I was on a roll. I was waking up, calendaring, working out, and even meditating. I had sort of kind of found my morning routine. It was motivating and emboldening me. The Make Jasmin Happier project was in full swing. And it was working: I was … a little bit happier.
And it’s not that I’m not happy. And it’s also not that I’m not doing my wake-up-calendar-work-out-meditate-therapy-rinse-and-repeat. But I have felt lately that I have lost my mojo a bit. Life can be mundane, exhausting, and sometimes disappointing.
Which, let me tell you, is okay. It’s not the end of the world (climate change will be the end of the world, but I digress). Despite the fact that these days, waking up is hard to do-ooo, I am also more or less accepting of the fact that I’m just in a lull.
And even though I’m writing this partly as a way to procrastinate working out (even though I recently said I rarely procrastinate), I also recognize that my radical acceptance (otherwise known as just plain “acceptance”) of my meh mood is just par for the course. Especially for those of us who are creative, driven, high-performers, and sensitive, losing our mojo has got to be part of our cycles of productivity and satisfaction. As long as it doesn’t become too extreme, there are ways of …
Managing the meh:
Remember that life shifts in ways we cannot possibly predict. Just like the stock market, there will be high points and low points (note to self: even though you bought Oatly stock today now that it finally went public, stop staring at your screen because it will naturally go up and down).
Slow down, even if that feels counterproductive. Nobody explains this better than Tabitha Brown, whose featured sleep story on the Calm app is all about trusting in the fullness of time and consciously slowing down when you feel life is getting to you. I literally listen to this every single night; it never gets old.
Be gentle, as in, really … not just in the catchphrase sense. That means not being so hard on yourself if things aren’t going perfectly, allowing yourself to say “no” a bit more often than usual if you need to, and cushioning your schedule with more downtime in between meetings.
Be honest when your loved ones ask you how you’re doing. You can tell them that you’re languishing if that’s your truth. You don’t have to hide it with the people who get you.
To some extent, focus on the positive. Not to the point of self-abandoning or phoning it in, but pausing before complaining and checking in with yourself to see what is going on that’s actually good and aligned can be a legit way of shifting yourself to a less-meh place.
Get out that notepad and go through those things that generally make you feel better, even if they don’t make you feel better right now. This includes your self-care 101 (showering or taking a bath—maybe even using a fancy new shower or bath bomb; eating your veggies, even if you just feel like eating chips straight out of the bag, which is also fine, but do eat your veggies at some point, too; getting outside, even if your body is tired and you don’t want to get up … you will probably feel better if you do; and be of service to someone else, to get you out of your head).
Change your furniture or around, go donate a bunch of clothes and pick up something “new” while you’re at the Goodwill, or cut bangs. The point is, change something around.
Switch up your music. If you’re feeling low, put on faster-paced music to help jostle you out of it a little. As I’ve said before, I find the music on brain.fm to always be the perfect solution to reaching a deeper level of focus or even switching my mood. (Bette Midler’s “I’m Beautiful” can also be very helpful if you need an instant fix.)
Take a vacation day. Life is short. Sometimes you can stop working so hard.
Stretch. I know this seems so silly and simple, but I started stretching daily a few months ago, and even though I am generally uncomfortable doing breathwork, stretching always gives me the cue to take big, healing breaths. A lot of my general aches and pains (physical and otherwise) are resolved from daily stretching, and I generally come out of my stretching sessions with a new perspective.
When I was a kid, my mother used to tell me two things specific with regularity: She would say, “Everyone’s off-step but you!” Of course, she was being sarcastic, but I do think that she was actually onto something (especially when I see so many people eating animal products that came from horrendously cruel situations rooted in violence and injustice).
She also said, “This, too, shall pass,” and she was onto something there, too. As a ten-year-old, that felt dismissive to hear (as you can tell, I was not easy!), but now that I’m forty-something and have that lovely perspective that comes with getting older, I am very well aware that—indeed—this, too, shall pass. That’s true about everything from heartbreaks, to stomaches, to life-aches.
As for me now, I’m actually kind of grateful for the meh, because that means that, soon enough, I will be in my flow again.
xo,
jazz
A Random Thing I Want to Share
For those of you who reached out after my last message, I wanted to let you know that we didn’t get the house. The housing market in Rochester is truly bananas, and it’s a good life lesson to hold onto things lightly. As perfect as they might seem, there are always other options.
When You Lose Your Mojo ...
meh-ditation!