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How To Stay Up When Your Feeling Down

What do you do when your feeling down? How do you keep yourself motivated or ‘get back on the horse’ as it were?

Today was a very tumultuous day for me. I have been working on a small project for some time and I knew at the outset that I would have a bit of a wait before I was able to see any real results. The expectation was  $10,000 and the expected date for the release of the project is supposed to be on Monday. Today however, after making some inquiries related to the deployment of the project, that involved other parties who I am relying for the implementation of particular tasks, I found out that they had not even begun the work on those tasks, let alone having them completed by the due date.

Obviously I was pretty pissed about that. Needless to say my emotions very quickly went from excitement and motivation into a huge angry slump. I spent the next hour looking at my options and attempting to see what, if anything, could be done to salvage this and still make the deadline. At the end of that hour it became very apparent that, because I am not skilled in that particular task (that’s the reason it was outsourced in the first place), I would simply have to delay the project deployment.

I’m sure that you have had something like this happen to you as well. You do all your homework, you set out a clear plan, make all the proper arrangements and then start to execute your plan. Then, out of the blue, something goes completely wrong and just demolishes your normally positive nature and reduces you to a smoldering heap of ashes.

It’s sometimes not easy, even for the most positive and determined individuals to not be affected by this type of situation. In fact I’ve known plenty of people who would let something like this affect everything they do in the future, and not in a good way. If we’re honest with ourselves, it’s happened to all of us at some stage, but some people will allow that negative emotion to develop, they’ll stew on it for days, eventually letting that feeling of disappointment and failure control them.

I’ll admit that for probably 2 hours that’s exactly what happened to me. I found myself distracted by every little thing that came along. I wasn’t concentrating on what I needed to be doing, I was flipping around on websites, pacing around the office thinking about what at first I thought was looking for a solution.

I quickly realized I was actually more focused on the problem rather than the solution and that was the cause of my distraction, my emotional state, and the very reason that I was not achieving what I had set out to achieve today.

So what is the solution?

Well it’s actually pretty simple. Take a break and step away for a while. Literally walk away, get out of there for a while and set your focus on something else. Do something completely unrelated to the problem. Go and do whatever it is that you normally do for fun. It doesn’t matter what that thing is, but it is important that it’s something that you can become completely immersed in. If you like playing video games then that is actually one of the best things because video games will cause you to become completely ignorant of everything else that is going on around you. Just don’t do that if it’s the middle of the day and your wife is trying to clean the house. I learned that one a long time ago.

For me its even easier than that. I am a very proud dad, and I only have to be in the same room as my kids and I melt. So whenever I am feeling a little off, I just grab all the kids and start playing jokes on them. They get a kick out of, which in turn gives me a kick and it just perpetuates from that. Before long I forget how frustrated I was and start focusing on solutions once again. I also enjoy playing poker so sometimes I’ll do that instead. Usually if its late and the kids are in bed. Poker causes me to focus on each hand and each player on the table so there is simply no thought capacity available to stay focused on any perceived problems I might be facing.

And that is the most important point. Perceived problems are just that. It’s your current perception of a situation, not necessarily reality. Sure I’m not going to make the deadline, and yes there will be delays in my ROI but in reality, it’s not worth getting all steamed up about it. A week is not going to make that much difference. So just keeping things in perspective, in my view,  is more important than pretty much anything else. But if you take a step back, regain control of your emotions, do something enjoyable you’ll soon get back into your groove and solutions will begin to take form in your mind.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve done this and right at the peak of my enjoyment, when I have finally let go and stopped thinking about the things that had caused me to be upset, solutions start to present themselves almost effortlessly. It was only a very short time afterward, when I was rolling around on the floor with one of the kids having a tickle fight when all of a sudden, without even thinking about it or any real effort on my part, a solution just popped into my head. I wrote down the idea, continued on to lose the tickle fight, and started to implement the solution.

So how does this all relate to blogging, making money, or running a business?

Because any good blogger, in fact any good (social) writer, is going to inject their emotions into what they are writing. When you are feeling down and out, its going to come through in your post. By comparison when your feeling full of life, excited and positively charged that is also going to show through. Do your readers want to hear you whine because something didn’t work out exactly as you had planned? Will they keep reading your posts if every time you are a little upset they can almost feel you bashing on your keyboard? Your readers want to take something away with them, and if you can inspire, educate, help, or solve problems then they will be back for more.

So what do you do to get yourself out of your funk? Do you have a particular strategy that you use to get rid of negative emotions and move on? I’d love to hear about what works for you.

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Tags: Mindset, Motivation