Boost Your Mood, Energy, and Motivation: Simple Strategies for Mental Wellness

Well, hey there, and welcome back to the Driven Woman Entrepreneur podcast. This is your host, Diann Wingert and if you are joining me during the month that this episode is released, then we are here to talk about mental health awareness month, October of every year. It's also ADHD awareness month. Now these are two things I care a lot about, and there's a lot of overlap. But it's undeniable that whether you personally have struggled with your mental health, whether you have ADHD or you care about someone who does, the world is really hurting right now. And I'd like to believe that we are going to come to a point in time where this artificial distinction of us versus them, the mentally well versus the mentally ill is finally going to be put to rest because the truth is there is no us versus them. We are them and they are us. It's just a matter of circumstances and timing. So stay with me, I'll be right back.

If you're paying any attention to the world around you right now it's undeniable that there is a lot of hurt and fear and anxiety going on. And the reality is that most people are struggling with their mental health as a result of the ongoing effects of the COVID pandemic. It's just that new things keep coming along that add to that existing basis of stress. And the reason why I am very adamant about getting rid of this notion of us versus them, and in fact, we are them is because I believe that it's really a matter of time that any person who feels healthy mentally today may not feel mentally healthy tomorrow. We are all being subjected to numerous stressors, most of us have inherited some sort of predisposition that might make it easier for us to struggle with anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, autism spectrum disorder, and so many other things. And the number of people that have been subjected to traumas past and present is also increasing. This episode is not about doom and gloom.

As a matter of fact, it's quite the contrary. Because the reality is if you are a person who actually cares about people, if you are someone who has empathy for others and you are genuinely concerned about what's going on, not only with yourself and your family, but in your community, in your culture, in your country, and around the world, then you are undoubtedly being affected right now. Not everyone is going to experience a clinical depression as a result of the conditions that they're in but most of us are not feeling a 100% ourselves. Many of the conversations I'm having with clients and colleagues are around bandwidth, boundaries, and burnout. Meaning, we don't have an unlimited capacity to care. We do not have an unlimited amount of energetic resources to take care of ourselves, to take care of our loved ones, to manage our workload, and to care beyond that. And yet we're all being bombarded with the evidence that many people are in need of our care right now.

So what are we to do, should we just put our blinders on and try not to pay attention? I do know people who have literally sworn off listening to the news for the last several years because they just don't feel they have the capacity to be well informed about how much suffering is going on in the world given their own energetic bandwidth. I have no judgment for this. It is not for me to say, but I think each of us does need to pay attention to the fact that our mood, our energy, and our motivation really do track together. If you pay attention to when your mood is down, your energy is down and your motivation is down. When your motivation is back up, I promise you your energy and your mood are as well. So whatever we can do to maintain our current level of motivation, mood, or energy so that it doesn't dip any lower and whatever we can do to raise those things, we will benefit, and the people around us will benefit.

I'm gonna share with you a few of the tips that I use myself and recommend to my clients and trust me, they're not rocket science, and I am no rocket scientist. I am a regular human being who has ups and downs, good days and bad days. Some days I'm really apathetic and other days I'm really idealistic and I'm guessing you are the same. A lot of people are questioning whether they are in a state of burnout right now, and they're really concerned about it because burnout isn't just a catchphrase like stress used to be. Do you remember when people used to disregard stress as a serious concern and just say, oh, it's just stress. I have all these health problems. I have skin outbreaks, stomach upset, gastrointestinal disorders, hives and people would just say, it's just stress.

As though I don't know, I've even seen a bumper sticker that says, “Stress is just another name for life”. But I think I've also seen another bumper sticker that says “Stress kills”, and that's the one I wanna take seriously. We can't afford to disregard our stress and our stressors. We can't afford to disregard the signs of burnout because once we actually reach burnout, it can take a really long time to work our way back to our normal baseline. So I think we owe it to ourselves, to our clients and customers, if we have a business, to our loved ones, to our community, to do everything we can to try to maintain our mental health at its current level and improve it wherever we can. I've had people tell me, well, if it gets any worse, I'll just go on an antidepressant. Okay. Listen, I've been part of the psychiatric community for years in my former role as a licensed psychotherapist and I will tell you if you are seriously depressed, like life endangering level of depression where you can't eat, you can't sleep, you have profoundly negative thoughts, including thoughts that your life isn't worth living? You desperately need to be under medical care and on medication.

