuphill.com, theuphill community and you is. And I would love to see you join it.

If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can at Tim Pecoraro, you can follow me on LinkedIn as well. Tim Pecoraro on LinkedIn, that's t I m last name P E C P S and Paul E C O R A R O and just see what I do. I just put out simple stuff.

I don't overwhelm. I don't post all the noise and nonsense. I just post things that hopefully make a difference and add value to your life.

That's what matters most to me. That is my gift to humanity. No one pays me for these things. These are things that I do because I love them.

I love to invest in the lives of other people. So.

And if you're listening right now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcasts, Amazon Music, Odyssey, audible substack or YouTube, please subscribe to the show if you have not done so already and share with other folks and let them know what's going on. Also in my Instagram, you can join up. You'll see all my links in the bio.

So go to Instagram go to my bio, click on the link, and you'll see all the little things I do through the podcast. You'll see my business website, you know, where I do stuff with my coaching business. And I do. That's all I do, is I focus on developing people.

My life is literally around investing in people. That's all I do every single day.

I help develop people, leaders, teams, individuals, people retiring, people starting their life, people making major changes and transitions. But I mostly work with people in transition. So I help you get clarity, raise standards, and embrace a call to and for more.

Even in retirement, there's still more. You can still be valuable and be a great contributor to life. So without any hesitation, let me jump into the day, tend to, into today's topic.

I'm getting excited. So this is the new series. This is what we're going to be getting into. And it's, it's, it's all around not quitting or don't quit in the rut.

So that's the series we're in. So have you ever felt like you're spinning your wheels?

You felt like that, doing a lot of stuff, a lot of activity, but actually going nowhere or it's like, seems to be wasted because you're not alone? All right, so today that's what we're going to dive into. The reality that we all face at some point. And that reality is that we're in a rut.

Personally, professionally, emotionally, spiritually. This is where we can end up, in a rut.

All right, so before we talk about getting out of the rut, we first, we have to first know how we got in the rut. Like, that's a big thing. How did I get into this, Ruth? So let's begin with a simple truth. You can't change what you do not recognize.

So write that down. You can't change what you don't recognize. All right, so we're gonna start right here with what is a rut? Let's talk about it. A rut is a settled. Ready?

This is a definition I'm gonna give to you. A rut is a settled and monotonous routine that feels like it's limiting your growth. It's not always dramatic. It's, it's. It sneaks up subtly.

It just comes out of nowhere, it seems. You don't crash into a rut. Most of us, guess what, we drift into a rut. You're not going to just crash into it.

One day, you end up drifting into a rut, and before you know it, there you are. And a rut is not the same as a routine, guys, okay? That's another thing. Routines bring structure. Ruts, they feel like a cage, okay?

A good routine gives you structure, but a rut is like a trap. It's a cage, right? So you might say, every day feels the same, or, I'm busy, but not fulfilled.

You may say something like, I don't remember the last time that I felt excited about my life. Those are real statements that. That we all make, I think at some point in our life.

yself of, and that's Proverbs: 14:12

Death could mean the death of a thing. Death could mean just waste, loss, right? So I just want you to realize that. How can I put it? That verse, kind of. It's like a mirror, right?

Sometimes we walk into ruts thinking that it's the right road, but we eventually wake up, we're disoriented, we're drained, and we're dissatisfied. Oh, gosh, the three Ds. Disoriented, drained and dissatisfied. All right? Not. Not a cool place to be. At least I know I don't want to ever be there.

So let's talk about the most common ruts that we fall into. All right? So in this conversation, since we're talking about ruts, I'm just going to bring up just common ruts. And I think what I did was I.

I developed five common ruts, okay? These are five simple, universal common ruts that we all can experience and go through. All right? So here they are. Ready? Hope you got a listen.

If you're not driving and you have a. You have something to write with, you're listening. Just, man, listen. Nothing listens better than a blank piece of paper.

And the shortest pencil is better than the longest memory. All right? So try to write some of these things down. And it's just simple stuff that's going to help. Help you.

So here's the first rut, the career rut, right? So you're. You're clocking in, you're clocking out. You go to the office, you do your thing. Some people are being called into the office again.

Maybe you're good at what you do, but the passion is gone. What was that song by the. It was the Everly Brothers. You've lost that loving feeling. So you don't love your job Anymore. You don't love what you do.

But the passion, it's gone, right? It's gone. You're stuck in a job that pays the bills but starves your purpose, right? I mean, how many of you feel like that?

How many of you felt that way? How many of you said, man, Tim, that is me, right? Remember, we have to recognize the key is you can't change what you don't recognize.

So I want you to look at that. I want you to think about that and the work that you're doing. Your career, your job, whatever it is, you know? Do you feel that way? Do you.

