How Do I Get Out of A Funk?

how's it going you guys Tyler wandering therapist here I'm out today on a beautiful day Springtime finally good temperatures you can see the river behind me it's just amazing today blue skies with just a few clouds you might hear my dog in the background splashing the water she's trying to chase Ducks right now thinking she's going to be successful but she's not but I just wanted to answer a quick question for you today this question comes from Adam Adam thanks for submitting your question and the question is where do I start when I'm in a funk or a rut how do I get out of a funk or a rut and this is a timely question because I've actually been in one of those myself so I'm gonna I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about maybe some personal experiences to how I've been trying to climb out of it myself and give you a few principles to think about that might be helpful so something that I think first and foremost we need to remember and consider is that we live lives where no matter what we do we're going to have Peaks and valleys and I think sometimes we kind of get blindsided by the fact that we end up in a rut or a funk and we wonder why it happened like what's what are we doing wrong and sometimes you may have not done anything wrong per se it's just that the circumstances of Life have maybe changed a little bit or you have waves of different emotions and so pausing to be kind to yourself and be curious with yourself as to what might be causing it is the first place to start and if you can't find anything that's okay but now you can start moving into some other skills and things so probably about two weeks ago I started to feel sort of my depression kick in pretty strongly and I kind of have this like weird seasonal depression it comes and goes but when I get it it sort of wants to shut me down to the point where I don't want to do anything all of my normal dailies kind of go out the window I kind of get lazy and lethargic and I stop doing my normal sorts of like rhythms that actually keep me going and then the depression wants to get worse when that happens then I end up in a funk or a rut unfortunately I let that slide over the last couple days and I did get into a funker rut to where I could feel that burning my behind my eyes again that real thick fog of depression in my head and I didn't want to do anything no motivation to do anything my wife kind of saw it and she pointed it out and she said Tyler like something's off with you and I said I know I can't I can't figure it out I can't get it to stop and she said well how are you doing on all your Basics when's the last time you ran your dog when's the last time you did your spiritual reading when's the last time you did your meditation I saw it's been a few days on all of that stuff she said well maybe that's where you start yesterday I woke up and I decided not to overwhelm myself but I decided to do one thing at a time and this is maybe the suggestion I give to you Adam is to find one thing at a time find the smallest possible action that will push you in the right direction and then do the next right thing just like you hear in the songs in Frozen right and so what I decided to do is to wake up and I decided to start with just getting my personal hygiene done and getting a hot shower and then I decided to listen to one talk from a leader of our church just to do something spiritual and then after that I decided that I hadn't run my dog in a few days and she needed to get out so I decided to take her for a run and while I was running her the wind that was blowing was starting to fill up my lungs and I started to feel a little bit more alive and I still didn't have a ton of motivation but I started to feel better and I realized that I was starting to turn the tables and so when I got home I went back into my house and I sat down with my wife and read a chapter of a book we're reading together and the topic was perfect it's a book called When Things Fall Apart by Pima Chadron and the chapter that we read was just perfect for how I was feeling and it got me thinking and we had a good discussion with my wife and so I got connection with my wife I had a great conversation with my brother yesterday and now you see that one thing at a time starts to turn the tides again and pull things out so that's the hardest thing is there's some activation energy that has to happen where you've got to get yourself to just do the first thing but if you can get that movement then the next piece of movement becomes easier and the next piece of movement becomes easier the smallest baby step smallest action in the right direction is the place to start and then you start to build in things on top of that until you get your motivation back and you get moving again so one thing at a time the next right thing hopefully that's helpful for you Adam have a great day thank you so much for being here with me if you found this to be valuable for you please hit the like And subscribe button if you're facing particular struggles that you need help with or roadblocks that you're running into please submit a question I'd be happy to answer it for you [Music] [Music]