Everyone gets in funks. May not be often for some, but it still happens. Some funks can last an hour; some can last for a year.
Funks happen.
And as we all experience funks differently, we all find different parts of them challenging. In my work, I’ve found that the most challenging and frustrating issue is how to get out of a funk when you are in one. Many times when someone is a funk they struggle with their work-life balance as well. There are many strategies to move through these times offered by many a psychologist or even earnest friends wanting to help. Some ideas and strategies are helpful and others only seem to grate on us when we hear them.
At Rewire, we’re not your BFF and we don’t have a psychologist on staff (yet), but we have found something we’d like to offer. A simple three-step process for pulling yourself through a hard time and breaking out of a funk:
- Step 1: Admit and accept that funk is your current reality. If you won’t do this, it’s hard to move through it because action based on incongruent self-evaluation is usually wrong action.
- Step 2: Make a simple list of the people in your life right now who you can call and help.
- Step 3: Help someone else (And this one is tricky because you may have to do this while you are not “feeling” great).
I want to be clear that it won’t work if you stop after steps 1 or 2. You’ve got to get to actually investing in someone else. And It gets you outside of your own head. And then it changes the way you think about yourself, and then it changes the way you think about your circumstances. And then, as if by magic, your mind starts to chart a path out of the funk.
So, how do you end a funk? Invest in someone else. Don’t wait. There are people who need a kind word or simply just someone with two ears who will be present with them. It is amazing what you can bring yourself out of when you go dive in with someone else. Cheers to moving through.
