Ashes to ashes, rut to ruts
Every action or inaction you take is a vote for who you want to become — James Clear
This article is part of a larger series titled Breaking Free: The Science, Art, and Meaning of Change.
The Quiet Arrival of Tragedy
A skilled author often foreshadows tragedy not through explicit events but by setting a scene. You know the type, a broken umbrella under a torrential downpour, the kind of weather that makes the reader feel that something’s coming. We’ve all read that novel in high schools where the protagonist trudges home in the pouring rain, shoulders slumped, knowing that something inevitable — death, loss, something permanent — is about to arrive.
But real-life tragedies don’t always arrive with such dramatic flair. They’re not always accompanied by storms or flashes of lightning. Sometimes, they seep in slowly, like water finding cracks in a foundation, draining away possibilities over time. Tragedy can unfold on bright and scorching days when everything seems deceptively still. It can come quietly, unmarked by weather or circumstance. It can come suddenly, your life chess pieces thrown in the air.
It can also come slowly, over many summers and many winters. It can come through a collection of choices. It can be your inner democracy voting for tragedy.
The 21st Century: The Age of Ruts
I originally planned to write this article months ago. Life happened, it got in the way. I started a new job and I was adjusting to my routine. This happens. However — I also let myself get into a rut. Ruts, in their simplest meaning, to me, are those destructive periods in your life where your health declines (physical, mental, or indeed, spiritual).
I found myself turning to drinking and eating unhealthy foods more frequently, most likely as a coping mechanism for the emotional weight of being stuck in a rut. These indulgences are fine in moderation, but in that moment, in that rut, they had become utterly destructive. One more pint didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but I paid for it the next day. Not just in terms of a throbbing headache or a ghastly bank balance, but in the form of exhaustion, irritability, and diminished focus. My energy was drained, and I could no longer work on my crafts and passions. The gym, my writing, and even my work, all suffered because of this rut.
I thought that engaging socially, an objectively positive step, might help me break free of the rut. However, the way I went about it only pulled me deeper. I was stumbling through a trap door that I couldn’t see. What I intended as a solution had become part of the problem.
After some hangxiety-induced reflection, I remembered that in the summer I had read Nicole Vignola’s wonderful book, Rewire. This book introduced me to the neurological basis for ruts. It helped me understand why I was soothing my low emotional state with habits like excessive drinking and unhealthy eating, and why those habits, despite their short-term comfort, ultimately kept me stuck.
On the surface, ruts might seem like simple lapses in motivation — failing to stick to New Year’s resolutions or abandoning your Duolingo streak. But there is so much more to them than meets the eye — there is a constant plethora of activity in your brain that’s contributing to it all. Everybody’s ruts are different, and the reasons for being in them and how we get out of them will vary — but common patterns emerge. By understanding how our brains are inadvertently keeping us tethered to unhelpful behaviours by protecting us, we can take a small, yet significant, step to aligning our habits with our values.
Habits and neural pathways
Habits make up a significant portion of our lives. Research suggests that around 40% of our daily actions are habitual — automatic routines that we perform without conscious thought. If you live until you are 80, this works out as approximately 11,688 days spent on autopilot. While this sounds alarming, they actually enable the brain to function way more efficiently.
Habits are stored and managed by the basal ganglia (you don’t need to remember that — there isn’t a test at the end). This part of the brain is responsible for automatic actions. This helps free up some of your brain energy for the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain which is responsible for complex decision-making and creative thinking. For example, think about your commute to work or brushing your teeth. On your first day of doing these, it required effort and thought to complete. With repetition, they became automatic. Although mundane to us, and a part of our day we don’t really give any thought to, it’s actually a crucial part for humans to navigate a world filled with endless decisions and distractions.
Habits are built through a simple process known as the habit loop. Readers of James Clear’s work will be familiar with this. Essentially, there are four parts to the habit loop: cue, craving, response, reward.
The cue is the signal that initiates the loop. It’s the attention grabber. It can be internal, like feeling stressed or hungry, or external, like seeing or hearing a notification from your phone. The craving comes next, it’s the desire to act. When your phone notification goes off, you may want connection (ever been gutted it’s just Duolingo chasing you up for a Spanish lesson instead of someone you fancy texting you back?). The response follows, you pick the phone up and you start the doomscrolling. Then your brain delivers the reward: dopamine, the ‘feel-good’ neurotransmitter. After the habit has formed, dopamine actually also begins to get delivered at the start of the loop. At the start, it fuels your craving by creating anticipation, and at the end, it cements that behaviour by delivering satisfaction. This dual role is what makes habits so effective — they are powered by a neurological feedback loop that links the anticipation of pleasure with the actual experience of it. This is why the mere thought of giving into instant gratification initially feels so good, even before you act on it (although, the intensity of this feel good factor does wear off). Take, for example, the last time you skipped cooking and decided to order a pizza on JustEat. For some of you, just imagining that moment might already have your mouth watering. That’s the habit loop in action — cue, craving, response, and reward — all powered by dopamine.
Dopamine strengthens the neural pathways associated with the habit, which makes the behaviour more automatic over time.
I understand how habits are formed — but why do I enter ruts?
Your brain loves familiarity. The brain’s primary function is to keep you alive and safe, and familiarity helps to do this. Familiarity signals safety to the brain, while uncertainty triggers the amygdala, which is the part of the brain responsible for fear and anxiety. This is why we tend to gravitate toward what we know, even when it’s not good for us. Your brain much prefers staying in the unfulfilling job or toxic relationship because it’s familiar and, to our brains, familiarity is safety. Those with exposure to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) may be familiar with this, where you are encouraged to challenge the automatic thoughts which dictate so much of our emotional state.
There is also the energy aspect. You only have so much ‘brain currency’ in a day, only so much effort to give to decision-making and complex thought. It’s why we sometimes get frustrated about what to make for dinner after a long day of work or why we boot up The Office for the fiftieth time. These neural pathways, the motorways of the brain, are roads that are very well travelled and so they require less energy to activate. Engaging with the unfamiliar demands more brain currency. This is sometimes fine to deal with, sometimes you do have that little bit left over which you can use. But oftentimes you just don’t have it in the tank after a long day.
This is particularly true if you have a mental health condition, like depression or anxiety. When the brain is hyperfocused on survival, it focuses on preserving brain currency for managing stress, fear, and low mood. This is why habits, even the unhelpful ones, often feel like the easiest route after a long or emotionally draining day.
Victim to Victor: Breaking the loop
Your brain is one of the most extraordinary creations of biology — without a shadow of a doubt. Yet, it may not always feel that way. When you’re trapped in loops of despair, it can seem as if your brain is working against you. But make no mistake: you and your brain are remarkable. This uniqueness lies, in large part, in a principle known as neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to rewire itself. It’s able to let go of those well-worn, ruminating motorways of the brain and build smoother, more productive roads for your neurons to travel. Breaking free from a rut doesn’t require a monumental shift overnight; it starts with a single decision, a single vote for the person you want to become. Your brain’s remarkable ability to adapt means that even the smallest intentional changes can create new, healthier pathways over time.
In the next part of Breaking Free: The Science, Art, and Meaning of Change, we’ll dive deeper into practical strategies to harness neuroplasticity and build habits that serve goals more aligned with your values. Until then, consider one question: What is one small action that you can take today to cast a vote for your future self?
