My top 3 tips for getting out of a funk…

WORDS: Chelsea Brazier PHOTOGRAPHY Supplied

 

In the past few months, we’ve all been living COVID-groundhog day.

Perhaps your scrolling has been at an all time high, as you sift through thousands of positive quotes and ‘wake me up when 2020 is over’ memes. Or are you busier than ever as you continue to juggle work, home, life and your own mental health?

But COVID aside, we all have moments in our weeks where we strive to stay calm amidst the chaos of school runs, work-life balance, household tensions and  pick ourselves up out of regular funks. Funks that can sometimes appear out of nowhere and for no good reason.

And whenever I’m hit with one, I remind myself to dive straight into my toolkit. Because there’s always something that works in an instant, to lift me up and out of feeling funky. I’d love to share my top 3 go to tips for getting out of a funk…

1. Learn to adopt an attitude of acceptance.

I listened to an interesting podcast recently about life-quakes – these being life events which rock your world in good and bad ways… and the reality is that we all have them. I’ve had my fair share of life quakes. Losing my Mum 10 years ago, a long term relationship coming to an end, closing down a business I’d built, emigrating overseas, having a baby.  At the time, these life events can seem all consuming and I know at the time of losing my Mum, I really was consumed with grief and it felt like I would feel this way forever.

But adopting acceptance that whatever you are feeling isn’t forever can be really helpful, especially when there isn’t an end in sight. As much as we’d love a hard and fast date for COVID madness to be over, we don’t have one. BUT, it will be a thing of the past one day and adopting an accepting mindset can really help to deal with the daily grind.

2. Create your own magical reframe question.

I learnt this one from Will Smith. His reframe question is to always ask himself, ‘what would make this moment more magical’ – and I just love it. It flips any situation into magic mode. Whether you’re sitting in the car stuck in a traffic jam, or having to quarantine indoors – there’s always a way to make any moment more magical.

Reframing is a powerful tool to help give our brains a new blueprint. Every time we have or say a thought, we’re giving our brains a blueprint for reality. So every time you say to yourself ‘damn I’m so forgetful‘, or ‘I never win anything‘ – you’re creating this blueprint for reality. Your mind neurologically does not care whether you are telling it something positive or negative… it simply just accepts it as true.

When we start to work on reframing our thoughts, whether it’s a statement or a powerful reframing question – the reality is that what you expect, is realised. So the simplest antidote to learning to reframe your thoughts is to… Expect amazing things!

When we break a leg, we don’t continue to walk around on it without seeking medical help. When we have a toothache, we head to the dentist. If something physical is broken, we fix it. So why do we continue to burn ourselves out, take on all of the things and deal with stress on our own? Why do we allow our mindset to drag us down, exhaust us and stop us from sleeping, when we know we could make a change and enable it to remove limiting beliefs and blocks?

When we look after our own mental health, we’re a better friend, partner, Mum, business owner or employee. And when we’re a better version of ourselves, we can help lift others up too.