But for most of us, an antidepressant is not the magic pill so many people would like to believe it is. Yes, it can help boost your baseline. But for many people, the things I'm going to share in this episode will do the job just as effectively, no prescription necessary. And I personally prefer feeling like I'm taking control of my health and my mental health and I'm doing everything I can within reason. And I'm going to get into some parameters about what reasonable is under our current conditions so that we can both give ourselves a break and take care of ourselves better. One of the things I've noticed about human beings, including myself, when we are under long term stressful conditions is we tend to engage in all or none black or white thinking. And here's how it might look. I don't have time to exercise right now, so I'm just gonna wait until things ease up and then I'll join a gym.

The truth is every one of us can get a few minutes of exercise in every day, no gym membership required. But when we're under conditions of chronic stress, we engage in this thinking that, Oh, a few minutes a day don't count, so I'm just going to wait until I have enough time. In a few minutes, I'm going to talk with you about distinctions between optimal and minimal that I think are much friendlier on our mental health and much more sustainable. I won't be the first one to tell you that you're probably a perfectionist. You're probably an overachiever. You're probably kinda type A, and you probably are engaging in a lot of this all or none thinking right now. Meaning, if I can't do that full morning routine, why bother? Any hands raised? I can't do a 45 minute workout right now, so I'm just going to wait until I can.

I promise you any little bit you can do does count and it does move the needle. Remember what I said a few minutes ago about mood, energy, and motivation tracking together? Well, the truth of the matter is anything you can do to boost your energy, boost your mood or boost your motivation is going to pull the other two parameters along with it, and it's kind of like manufacturing your own resources. Let's say you're feeling kind of apathetic right now. I wouldn't blame you if you were, let's say you're feeling sad. You're feeling overwhelmed. You're feeling a little bit helpless, like nothing you do is working out the way you want it to. I think one of the things we need to be talking about a lot more, not just in the mental health community, but in society at large is how it feels to be living with chronic disappointment.

Chronic disappointment is not a mental disorder. It is not a diagnosable condition. It's not in the DSM, you can't take medication for it. Many doctors wouldn't even give you appointment if you say that's what the presenting complaint is but I guarantee you it is affecting your mood, energy, and motivation in a negative way. And it almost doesn't matter what the reason is, we are all living in unprecedented conditions right now. There hasn't been a pandemic that has affected the whole world for many, many years, and we're still not over the effects of it. There's also the individual stressors that people are living with based on where they're located in the world, where their cultural heritage is in the world, where their people are, where they're from, and things are going on in the world right now that they can't do anything about. That is a devastating level of helplessness, and you better believe it has a negative effect on mood, energy, and motivation.

Most of us have some level of past trauma that we're dealing with and if your health status is currently compromised because maybe you just had surgery, and you're just not gonna feel like yourself for 4 to 6 weeks. Or maybe you have a chronic health condition, like many people I know do. These things all weigh in on your mood, energy, and motivation. There are seasonal variations, and I'm talking not just people who have a diagnosis of seasonal affective disorder. These are people who are affected much more than the norm, but all of us experience seasonal variations in mood, energy, and motivation that affect our mental health. You wanna know what else? If you are a highly sensitive person, if you are a creative, If you are in the helping professions any of the helping professions if you have empathy for your fellow man If you care about other people, period.

I think that just about encompasses the vast majority of humans on the planet, you are being affected right now. It may not look like depression, and I hope for your sake it isn't. But there's a whole lot of levels of decreased mood, energy, and motivation up to and including depression. Clinical depression is actually more rare than you might think. But a lot of people have what we might call a subclinical depression, below that, they might just feel apathetic. They might feel excessively fatigued. They may feel like I'm on the pathway to burnout, but I don't think I'm there yet. It just feels inevitable that I'll get there. I know a lot of people who are feeling that right now. Sometimes this causes us to procrastinate on things that would actually make us feel better if we could just get ourselves to do them. And if you happen to live with someone who isn't wired this way that may be one of the most painful things of all because they're probably be telling you, “Just do it”, as though repeating the Nike slogan would just snap you right out of it.

