How to Get Out of a Funk
We all have those days when the drudgery of everyday life gets to us.
Maybe we don’t like our jobs, we’ve been too busy recently, or maybe we’ve been doing the SAME thing everyday for a while. It doesn’t really matter how we got here, all that matters is that we are here now — in The Funk — and how to we get out?
Many people will say, “hey, go do something fun,” “get your mind off of it,” or “do something you enjoy,” but if you’re anything like me, that doesn’t always work.
Sometimes, my mind gets stuck on feeling miserable, and even if I don’t WANT to feel miserable, my mind is like, “Ha! too bad, you’re staying miserable. You’re going to list out the 101 ways today went wrong, THEN you’re going to list out the 101 ways tomorrow is going to go wrong. NEGATIVE NANCY. THAT is YOU.”
So if doing enjoyable things and “getting our minds off of it” doesn’t always work, what does work?
FUNK KILLER #1: PAUSE and WATCH your thoughts.
Before any of us can change gears, we first need to know what our minds are doing. If we are drowning in an ocean of mind-chatter and don’t know it, we will more than likely keep on drowning.
To know what our minds are doing, we need to practice THE PAUSE. The pause is an in-between space. It’s the space between thoughts, actions, and stimuli. It’s as Victor E. Frankl says,
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
In this case, it’s our freedom to choose a better perspective. One that doesn’t invite negative Nancy to the party.
So if we were to pause and watch our thoughts, what then?
All we’ve done is gained some sort of awareness over our thought patterns, but how does that help? Now we’re just thinking about thinking…
FUNK KILLER #2: REFRAME the thoughts.
So now that we are thinking about thinking, and know what our thoughts are, we might as well make them useful.
Since these thoughts aren’t really helping us in any way, we might as well change them into something different, and see if THAT serves us better.
So let’s change it. Let’s say one of our thoughts is “My job is super boring and I wish I didn’t have to do this everyday.”
Although that is valid and might be true, you probably don’t have a choice but to work your so-called boring job everyday. So, we might as well REFRAME this into, “My job has some boring tasks that I would rather not do, BUT it is teaching me discipline and discipline is an awesome skill.”
Reframing helps us find the silver-lining in situations that can’t be helped. Rather than brooding over the less than ideal situation, changing our perspective has a positive impact on our less than ideal experience
FUNK KILLER #3: NOW, do something FUN.
Contrary to what I said earlier, once we know what our thoughts are AND reframe them into something more productive, NOW we can do something fun and take our mind off of it.
The purpose of pausing and reframing is to prepare our minds to enjoy life. If our minds are stuck on unproductive thought-patterns, doing something fun and “getting our minds off of it” is just a form of escapism. You might be able to distract yourself for a little while, but The Funk is going to come straight back, when you’re not distracted.
Pausing and reframing sets us up to actually enjoy fun things when life is getting us down.