Are You Feeling a Sensation of Stagnation or Success Right Now?

Last week I was sharing with you that many people around me, me included, have felt like they are in a funk in the last month or so. When we get into this mode it’s easy to get caught in the ‘funk spiral’...getting carried away with the energy and emotion that may be there. 

But here’s the thing we have the power to choose what we pay attention to and take action to course correct. Just like one of my contacts in LinkedIn said as she read my email. 

“I love that reminder that being in a funk is a part of the growth cycle; I felt my shoulders drop when I read that, as though I was Ok to stop rallying against it.” 

So, if you too could do with a ‘shoulder-drop’ moment, getting out of the funk and back into the flow again then below are the key ideas that can help. 

The ‘funk’ can actually be a gift. 

Instead of viewing this ‘funk-state’ negatively, I think it can be a gift when we realise it’s actually a natural part of the growth cycle. Let me explain a little more and see if you can put yourself in this picture.... 

When we embark on something new, we feel uncertain and incompetent. It could make us anxious as we struggle to get the desired results. But with time, we fail, we learn, and we gain competence, skills, and positive feedback, reaching a tipping point where we become highly skilled and confident in our abilities. 

However, over the other side of this peak things become repetitive, energy and motivation may decline, we can start to feel like our growth is stagnating and hey-presto, we start focusing on what is going wrong instead of what is going right. We tune into all the negative rhetoric out there on the news and the self-doubt and procrastination kick in. The funk is back with a vengeance! 

Break the cycle 

The trick is to shift your mindset and see these feelings and emotions as signs and signals for change, indicating readiness for the next level of growth as a leader or in life. It’s about creating some space to step off the cycle and shift gears. As the great Victor Frankil said... 

“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.” 

The following ideas are designed to help you do just that. Whether you are in a funk, negative headspace or just need to re-build some energy and motivation right now here’s the method I use to do just that. 

5 Ideas to shift the funk and get you growing again 

1. Tune things out for a while – for me that’s turning off the news and not participating in conversations with people that amplify some of the more negative thoughts and feelings. 
2. Take time to be present and acknowledge how you are feeling. Don’t push those feelings and thoughts away which invariably makes them become bigger and stickier according to Dr Russ Harris who wrote The Happiness Trap.  
3. Calm and clear the thoughts in your mind. I find it helps to journal, go for a long walk to process my thoughts, or meditate.  
4. Seek out new ideas and people to learn from that can help you peel back the onion layers and gain more insight about who you are and why you behave in the way you do. In my case just recently, I’ve done some training about Financial Archetypes and Human Design.  
5. Share what you are learning. As I go through this learning my thinking expands, I gain fresh insights, I share what I’m learning with others in case it can help them, and before I know it I’m back into flow and more connected to a sense of purpose. 

I hope you have found this helpful as always, please do let me know if this resonates, you have tired these ideas and they are working for you or if you need a little more help – I'm always here. 

Building Resilience Program 

We are kicking off a Resilience Program this week with a new client that has been in a high growth phase and really wants to support their people to deal with all of the change and uncertainty that can come with growth. As we put the finishing touches on the first session which is all about Mental Resilience, I’d love to share with you a simple yet powerful mindfulness exercise from the session that can help you to break the cycle. It’s called STOP. It takes less than a minute and can be done at any time of the day if you feel like you are getting overwhelmed, struggling for motivation or are getting frustrated by colleagues. Here’s what to do: 

• Stop, interrupt your thoughts. 
• Take a breath or two or three. 
• Observe what is happening around you and inside you. 
• Proceed and reconnect with surroundings. 

The power of cultivating luminosity 

As you probably know about me, I’m obsessed with helping myself and others maintain their energy as a leader. To help them become that little bit more luminous in life and leadership. I believe two things happen when we are able to do this: 

1. We become the light and role model for others to inspire them to find a way to stay energised and motivated themselves  
2. We have more fun, joy and lightness in our weeks when we approach them from a place of ‘What do I need to be doing to stay energised, so I can give this week my all and create a positive impact?’ 

As the Easter holidays are likely a distant memory for you and we start to approach the mid-year-point the energy tank can start to get low, and things become a grind. Am I right? 

This is when I start to break up my weeks and infuse pause and recharge points into them very intentionally. For example, a slow start and an extra-long walk on a Monday, a mid-week massage, a lunchtime yoga class, a session with my coach at the end of the week to help me process some of the extra freneticism. Here’s my challenge to you as you read this email. What do you need to infuse into your week to stay lit up and energised?? Do you need to reschedule some meetings to take the pressure off, get a catch up with a good friend, take a sauna, hit the gym, or get the team together for lunch...what-ever you need this is my call out to plan it and get it into the diary. You can also download my ‘5 Killer Steps to create work-life integration in your week’ an inspirational guide to infusing more of the things that luminate you into your week.