It seems from the excerpts provided that you're experiencing a period of feeling stuck, which Ed Batista refers to as encountering "emotional speed bumps." These are low-intensity emotions like annoyance, worry, or sadness that disrupt and distract, causing procrastination or unproductive uses of your time. To address this, Batista suggests a two-pronged approach: raising your awareness and taking action.

Raising Your Awareness: Batista emphasizes the importance of mindfulness, exercise, sleep, and managing chronic stress (MESSy) to increase your attunement to emotions and make more deliberate choices. Mindfulness helps you notice what you're feeling, exercise attunes you to physiological manifestations of emotion, sleep is crucial for emotion regulation, and managing stress improves your emotional regulation capabilities.

Taking Action: Batista notes that there's a dynamic relationship between attitude and behavior. Instead of waiting to feel like engaging in a desired behavior, you can choose actions that influence your emotions. Constructing a set of routines can help you overcome the reliance on willpower, which is finite and unreliable. For example, having a set time for writing, as Faulkner did, can help you follow through on commitments regardless of your current mood.

In terms of exercise, Batista points out that while many people pursue it with the goal of weight loss, diet has a far greater impact on weight than exercise. He emphasizes the importance of consistency and novelty in exercise routines, the benefits of weightlifting and high-intensity workouts, and the clear advantages of walking for health and performance. Batista also suggests trying silence during workouts for reflection and the benefits of being outdoors.

Additionally, if your rut extends to your professional life, Batista suggests redefining your role by considering what you are uniquely qualified to do, what you are obligated to do, and what you are free to do that might be personally fulfilling. This can help align your responsibilities with what is most valuable and fulfilling to you.

Finally, Batista encourages resilience, which involves the ability to adapt and persist in the face of difficulties, rather than toughness or invulnerability. Emotion regulation is a key component of resilience, allowing you to balance faith in your ability to prevail with the discipline to confront the brutal facts of your situation.

In summary, getting out of a rut involves a combination of self-awareness, deliberate action, and resilience. By applying these principles, you can start to make incremental changes that may help you move past the emotional speed bumps and re-engage with your goals and activities more effectively.