A Simple Tool for When You’re Struggling

Sometimes the best tools for your mental health are the ones you can apply in all aspects of your life.

I’ve been pretty quiet online lately. While I wish I could tell you that I was sunning myself on the beach, alas, that is not the case. Sure, I have been busy (see my Monday post). But the truth is, there have been busier times, and I’ve still managed to put out some pretty awesome content. This time, not the case—it went deeper than that.

It happens to the best of us, right? Especially those in business for ourselves. You hit the proverbial social media wall. The content runs dry, or everything you have planned no longer feels good enough to share.

So you take some time away, hoping that a social media break will lead to a refresh and realignment.

Unfortunately for me, my time away was only one-sided, and my screen time has the receipts to prove it. (Dammit, Apple, why you got to shame us like that?)

In other words, I’ve been doomscrolling—quietly consuming all the most unhelpful nuggets of content on the internet. From unabashedly catching up on the last 15 years of Jersey Shore to dissociating while reading the most unbelievable (but sadly true) world news updates from the Boston Globe.

Yet, I had zero wherewithal to create my own content. I felt my motivation and excitement slowly petering out over the last few months. And, I’ve spent the last five or six weeks in a real funk, only to be exacerbated by incessant doom scrolling.

If this has ever happened to you, it’s the most frustrating feeling. You know what you’re doing isn’t helpful, but you don’t know how to stop it. Sometimes it feels better just to ride it out and let the unhelpful behavior take over, hoping that the motivation will decide to pop back out on its own.

For me, it’s particularly frustrating to find myself in a funk, as I begin to obsess over whether it means my depression is “back” or it’s simply just that…a funk.

As this lack of motivation took over, I also began to notice something interesting about myself. My mind and body have two settings: incredibly busy or hopelessly dormant. Finding that middle ground of my mood has never been easy for me, but this time, I was acutely aware of it.

I worked through this with my therapist, and we identified a few underlying causes that I am working on embracing. However, we also talked about ways to get that motivation back by breaking down my to-do list into micro-habits. This concept is nothing new to me (shout-out to Atomic Habits), but it was a good reminder.

Sometimes when you can’t do anything at all, the best way to get going is to start super small. This is something we talk a lot about at the Chronic Boss. When you’re in the thick of it, whether it’s a flare-up of your physical condition or a temporary battle with your mind, the best thing you can do is take it micro-step by micro-step.

Breaking down tasks is also what we do in business, particularly in the highly organized LPC world. We don’t just put a launch email campaign on the calendar and call it a day. We break it down into many steps in our beautifully designed project management system, so we don’t miss any steps and stay on track. 

So here I am taking this simple advice and consciously applying it to everything in my life now. Maybe it’ll help me get out of this funk or flare, whatever it is, or perhaps it’ll just force me to be nicer to myself and get back to full-on Perna-mode when the universe is ready for it.