Everyone feels unmotivated or lethargic sometimes. If you dig into the minutes or hours prior, you’ll find the cause. Perhaps you just consumed too much sugar or caffeine and now you’re jittery and irritable. Perhaps you just had a fear or worry-based conversation with someone. You might need to do something later that you’re not looking forward to, or something you’ve seen on social media has given you feelings of envy or inadequacy.

Find out the trigger for your low energy and work on filtering it out or eliminating it all together. See it like a ball that someone has thrown at you, that you don’t have to catch if you don’t want to. Resist the reflexive urge to join in and spiral down further.

Master the art of changing your energy as soon as you notice you’re in a low energy slump and it will become automatic. In the meantime, here are seven ways to change your energy from low to high and change your outlook from negative to positive, to put you in the mindset for success.

7 Tactics For Instant Productivity And Positivity Pixabay

1. Change your scenery

Humans are creatures of habit and you may have come to associate specific places with specific behaviours. You might have slipped into unconscious thought patterns. Even a simple change of scenery might help here. It doesn’t have to be a flight away or a drastic edit to your life. Simply changing rooms, sitting in a different chair at the table, or walking a different route somewhere will mean you look around more, notice more, and spark new ways of thinking.

When it’s forced out of its comfort zone your mind is working to make sense of a new environment, which brings benefits. Whilst routine can equal freedom, because it creates habits from everyday actions leaving more room for creativity, a stale routine that isn’t questioned or modified might have the opposite effect. Distance provides perspective and a shake-up of your routine and scenery can do wonders.

2. Listen to a guided meditation

Meditation apps such as Calm and Headspace give easy ways of developing meditation habits with low barriers to entry. Calm’s app provides a daily Calm, a ten-minute guided meditation for beginners and seasoned meditators alike. Tamara Levitt, Calm’s head of mindfulness, talks you through getting relaxed, focusing on your breath and introducing the day’s theme. You leave the meditation feeling peaceful and ready to begin again. Try it for a few days in a row and see what you think. Find a place where you won’t be disturbed and notice how you feel before and after the practice.

Slowing down and breathing can change your default energy and make you less susceptible to energy-sapping external events.

3. Turn off the tech

From the Minimalists, “Constantly searching for breaking news will break you.” You simply do not need to know what is going on all over the world every hour of every day. Even one check per day might be excessive. Media manipulation is designed to provoke extreme reactions. Extreme reactions of any kind don’t match with the strong, stable middle-ground we’re looking to achieve. Cal Newport, author of Digital Minimalism, encourages readers to differentiate which technologies are compulsory from those that are optional, and eliminate the latter completely.

Excitable is not the goal. Fearful is not the goal. Avoid the headlines and the consistent stream of opinion and judgment by turning off the tech and limiting media consumption.

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4. Talk to people who inspire you

I’m part of an online network called Dynamite Circle (DC), consisting of 1500 location-independent entrepreneurs. The network has a forum in which members help each other find solutions and discuss ideas, and there are monthly meetups in cities around the world as well as virtual meetups for members to get to know each other.

Whenever I have a conversation with another DC member, I feel my energy shift upwards straight away. The conversations focus on lifestyle experiments, finding solutions and being open to the ways others live and run their businesses. Being around people who live interesting lives, are open to learning and happy to share is inspiring. It changes my inner monologue and shifts my natural disposition.

From a Spanish proverb, “Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are.” Who inspires you? Who do you know that focuses on solutions instead of problems and avoids gossip and drama? Give them a call.

5. Make a hype playlist

Music has the power to instantly change your mindset, so make use of it. Think of the tracks that make you feel invincible and add them to a playlist. Pick songs that resonate deeply with you, not ones that you think you should like. Who cares if they’re embarrassing or cheesy? If it works for you that’s good enough.

When you find yourself in a place of low energy; feeling negative or pessimistic or overwhelmed, grab your headphones and listen to your hype playlist to feel yourself slide back to normal. Combine this with point 4 and listen to podcasts featuring the people who inspire you. See the world from the perspective of the people who are absolutely smashing it to feel inspired and unshakable.

7 Tactics For Instant Productivity And Positivity Pixabay

6. Journal

Making journaling a habit helps you tune into your thoughts and feelings, so when there’s a change in your energy you can rectify it sooner. If blank pages are intimidating right now, start with a guided journal. Write the date and your location at the top of the page and begin freewriting. Try not to edit, just write about how you’re feeling and the day you’re having. The act of turning your thoughts into words on paper helps you make sense of it all, which might lead to the solution becoming obvious.

Stepping back to make sense of a situation brings heightened awareness of who you are and what lifts you up. Arm yourself with a pen and notebook so you’re prepared to identify and solve any obstacle.

7. Stay in the present

The past does not exist because it’s been and gone. Its only purpose was to lead you to where you are now. The future does not exist because it’s not yet here, and when it arrives it will no longer be the future. Only the present exists. It’s the only place anything can happen and it’s the only thing over which you have control. Focusing on only what you can control means feeling capable instead of helpless.

Notice when your thoughts and words focus on the past or the future and gently guide them back to the present. Oprah Winfrey’s book is called What I know for sure, inspired by film critic Gene Siskel asking her, “What do you know for sure?” Stay in the present by answering this question. It’s a tactic used by Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games book series by Suzanne Collins, where she recites what she knows for sure every time she needs to feel grounded. “My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is district 12” and so on. Think in terms of what you know for sure and what you can control to stay firmly in the present.

Change your mood from low to high, feel productive and positive and condition your mindset for success by preparing a toolbox of interventions to use whenever you need them. Include changing your scenery, even if only subtly, download a guided meditation app, avoid scrolling newsfeeds, make a hype playlist, start a journalising practice and focus on staying in the present and not caught in past or future thinking loops. Deploying one tool at a time might be sufficient to change your energy, and soon it will become automatic and mean you’re far less susceptible to lows.

Source: Forbes.com

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