By African American Books Author Denise Turney

Freedom and love must be semi-twins, because freedom feels good like love. Live free and with an open mind and you could avoid getting stuck in ruts. It sounds easy, but few pull it off. School schedules, work routines, family patterns and internal cycles drag you down after a while, sneak up on you slow and easy. Yet, to thrive you have to discover ways to avoid getting stuck in ruts.

Getting Out of Ruts

It’s odd how the goals you set to graduate with a degree, land a job, buy a home and start a family are the very goals that slowly pull you into routines that work their way into ruts. Although you might not admit it, you’ve created obligations that are forcing you to stick to routines. There’s the mortgage, credit card bills, artistic contracts and student loans. Today, it’s hard to believe that each of these responsibilities came offering greater freedom, not hard routines.

You thought taking on thousands of dollars in student loan debt would open doors to high paying jobs, respect and satisfaction. But that’s not what happened. One debt led to another idea for how to pay that debt off, got you into more debt. Now, is the time to break free.

There’s only one way out — freedom. To get free of ruts, you could:

• Insert small changes into your day (e.g. get up 20 minutes earlier, shower in the morning instead of at night, grow your own tomatoes)
• Pay double the minimum due on credit cards (while not making any other credit card purchases)
• Listen to a different music genre
• Rent out the basement in your house to pay your mortgage off 10 years early
• Start writing on that new movie script

Explore Your Passion for Freedom to Avoid Getting Stuck in Ruts

Despite your passion for freedom, don’t be surprised if a part of you balks at the idea. After all, as much as you hate getting stuck in ruts, there’s something about routine that feels comfortable, safe. This is why it’s best to avoid getting stuck in ruts from the start.

Check out these ways that you may find easy as it regards personal freedom. However, you should know that you’re going to have to practice self-awareness for these actions to work:

• Write in a journal to become aware of repetitive thoughts and patterns that you’re drifting into.
• Pay attention to your dreams, exploring symbols and situations that keep popping up in your dreams.
• Enter outdoor adventure challenges that take you out of your routines for one to two months. There are nature challenges that come with expert protections (e.g. medical crews, experienced survivalist teams) that are life changing.
• Pray for guidance from your higher Self. Follow the inner guidance that you receive.

More Ways to Avoid Getting Stuck in Ruts

• Talk with people who have taken smart risks in areas that you want to explore.
• Celebrate a time when you took a smart risk and failed. Acknowledge your courage, actions and what you learned from the experience. Remember that every experience teaches. So, there really is no failure, especially when you take what you learned and grow.
• Return to a hobby (e.g. woodcutting, painting, dancing) that you love, but abandoned because you got so caught up in routines that you convinced yourself that you didn’t have time to enjoy engaging in the hobby.
• Pay off debts to empower yourself with a debt free lifestyle. To do this, look at your bank statements for the last six months. See what you can carve out. Avoid making new debts, and watch your savings grow.
• Take nature walks. It’s amazing what being out in nature does to routines and the drive to live free.

Say Goodbye To Safety Illusions

Routines may feel safe. Yet, a part of you wants freedom, not routines and ruts. With routines, you know what’s coming a lot of the time. If today mimics yesterday and you know that you made it through yesterday, routines can lend the confidence that you’ll get through today. You’ll get through another day. Before you know it, each day is starting to look and feel the same.

That’s when boredom starts to set in. It’s because you abandoned your live free and stay free commitment. And, somewhere along the way, you knew exactly what you were doing, what you were setting yourself up for.

Regardless of how many people this has happened to, you don’t have to stay on this path. It starts with daily choices. For instance, you might cook eggs differently for breakfast. Or you might drive a different route to your friend’s house. Wearing a different pair of shoes or styling your hair differently are other ways to avoid slipping into ruts.

Practice Awareness to Avoid Getting Stuck in Ruts

More importantly, when you feel bored, uninspired or flat, check your routines. See if your day consist of routines and patterns that you’ve been engaging in for a year or longer. Without being aware, you could be wearing the same clothes on the same days of the week, styling your hair the same day after day for two years or longer and eating at the same diner for lunch for five years.

Add a job that you don’t love to this list of routines and it’s no wonder that you feel like you’re in a rut. Your day is filled with routines you no longer want to engage in. Practice awareness and catch yourself early, before you’re deep in ruts.

Live Free

But you can’t just practice awareness, you have to be honest with yourself. Admit when you don’t feel like you’re living in freedom and do something about it. Stir your courage, and shift. Try new things on a daily basis. Just do something new, something different each day.

Admittedly, it’s a risk. You won’t be able to predict outcomes. But isn’t that the fun part of what it means to live free? Not knowing how all choices will unwind can be liberating. And, when you think about it, financial debt, ridged routines and destructive relationships has never gotten you what you really want.

All the money, all the routines and all the work in the world has never gotten you freedom. So, consider taking smart risks. Make daily choices that support  debt free living. Start early, so that it becomes a lifestyle. Then, freedom, joy and what you love may start to lead you, offering you the types of emotional, financial and mental debt free lifestyle choices that you’ve been seeking.