In a Funk

Photo found here.

I had the best intentions of finishing a post this evening about easy ways to integrate healthy habits into your life for optimal post-holiday health... and somewhere along the way I wound up in a no-good-very-bad mood instead. I don't know what set-off my pathetic evening slump, but it involved moping on the sofa, eating handfuls of high-fructose-laden store brand sugar cookies of the most evil variety, watching reruns of The Office I have seen at least twice before. Embarrassing? Incredibly. While I enjoy writing about health, am generally optimistic, and hate the thought of wasting a perfectly good evening to be an unhappy hermit (I was going to make soup!), none of us are immune to a sudden pang of frustration, self-pity, or hormones that leave us in a wilted heap for the remainder of the day.

So here's my question to you: How do you snap yourself out of a funk?

Do you have a good long sleep, or do you stay up all night watching scary movies? Do you hit the gym, or maybe take a day off instead? Read a trashy magazine, or dive into a literary classic? Ask for a hug, or need some time alone? Spend some time outdoors, or relish in the hours inside? Need to feel comfortable and relaxed, or seek to feel excitement and adrenaline?

Whatever helps you dislodge yourself from the melodramatic depths of despair, jump to it as soon as you can to prevent a bad day from snowballing into a bad week. As for me, tomorrow promises to be a busy day, and nothing helps me get out of a bad mood better than getting things done. With each task I cross off a to-do list, I sense my self-purpose and motivation multiply. But until you're ready to take some steps towards feeling positive again, don't stress about those bad days that come around every once and a while. It happens to us all.

Lazy Sunday: Typing Away

Today's one of those autumn days when the trees aren't brilliant enough yet to warrant a leaf peeping, the wind's a little too whip-y to permit for outdoor anything, and the rolling clouds are just ominous enough to trigger a contemplative mood. Well break out the notepad and bic, moleskin and fountain, typewriter and ribbon, laptop and high-res, or whatever your recording implement of choice, because it is the perfect day to write. I am two emails into my long list of inscriptions, and there's no stopping me now. Writing is the perfect Sunday activity because it can be so emotionally cathartic. Give it a shot! Whether you opt for a letter, email, journal entry, poem, short story, free write, article, blog post, or more, it's sure to release some pent-up creativity and put you in touch with what's been on your mind.

Priorities, Part 2

Photo via Mental Health

Yesterday I wrote about priorities and why prioritizing is such an important tool in today's world of endless opportunities. So how can you make prioritizing work for you? And where do you begin?

For starters, taking time to set our priorities can help us take stock of where our time, energy, and funds - I refer to these as our personal resources - are going, and recognize where they could be better utilized. When we take the time to consciously prioritize our desires and commitments, we are giving ourselves the power to redirect where our life is headed. That's powerful stuff!

An easy way to take stock of what your current priorities are is to make a personal resources log. You can do this by creating a journal, chart, or spreadsheet where you log everything you do over the course of a week. Your log doesn't need to be too detailed, but it should include each activity, how much time you spent on it, whether it was energizing or energy zapping (this will vary for each of us), and the cash result (either inflow or outflow). Here's a couple examples:

Watched TV, 1.5 hours, energy zapping, $0 (you could prorate your cable bill here if you wanted)
Worked, 9 hours, energy zapping, $500 inflow
Dinner with a friend, 1 hour, energizing, ($40)
Played soccer, 2 hours, energizing, ($10) on a new team shirt
Showered, .5 hours, energizing, $0

Photo via Ask Miss A

The purpose of this log is to give you a snapshot of what your personal resource allocation looks like right now. Feel free to alter these categories or add more categories as you wish - maybe noting how you felt after each activity or who else was involved.

Once you have a week's worth of information in your log, it's time to tally up where your time, energy, and funds went. Take a look at which activities took up the most time. Recognize where the most money was spent, and earned. Note which activities zapped your energy and which revved you up. Finally, after looking at only your personal resource allocation, what do your priorities appear to be? Try to answer this question as analytically as you can, without letting your personal bias answer for you. You might realize that watching television or working overtime has become more of a priority than you'd like to admit, and that's important to be honest with ourselves about. Or perhaps you realize that where your personal resources are going is just where you want them, and that's important to see as well.

So what do you do now that you have an accurate picture of your personal resource allocation (and what your actions are telling you about your priorities)? It's time to reassess if your actions match you desires. Stop by next time to find out how.