You feel like you're good at what you're doing, but the passion is gone, the loving feeling is gone. You don't have a desire for it. You feel stuck in that job and. And you pay the bills, but you're starving your purpose.

If that's you, I want to say this to you. You were made for more than your paycheck. All right? I do believe that.

And I do believe that there comes a time in your life where you change your life to not just have more, but change your life to have more joy and satisfaction. I would rather have a fulfilled life than to have tons of money. Now, if you can have both, great.

But I'm going to tell you right now, to chase the money doesn't mean I get the fulfillment. It can make me want to. I can do more things. But I see so many people and listen, I have the privilege of coaching people who are multi millionaires.

Multi, multi millionaires. I go to organizations that are billion dollar organizations. Literally. I was just there last month.

The second largest employer or the first largest employer in the world, That's Walmart. I was at Walmart Corporate. Sitting in there, sitting with top people. And I'm going to tell you, guess what? There's faces.

There are faces in the room that you can tell their head and their heart are not in sync. And they drove up to a meeting in a vehicle that was easy six figures. But there's no joy now. Doesn't mean if you have the money, you have no joy.

No, it doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that at all.

What I'm saying is, is you, when you're working, sometimes what you're working in, the places we find ourselves is because we're chasing something, we're chasing this idea and we're forgetting about ourselves. We're starving on the inside. Our purpose is dying.

And that's a great indicator that you have to be careful on the road that you're on that's creating the rut that you're in, right? So that's the thing you have to pay attention to.

The road that you're on is putting you in the rut that you're in because you were made more, made for more than a paycheck. The second one is that I want to bring up is the relationship rut, man. I've had good ones, I've had bad ones.

I've been the person who's made the relationship good. I've been the person that's made the relationship bad, okay? So I know what it's like. I've been on both sides of that.

So whether it's a disconnection in your marriage, loneliness, or it's a one sided friendship, maybe you're experiencing your relationships feel like they're on autopilot or ready, worse yet, empty. So when conversation turns to convenience, connection ultimately starts to decay. When you're just talking, it's convenient and it's there.

And that's what you do. And you go through life. I know people like that. I know people who just use their friends. I know people who make friends just to get stuff.

I know people who don't know how to be friends. I know people who just talk out of the convenience. But they, but they're starving on the inside.

I mean, one of the hardest things I've experienced over the last few years was dealing with that with someone who, you know, this guy was a friend. I mean, at least I thought he was. And no, he wasn't. Just, just treat you disposable. And I get it, I get it. So it happens.

But I had to look at that, I had to pay attention to that. So then there's the personal growth rut. Now I'm in love. I'm a person that believes you need to fall in love with personal growth. All right?

I am seriously 100% in love with growing and changing and developing. And I have to start with me. I don't put the requirements on other people. I start with myself.

So when it comes to personal growth, are you that person that stopped learning? Have you stopped now? Hopefully you haven't said, well, there's nothing else I can learn. Because if, man, I don't know who you are to think that way.

I mean, I see there are brilliant folks that are, you know, doing incredible things, making stuff. They're in science and stuff and they're still learning. So I don't know who could ever say such a thing. And if you did say such a thing. Wow.

But you stopped learning. You stopped stretching. When you're not learning, you're not stretching. And so you've lost your hunger to grow. Everything is fine, but you're ready.

Nothing is thriving. Is that you? Are you in the personal growth rut? So the first one's career rut. Second one's the relationship rut. Third one is the personal growth rut.

Because growth doesn't happen by accident. Growth is something that is going to happen intentionally. It's because you pursue it. I'm enjoying some of these. I hope you are, too.

As I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm going, wow. These are, I think these are, I believe, the ones that are going to help the most.

If you're listening to this, then there's the faith or the purpose rut, okay? And that means your belief in something bigger or you believe in something bigger, but it feels very distant.

You're going through the motions, but you still, like, your soul feels dry, it feels empty. And you haven't felt connected to your purpose.

Or even if you're like me to God, to your savior, your creator, to Jesus Christ, for me, you can feel that. So whatever is your thing, you can feel that purpose disconnection or that spirit disconnection.

And the thing that I want to let you know is especially for me now, if you're a believer and you're listening to this, that even when you're disconnected, meaning you disconnected, meaning you have become stagnant, meaning you're just. You're no longer. I mean, you just read the Bible or you just go through the motions. God hasn't stopped calling you. He's not abandoning you.

The same thing with your purpose. Whether you believe in God or not, I want to let you all know that inside of you, you're wired to be drawn to your purp.

So a lot of you could feel very disconnected to it. You could feel like you don't feel that thing calling you anymore. You feel like you're just going through the motions again.

And that is something that I believe. You've got to change the way that you're doing some things, which, you know, I'm going to get ahead of myself.

