When I traveled in the Arabian Desert, I frequently found myself driving in deeply rutted desert tracks.  My Land Rover followed wherever the tracks led.  If I took my hands off the steering wheel, the truck’s wheels automatically followed the twists and turns in the track; it was almost as if the Land Rover was on autopilot.

Getting out of a deeply rutted desert track can be difficult and dangerous.  If I drove too fast, I could lose control of the vehicle as I tried to leave the track.  When I wanted to get out of a track, I always did it slowly and in a controlled manner.

Ruts are a safety problem, and you try to stay out of them so you don’t have an accident or damage your vehicle.  Ruts also create navigational problems since they take you where you don’t want to go.  Ruts exist because a large number of people drove down a desert track in order to reach a particular destination.  If you happen to be going that way, you don’t have a problem.  But if you want to go somewhere else, you must get out of the rut in order to travel where you want.

You are not going to change the ruts you find in the desert; there is nothing you can do to make them go away.  They will stay where they are, and if you don’t like them, you simply stay away from them.  The same is true for the ruts in your emotional mind.  If you don’t want to go where they take you, stay away from them.

Your emotional mind often behaves like rutted desert tracks.  Thousands of emotional ruts take you to destinations you don’t want to visit.

The ruts in your emotional mind go by many different names.  Negative thinking and fear create massive ruts from which escape is difficult.  Despair and depression cut deep ruts that afflict billions of people.  You need a strategy to get out of the ruts that ruin your life.  You need to turn the wheel of change in a new direction and climb out of the ruts controlling your life.

Although escaping from emotional ruts isn’t easy, it’s possible.  One of the best ways to do it is with positive affirmations.  If you turn the wheel of change in a new direction, it won’t be long before you are out of the ruts that have held you captive for such a long time.

Excerpt from :

Zero Tolerance To Negative Thinking : Good-by Depression - Hello Positive Mind

David J Abbott M.D.