Thryvelabs

Daily Drop

You ever been in a bad slump? One that caught you off guard?

I was in a slump recently for longer than I would like to admit.

Here’s how I began to get out of it…

First of all, I made the choice, enough is enough. No more. It sounds simplistic and maybe it is, but it’s what I had to do.

I had to remove the option to drift in the ambiguity of my own self doubt and lack of direction. I had to accept that for some weird reason I wasn’t feeling like my usual energetic, motivated self. And then I had to face that and move anyway.

In hindsight, something that kept me in that “lost time” was the idea that I just had to wait for the right moment and I would “figure things out”. We need to be proactive, not reactive. Eventually I did figure things out… But it took much longer than it should have.

Waiting for motivation and ambition to show up at the door, is a risky bet. Especially if you’re in a time of looking for direction. The better option is to just dust ourselves off and start moving. Motivation, clarity and energy will show up with momentum. Not before.

I want to be clear, trying to get motivated while in a slump is very difficult if you’re just waiting in stagnation. for example, water that is stagnant gets dirty and filled with bacteria. A moving stream stays clean and fresh.

The next thing I needed to do was to stop overthinking so much. Often what gets us in a slump is a lack of action. We think, we plan, we analyze. But we’re not doing.

All that thinking is just theory until it’s put into practice. All that strategizing and planning is useless if it’s not acted out. All that knowledge isn’t helpful until it’s applied. Often planning, learning and strategizing is a way to feel productive while procrastinating the real uncomfortable work, because it feels safe and beneficial.

My final tip for today is, to look within. What’s causing this block for us? what is obstructing our stream of energy? Where’s the bottleneck in our flow? It could be fear, staying stuck means we’re not having to face rejection and failure right now.

We need to understand what we’re avoiding, what perceived benefit have we had from being in a slump? What are we hiding from? Once we find these answers, things will begin to change rapidly. We need to stop deceiving ourselves. We need to have a clear understanding of ourselves, the good and the bad, the dark and the light.

When we put in the effort to understand ourselves, we will be able to see our patterns from a birds eye view. Once we know what we’re running from we also know what we need to turn and face.

Whats one thing you can do today to take your first step out of this quicksand and get back to the path you want to be on?

Let’s take that step. Enough is enough, things wont change until we make the conscious effort to change. No more waiting, the time is now.