#4: Need An Uplift?

Ever have one of those days where you don’t feel particularly accomplished? Most days we may write it off as just a bad day and get on with life. Some days to hit closer to home and put us in a bit of a funk, don’t they? Just a tad intense.

Here are four steps to get an uplift:

1. Embrace the Funk
2. Write Out the Suck
3. Great Memory Recall
4. Change the Routine

1) Embrace the Funk

We do our best to avoid the funk, hoping that magically it disappears. Funk is just a funk. It too will pass. There’s no need to force a bypass. Embrace the funk, say hello and let it just hang out on the sofa next to you. It doesn’t need to do anything. Neither do you need to do anything to it.

2) Write out the Suck

The suck is that’s going through your mind and body – feelings perceptions thoughts and the gamut of processes that run simultaneously that they are no longer coherent. The longer they swirl through our psyche, the more we latch onto them. Write them out, dump them onto a piece of paper.

3) Great Memory Recall

Go back to a time in the past where you had tremendous success. The feelings you had. What you are proud of (yourself). Write that out.

4) Change the Routine

There’s a pattern or sequence that follows a state of funk. We reach for something to douse the intense. I reach for chocolate or snacks. Then, I wash it down with anything that’s not water. Which is followed by ice-cream. I can polish off a tub of Haagen Daaz’s Macadamia Nut Brittle in one sitting. I don’t judge! For that reason, I change my routine. Instead of walking to the nearest store, I walk to one that’s a suburb away. By the halfway mark, I am done and whip back around.

Also, movement is great for letting go of the funk. It’s in the staying still that we feel stuck. Get out there.

And here’s a bonus:

At the end of each day, no matter how they turn out, write down your accomplishments, be they simple or small they may be. It’s based on your perceptions of what matters, not anyone else’s. Look at what you’ve done as little as 1% better. For instance, writing 1000 words for your next book or policy document, walking for two hours with the dog, completing another 5 slides of next week’s presentation. Review them weekly.

On Mondays and Fridays, I read my list of accomplishments from the week that’s passed. They give me a much-added boost!

Ready to uplift out of that funk?

---

"Sometimes your passion challenges you to depths you never knew you could get to."