I'm going to show you how to get out of these ruts in a minute. So just forget that for a second. I was about to get down the road. So the fifth one, and so your first one is a career, Ruth, right?

You were made for more than a paycheck. The second rut that I gave to you is a relationship rut. That's when conversations, they turn to convenience and connection starts to decay.

The third is the personal growth rut, which growth doesn't happen by accident, it's intentional. The fourth is the faith or the purpose rut.

And even when you're disconnected, God hasn't stopped calling you or your purpose hasn't stopped calling you. And now the fifth one. This one's a big one. It's the health and the energy rut. For me, this is big. You always seem tired.

You're physically, emotionally, mentally right. You feel emotionally, I mean, you're just, oh, you're drained. You don't feel like you. And the habits you use to maintain have slowly eroded.

That's huge. That's a big one. Because your body and mind, they're not supposed to be enemies, okay? They're trying to alert you. They're not your enemies.

They're supposed to be on your side. You need to view them that way because when you're in that rut, they're speaking to you, going that you're tired, you're exhausted, you're beat.

Of course it could be like, okay, well you're staying up late binge watching television or you're staying out too late or you're online doom scrolling too much, whatever, okay? That's an indicator case. So now you stop doing that and you feel tired and you say, okay, well, maybe I'll catch up on my sleep.

So you start to catch up on your sleep, you know, you're not doom scrolling. You turn off the tv, you get the bed a regular hour, but you're still exhausted, some reason, for some reason.

So then maybe you go to your doctor and your doctor does blood work. The doctor says, no, that's great. I mean, it may not be medical, okay? It could be that you're just, you're in a rut. You're in a rut.

So if I, if I was going to ask you, like if you would tell me which, which you know of these ruts do you think you relate to the most? I want you to pause. I want you to think about that. I mean, it's not to put you in a place of shame. It's to help you move into a greater awareness.

And not just to be aware, but to be consciously aware. And awareness to me is, it's a doorway. And if you want to move forward, you have to name where you are first. You are here, I am here.

So it's hard to move forward because you could just move. But where are you going? I mean, maybe it's time for you to stop. Identify where you are so you know how to make a better move or better step.

The next step. The next step can be better in a different direction.

It's kind of like on Seinfeld, where George did the opposite of what he normally did, and he started getting dates. So he was, like, opposite George, like, doing the opposite. And that's what some of us need to pay attention to.

Some of us, the change is simply doing the opposite of the thing that we've been doing. And we could get our life back. Just the opposite. So how we get stuck. Okay, I'm gonna get into this. We're getting close to wrapping up here.

How do we end up in these ruts? I'm gonna give you four ways we end up in ruts, all right? The first one is we get busy and we just don't notice the slow drift.

Just doing this, a little bit of that. Saying yes to this, saying yes to that. Oh, but I'm gonna go have fun. Oh, but I'm gonna go do this. Oh, but this person, they did this for me.

Oh, but I gotta do that for them. Like, you can literally put your life that you don't even notice you're drifting. The second is we avoid hard decisions.

And so by avoiding the hard decision, we will settle for easy routines. Man, I'm going to tell you right now, stop avoiding hard decisions. Do the hard decision.

Instead of the easy routine that you find yourself into, make a hard decision to go to the next level and get out of the easy routine. That's not building anything. It's not doing anything.

So, for instance, if your routine is, wow, I'm walking, but the rut is your health is not advancing, then maybe the routine of just walking needs to change. So the walking isn't bad. It's just the routine's not doing anything else. So you avoid making the hard decision to change it up.

Because you're like, man, I just got this thing going. So that's just giving an example. Just what is the thing that you could. What hard decision might you be avoiding?

Because you're sticking with an easier routine. Right? The third one is we fear change more than we fear stagnation. Oh, that's not. That's just.

I am so afraid of being stagnant and just being a dead sea. I'm just like, where you're just like that swamp water or that water that's sitting there, a puddle outside, and mosquitoes gather around it.

Like, that's what it feels like it's just nasty algae grows in it. There's no movement. It's just. That's what that feels like to me. I would rather change than be that. And, yeah, change is hard.

And because we know change is hard, we need to challenge ourselves to get better at it. And so the fourth one is we normalize dysfunction because it feels familiar.

So when we know that we're dysfunctional, we go, okay, well, this is just what I mean. I'm familiar. Like, I know people that have had learning disabilities in their life and, like, severe ones. And rather than just say that this.

It was familiar and they felt safe by identifying as that, they worked hard to change it to whatever degree that they could. I had an uncle who just passed away who, where I grew up, you know, he had mental issues, and they called it mental retardation when I was younger.

I know that's not appropriate, so nobody's head explode, please, nobody blow up over that. But that's what we knew when we were kids, when we were little, and this is in the 70s. So he passed away, but he only wanted to be emancipated.

