It’s not unusual to feel down, low or stuck in a rut at some point in your life. If you’re lucky, these moments are fleeting and temporary, so you breeze through them without any lasting effects to your mental health. However, sometimes our emotions and mood can see us develop a more chronic feeling of depression, anxiety or hopelessness. Sometimes we can feel powerless to do anything to break the pattern of waking up every morning feeling down, slogging through the same monotony and feeling little or no satisfaction with life. When we feel down, we tend to let other aspects of our life slide. Our finances might not be as ship-shape as they once were, the house might get messy and we may let ourselves go a little.
Feeling hopeless stops us from being proactive. However, it’s vital that you find the motivation that will help change your life for the better. Reorganizing your life may seem impossible when your mental health isn’t at its best, but by taking a step back and reflecting on your lifestyle, you can bring a new routine and order to it that can help you incrementally feel better.
Finances
The specter of debt on the horizon can fill you with dread and has a knack of making you bury your head even deeper into the sand. This is obviously the wrong approach to take, but can appear less hassle than tackling your finances head on. Seeing all of the money that you owe can lead to stress, but if you do find yourself struggling with debt, there are plenty of helplines that you can utilize with free, impartial and non-judgmental advice. These individuals have often been in your current situation, and can help you wade through the seemingly impossible. Financial advisors are not just for the bougie rich – do some digging, look in your community, and find the right advisor for you.
If you don’t want to seek outside advice, take a look at your finances and draw up a spreadsheet detailing every little bit of income and every tiny bit of expenditure. This should include every Friday morning macchiato you treat yourself to from your favorite coffee shop on the way to work. Cut these from your expenditure, and that’s over $100 saved every year already.
If the debt repayments that you do have are making it nigh on impossible to stay in the black every month, consider a debt consolidation loan. This will allow you to have one simple monthly repayment rather than lots of smaller ones throughout the month. This simple reorganization can lighten the financial stress from your shoulders and help you budget more effectively. Becoming debt free can take a long time, but when you see the money owed decreasing, you will be motivated to continue.
Work
If you are stuck in a rut at work, it’s time to reassess your career. It’s rare for people to have a job or a career for life nowadays. In the twenty-first century, more people than ever are choosing to wave goodbye to their steady wage and promotion prospects to start their own business instead. If you fancy a new challenge and want more job satisfaction, consider where your passions and abilities lie.
You may choose to switch careers and retrain for a job in a different sector. While you might have to start on a lower rung of the career ladder, it could be the challenge you’re looking for. Being motivated in your work and loving what you do is essential. After all, you are at work for forty hours a week. It’s vital that you are satisfied with what you are doing and the impact you are having.
You may choose to stay within the same sector but simply go it alone. Or perhaps you fancy breaking into an artisan or creative field. Do your research and discover whether there is a market for a startup idea. Figure out what you want your brand to be and dive into developing it. Having something to focus on and get excited about can help your mental health. Using tools like the Template and Content Accessibility software on offer will help you to hone your branding across a range of platforms, you can make yourself visible online via social media and a website, and you can convert clicks to sales with an effective ad campaign.
Don’t ever think that you are too old or not capable enough to achieve your business dreams. If the idea of working for yourself is life affirming, and reorganizing your work-life balance could be just the ticket to improve your levels of happiness.
Home
If you look around your humble abode to see mess and clutter everywhere, it’s time to whip out the spring cleaning kit and get to sprucing up the place. You might want to start with the stuff cluttering up every corner of your home. Being surrounded by excess ornaments, books and junk can make you feel more stressed and overwhelmed with life. If your living environment is decluttered and more airy, your headspace tends to follow suit. There’s nothing better than getting some boxes ready, filling them up with clutter and then storing them in the loft or selling your unwanted items on eBay to make some extra cash.
Once you have decluttered your home, you might be keen to revolutionize your decor. Giving the place a lick of paint, putting up some new artwork or even going for a more dramatic kitchen extension can lead to you feeling more energized and happy. Being motivated to do something practical can increase our dopamine levels and kick our happy hormone into gear.
Being happy isn’t something we can just switch on and off. We need to work at it, especially if we have recently gone through something traumatic, sad or overwhelming. However, we need to try and work through our feelings and emotions, rather than bottling them up or ignoring them. Only then can you be proactive and try and hunt for the thing that inspires your feelings of happiness once again. Taking a step back and reorganizing different aspects of your life can go a long way to helping you achieve this.
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