In todays world of look-at-me-ism and how perfect is my life, it can feel lonely and extra exhausting to be in a rut when everything feels mediocre. For me, a rut is when I’m going through the motions but not experiencing much pleasure or joy, most things me tired and there is often a bit of anhedonia and apathy fused in.

Disclaimer: I am not trained in mental health, I am sharing from my own energetics and unraveling of ego aspects, people pleasing, burnout, living out of alignment and how I am slowly but surely finding my energy and deeper purpose after veering too far from my authenticity.

Why am I talking about this? Because it can also feel very isolating. Why can everyone else show up, find their joy, their passion but I can’t seem to figure it out. Why doesn’t anything excite me and why is it hard to find meaning. Things start to become what’s the point. Not as in what’s the point of my life (professional help is needed in this case) but more so a yeah, sure, I can take it or leave it mentality. Things that used to excite you have become mediocre.

How does this happen?

This can often happen when we are living out of alignment for too long. In my case, this reflected through running on ego aspects of self such as seeking approval, people pleasing and worrying what will others think, from strangers to my close friends and family.

There is often auto-pilot life happening as we fall into these rutty cycles so it may take some digging to start getting real. I will say that if you’re worried how others will think or react in any way at all about any of your choices, then it’s time to start digging.

As for the people pleaser in me, I actually didn’t even realize how much of a people pleaser I was until I started deeply examining why I was so exhausted all the time combined with habits around the way I was emotionally eating. I’ll save people pleasing for another time but I will say it can be more hidden then we are led to believe.

From an entrepreneurial lens, I went on way too long believing that working through resistance is normal, thinking that being exhausted and having no creativity is normal, it’s “normal” for an entrepreneur to feel exhausted all the time, have to “pay my dues” “nothing comes without struggle” “but at least I’ve come this far.”

There is some truth to these statements, as there is no light without dark, but when these cycles turn from exhilarating challenges to resentments, burnout and numbness, this is the danger zone. So how do we figure out the difference? There is a big difference in being challenged and pushed beyond our limits with the underlying desire of wanting to rise up in the face of challenges and reach a goal vs living in resistance, ignoring your intuition, doing what looks good on paper and becoming numb and apathetic.

A good metaphor for this is working out.

If I’m a bit tired, a little sore or not fully in the mood, I’ll still workout, I always feel better after and it motivates me to keep at it. However, if we workout on an injury, we’ll make it worse, it will take us longer to heal and it will lead us further from our goals. We might even stop working out all together because it becomes to painful.

We may also subconsciously ignore intuitive hits around resistance, exhaustion and auto-pilot due to a collective shadowy that, especially if we are in any way privileged, we don’t have the right to feel sad, or down, or experience deep loss, purposelessness, confusion, or express that we may be experiencing a challenging cycle in life.

These conditioned societal aspects of “how dare I not be living in gratitude 24/7 with my gratitude journal and my gratitude quotes” with everything all figured out, will indeed have you gaslighting yourself, and will continue to lead you further from your truth, purpose and joy. I’m not saying not to have gratitude, I live in a daily deep gratitude for my life because I do know how very privileged I am, I have many blessings in life, however, that does not mean I should settle and pretend things such as relationships, careers, etc are fulfilling when they indeed no longer are or never were to begin with.

When everything feels mediocre, the only way out is through

The only way we can each serve the world is through the deepest embodiment of our purpose(s) and to live in truth during both the light and dark cycles of life. Playing pretend with our lives and suppressing how we feel because we are concerned what society or others will think helps no-one but will indeed cultivate guilt, shame and more resistance that we then have to spend time unraveling and alchemizing.

Other ways ruts, apathy and things feeling mediocre in life can manifest as, especially with a false gratitude, is staying is a mediocre marriage because *some people don’t have anyone at all so I better be thankful,* staying in a mediocre career because *some people don’t have a job so I better be thankful.* Whatever these stories are that we tell ourselves must be deeply examined if we want anything to shift.

What all of these aspects boil down to is suppression, repression and resistance. We’ve been living in either one, both or all for too long, we’ve numbed our innate knowing and now we are frozen, don’t know what to do next, our intuitive signal is very fuzzy, we focus on external vs internal and on the more heightened end of the spectrum, we can wind up waking up one day to an entire life that we built through ego, comfort, approval or conformity.

During this type of cycle, our energy becomes full of resistance, which is why we get fatigued and the truth is that somewhere, we are doing to please others before ourselves, we are experiencing feelings of guilt or shame in something we are doing or not doing, we may be living from comfort vs joy, and we are participating in something because we don’t believe we can do anything else or have a choice to do otherwise.

To navigate these cycles, we must first get real with ourselves

“I love my x,y,z.” But do you really?

“I’m happy.” But are you really?

I was actually not able express my truth around either of these aspects until I started meditating regularly to get out of my head and into my body to FEEL instead of think, I had to start trusting my initial intuitive knowings and stopped second guessing myself. It is a layered process and you must commit to a new way of being and a new trusting.

I had to shed everything that was no longer serving me and am now in the rebuilding process. Which is “I am unavailable unless it speaks to my soul.” Because I was living out of alignment for so long, which was expressed through my energy levels, eating habits, partners I was attracting in dating and imbalances in my business, I personally had to embody an all or none frequency and my wishy washy energy had to go.

Wishy washy looks like well, maybe, I guess, if, but, saying yes when I wanted to say no, smiling on the surface while upset underneath and jumping through hoops to navigate my own life.

I won’t bore you with the details but I had to step fully into the unknown, fully trust myself, my intuition, go against everything that looked good on paper and get comfortable with discomfort. I had to heal (I still am) resentments, shed the guilt and shame around certain decisions I was making and liberate myself from fathoming what anyone would think about my choices. If you are feeling stuck but know you want more out of your life, I encourage you to do the same.

Don’t believe you’re not here to live your most fulfilling life because you are and surround yourself with people that feel the same way. There is no light without dark and the only way out is through.

Radiance is living in our truths.

With Love,

Jen xx