He wanted to live on his own. And there came a point in his life when he finally was able to do that. And what he did was he had to learn, though.

He had to push himself because he didn't want the familiarity of the dysfunction. He wanted to. He didn't want to normalize it. He wanted to push himself beyond that to go to the next life.

There's a guy, Nick Vujicic, Go look for him on YouTube. The guy has no arms and no legs. So he could normalize the dysfunction, but no, he's a great public speaker. The guy swims in the ocean.

I know people who won't even go learn to swim at the ymca, at the local pool with free pool lessons. And this guy is swimming like that in the ocean. Like he scoots up to the edge and goes in. Unbelievable.

Because he will not normalize dysfunction because it's familiar. Don't do that. Just don't do that. So here's the kicker. Most ruts are. Are built by good intentions, right? Plus poor maintenance, though.

So you end up in a rut. You have a good intention, but you just have poor maintenance. Think about that. Good intentions. That's how I'm building a rut.

But I have poor maintenance of that. Another one that you want to look at for here. Here's.

I want you to kind of think and take into consideration as another kicker is we didn't plan to get stuck, but we stopped checking in on ourselves and we stopped adjusting our course. So we have good intentions, but poor maintenance.

We don't plan on getting stuck, but we stop checking in on what we're doing, checking in on ourselves. We stopped adjusting our course. And then we start thinking to ourselves, oh, this is just a season. It will just pass. We'll get through this.

But seasons turn into years, and we don't take the wheel back. We don't get back into it. Unbelievable. And then we want to know what happened. So if you're in a rut, I don't want you to beat yourself up.

I don't want you to just say you're lazy. I mean, maybe you have tendencies, I don't know. But just don't call yourself these things. And guess what? You're not broken. I've been in ruts, too.

I know a lot of people. I know very successful people. Think of the most successful people you can imagine. They've all been in ruts.

And the other thing is, you're not too far gone. But here's what I want to challenge you with. You don't have to stay here. And the first step is you've got to decide that you're going to be honest.

You're going to really be honest, and you're going to be honest about what's going on in your life.

And the way you can be honest in starting with that is, remember I said, and hopefully you heard me say it in the beginning, that nothing listens better than a blank piece of paper. And the shortest pencil, right? Is better than the longest memory or pen, right? It's better than the longest memory.

So I want you to write some things down. Here are three things I want you to write down. I want you to write down what rut or ruts are you in? Right? I gave you a list.

I gave you in the beginning. The first one was a career rut. Second one was a relationship rut. The third was the personal growth rut. The fourth was the faith in the purpose rut.

And then the fifth one was the health and the energy rut. All right, so I want you to write down, what rut are you in? What is the ruth? And then how long do you think you've been there?

Try to take some time and go, how long have you been in there? Because a lot of times, if I can go, man, I've been in there since last. Whatever, this time last year, right?

It's really good to kind of look at that because you never know what was going on. You can kind of go, that's when it started. But then here's the big one.

After you find out what rut you're in, how long you've been there, I want you to ask yourself this. What does it cost you? What's the cost you really want to get into? Like, I want to feel this thing because I don't want to stay here.

I want to get out of it. Because next week, we're going to talk about what to do when progress disappears. When you're in the dip. Okay, the proverbial dip.

When you're in that spot, what do you do when that happens? All right, so which of the five ruts are you in? Right? That's what I want you to do. Which of the five ruts?

I want you to define it, say it, speak it, share it with somebody. I want you to say, hey, I'm in a career rut or personal growth rut. Right? I'm in relationship rut. The faith and purpose rut.

I'm in a health and energy. Ruth, whatever it is, which of the five ruts feels most familiar to you right now? And what are the warning signs that told you something isn't right?

Maybe it's this podcast today. Maybe you listening to this and it's telling you something's not right.

If you were to describe your current emotional or spiritual state in one word, what would that word be? That's a big question. What would it be? So here's my challenge for you. I want you to find someone, someone that you can talk to and share this with.

I want you to tell one trusted, trusted friend or mentor, someone that. That you know walks and does life with. You appear someone you can count on, what rut you feel stuck in right now.

And I want you to invite them to check in with you this week, the next week, but check in and see how you are and how things are going.

When we do this and when we really bring somebody else in and we share and we write it down and we take these steps, we grow faster when we stop hiding. And we also grow deeper, deeper roots when we open ourselves up to trusted people, trusted friends, mentors, coaches.

So you've got this, and you can do it. Next week, we're going to tackle the dip and the lull, those dry, dull places where most people quit right before their breakthrough.

And I'll also share a story of a man who gave up three feet from finding every bit of what he was searching for. You don't want to miss it. So until next time. We'll talk soon.