Waking up feeling low:

And changing direction

“If you do not change direction, you might end up where you are headed.” – Lao Tzu

Photo by NEOM on Unsplash

On Saturday, I woke up with a low, sunken grief in my chest. I had not gone to bed with it. I had gone to bed full of creative energy, determined to wake up and write. So often for me, a feeling like this one turns into a mood that casts a long shadow over my day. But on some days, increasingly, I have taught myself to slow down. To pay attention. 

And when I pay attention, I notice how I feed the mood. How I am quick to pick up my computer or phone. How my fingers seem to act of their own accord, typing in searches for things that validate my bad mood. Sometimes, this means looking at social media. On Saturday, it meant looking for numbers—sales numbers, review numbers, numbers of readers—to validate my meanest beliefs about myself. Meanwhile, the creative inspiration I had just hours before settled deeper into its hiding place.

Is it just me who is so adept at reinforcing a mood in this way? In sabotaging the fragile motivation I am always seeking to find?

The surest way I’ve found to change direction in times like these is not by allowing my thoughts to roam. And it’s certainly not by going anywhere near my computer or phone.

It’s by asking myself these five questions about my day:

Have I journaled? 

Have I gotten outside?  

Have I exercised? 

Have I meditated or done yoga?  

Have I connected with another person? 

Almost always when I’m in a mood like this one, the answer to each of these questions is no.

It is never easy to get myself to take the first step and pick up my journal. I usually have to force myself through the motions. And I usually start quite grumpily. But when I am through, when I check all the boxes, my hands no longer twitch at the keyboard. I no longer feel so low in my chest.

None of these things is really a box to check. They are much less about doing than being. But in the moment, when I am low and mean, I find that my mind responds best to boxes and doing. It’s a mental trick I play that I thought might resonate with some of you too.

In the next few weeks, I'll do a deeper dive on creativity and journaling, including the journaling practice that is like gentle rain on the harsh inner voice I developed long ago, learned from the wonderful Elizabeth Gilbert.