The Comfort of the Rut: Why Letting Go Can Be So Hard
Updated: Oct 9
Sometimes we know exactly what we need to change, yet we still find it incredibly difficult to change it. We can recognise that something is making us unhappy, exhausted or even unhealthy, but somehow we keep going back to it. It is a strange thing about being human.
There is an old saying attributed to Hippocrates: “before you heal someone, ask whether they are willing to give up the things that make them sick.” It could be a habit, a belief, an expectation, a routine or a need to please everyone.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and perhaps it is because I have reached an age where I look at certain parts of my life and ask myself a slightly different question. Instead of simply asking, “Is this working?” I am starting to ask, “Do I actually want to keep living this way?” Those are two very different questions.
There Is Safety in the Rut
We tend to think of a rut as an entirely negative place. Nobody wants to admit that they are stuck in one. But perhaps a rut has another side to it.
Sometimes the thing we need to let go of is not necessarily making us happy. It is simply making us feel safe because it is familiar. We know how it works; we know what to expect and we know who we are within that routine. I think this is one of the reasons change can be so difficult. It is one thing to say, “I need to stop doing this.” It is another thing entirely to actually stop when that habit, routine or way of thinking has become such a familiar part of our lives.
My Own Rut Was in the Gym
I have a very good example of this from my own life. For quite a while, I had an almost obsessive idea of what a successful gym session looked like. I wanted to burn one thousand calories. If I had burned one thousand calories, I could go home feeling that I had really worked hard. Anything less somehow felt as though I had not done enough.
The problem was that my body did not care about my perfect little number. My body wanted recovery. It wanted me to understand that getting older does not mean giving up on fitness, but it does mean becoming a little wiser about how I train.
Letting go of that one-thousand-calorie goal was harder than I expected because I had to let go of the idea that more is always better. I had to accept that a shorter, smarter workout could actually be more useful to me than spending hours aiming for a goal that did not benefit me. That was a surprisingly big mental shift because I had spent years believing that working harder was automatically the answer.
The Fixer in Me
There is another side to this subject that I find particularly difficult because I am a natural fixer. If someone tells me they have a problem, my brain immediately starts looking for a solution. It is almost automatic. I want to help, I want to make things better and, if there is a problem, surely there must be something we can do about it.
I have had to learn that this is not always how life works. Sometimes people are not ready to change. Sometimes they know exactly what they could do differently but are not ready to take that step. Sometimes they are frightened of what change might involve. And sometimes people simply need someone to listen rather than someone to produce a five-point plan for fixing their lives.
This can be surprisingly difficult when you genuinely care about someone. You can see a possible way forward so clearly, yet the other person may not be ready to take it. I have had to remind myself that offering help is one thing. Taking responsibility for another person's choices is something completely different. I can listen, I can care and I can offer advice when it is wanted, but I cannot make another person change.
And perhaps that is another form of letting go. Not letting go of the person but letting go of my need to fix the problem for them. For someone like me, who naturally wants to jump in with a solution, this is difficult.
We All Have Our Own Version
The interesting thing is that none of us are immune to this. We may not all have the same rut, but I suspect most of us have one somewhere. It might be a job that has become draining but feels too frightening to leave. It might be a relationship that no longer feels right but is familiar. It might be an old belief about ourselves that we have carried for so long that we no longer stop to question whether it is even true.
I know the people-pleasing rut particularly well because I spent years in it myself. I worried about hurting people's feelings, I did not want to disappoint anyone and, quite honestly, I found it much easier to say yes than to say no. I remember regularly giving people lifts home from work, sometimes taking them kilometres out of my own way. At the time, I did not really think much of it. If someone needed a lift and I could help, I helped.
But somewhere in my mind, I expected people to appreciate my generosity in the same way I would appreciate theirs. Maybe they would bring me some flowers, buy me a little box of chocolates or offer me some money towards the petrol. The funny thing was, that never happened in return.
That was a valuable lesson for me. Learning to say no without feeling guilty was one of the most liberating changes I have ever made. I realised that I could still be a kind and helpful person without automatically making myself available to everyone. These days, I can say no without feeling that I need to justify myself.
Perhaps this is what growing out of an old rut looks like. It does not mean becoming a completely different person. It means recognising an old pattern, understanding why you behaved that way and deciding that it no longer works for you.
What If the Rut Is No Longer Where We Belong?
I think getting older gives us a wonderful opportunity to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions. What am I still doing simply because I have always done it? What am I holding on to because it is familiar? What am I afraid might happen if I let go? And perhaps the biggest question of all is whether the thing I am calling “security” is actually keeping me stuck.
Perhaps that is why change often begins with something very small. Maybe it begins with simply admitting to ourselves that something is not working for us anymore.
Maybe We Don't Need to Escape the Rut All at Once
For me, it was partly the belief that I always needed to push harder in the gym to prove that I was doing enough. For someone else, it might be the belief that they have to keep everyone happy, that asking for help is a weakness, or that changing direction at this stage of life is somehow too late. The difficult part is that these things can become comfortable. They can become familiar and, over time, they can even become part of who we think we are. That is why letting go can feel like losing something, even when what we are letting go of is no longer helping us.
I don't think I have suddenly become an expert at letting go. Far from it. I am still learning. I am learning that I do not have to exercise to exhaustion. I am learning that rest is not laziness. I am learning that I cannot solve every problem for every person I love. And I am learning that sometimes the kindest thing I can do for myself is to stop trying so hard to maintain a version of my life that no longer fits.
Maybe that is what growing older really gives us. Not all the answers, but a little more courage to ask better questions. We become a little less interested in proving ourselves and a little more interested in asking whether the life we are living actually feels right for us.
Because sometimes the rut is uncomfortable, but it is familiar. And familiar can feel remarkably safe. Until one day we realise that the safest place for us might actually be somewhere we have never been before.
Over to you: Have you ever realised that something familiar was keeping you stuck, even though part of you was afraid to let it go? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.
🌿 Continue Your Journey
If this blog resonated with you, here are three more stories you might enjoy:
Why I Don’t Do Drastic Anymore
How I started breaking the invisible, comforting routines that quietly ran my day.
What happens when the things that worked for years suddenly stop working — and we have to learn to work with our changing bodies instead of fighting them.
— Frannie ☕
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