Now this is not a mental health podcast. However, I do wanna share something with you that I think would be really helpful. There's something called dysthymia, and I'll link to that in the show notes. It's not depression. It's not burnout. It's a chronic state of reduced mood, energy, and motivation. You're not in bed. You're not calling in sick to work. You're not unable to eat or sleep or eating and sleeping too much. You're still showering and brushing your teeth and doing your daily duties. You're just not able to do any of them with enthusiasm. You're just going through the motions. Now you personally may need something beyond what I'm gonna recommend for that, you might need to go see your doctor. It could be a health condition. Something with your thyroid or your endocrine system, your hormones.

I'm not a doctor, and I'm certainly not your doctor. But if you are feeling just blah, just down, and you just don't have the level of mood, energy, and motivation you need to live your life the way you're accustomed to living it, don't ignore it. This is mental health awareness month, it starts with to us this not to shame you, blame you, call you out, make you feel bad. I feel you. This is a hard time. It's a hard time for everyone I care about, and it's a hard time for me too. I'm finding it very challenging to push myself to do all the things that I need to do. And sometimes, I just feel like I'm dialing them in.

So what are the things that we can do not only now during mental health awareness month, but on a regular basis, whether it's to maintain our mood, energy, and motivation so that we can do the things that we need and want to do. Or if we're in a slump, a lot of people are in a slump right now for all kinds of reasons. Some of the reasons I've mentioned and many others I couldn't possibly know about because they're unique to you. But some of the recommendations I know for a fact will help if you can do them. One, the biggest and most important thing right now is to decide without reservation to radically accept yourself and where you are. You can't convince yourself that how you feel is okay and that you're doing your best because your brain just wanna convince you otherwise so you simply have to decide. And when I say simple, I don't mean easy.

I know it's not easy, but it actually is simple to make an agreement with yourself for the time being, I am going to practice radical self acceptance. You can always revoke your agreement with yourself later if you decide to do so. Personally, I'm a fan of radical self acceptance on an ongoing basis. How does it look? You simply decide that you're doing your best from one day to the next. There's a wonderful book I'm a huge fan of. I read it years ago, and I still refer to it all the time. It's called the Four Agreements. One of the agreements is it's basically it's a self help book, I suppose, but I sort of think of it as a personal philosophy. Kind of the way I think about how I practice Buddhism. I don't think of it as my religion. I think of it as my philosophy for living.

So in the Four Agreements, always do your best is one of the agreements. Now you're not agreeing with anyone else, I think that's really important here. You are agreeing to and with yourself, always do your best. And if you haven't already figured it out, your best is not feeling great right now, most likely. Otherwise, you wouldn't still be listening to this episode because it wouldn't apply to you. You get to decide if you're doing your best right now, and I highly recommend you do. Because it won't be your best tomorrow, or next week or next month, but if it's your best right now, how does it serve you to blame and shame yourself for not doing better doesn't change a thing. Nobody ever shamed themselves into better functioning. Nobody ever bullied themselves into feeling better. It just doesn't work that way. Plenty have tried. I've even tried it, it just doesn't work.

So instead, practice radical self acceptance and decide this is my best right now. You also get to decide to believe that your best will be better in the future, because we all need something to look forward to that generates hope. The flip side of radical self acceptance, it's to choose to forgive yourself. Because when your mood, energy, and motivation are not optimal, you're going to make mistakes, I guarantee it. You're gonna forget things. You won't follow through on things. You'll delay things. You'll promise to do something and forget all about it? And if, like me, you have ADHD, some of the things that you would normally procrastinate about may turn into resistance or even avoidance because that is what happens when our mood, energy, and motivation decrease. So you get to make the choice to forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for the things that are already now water under the bridge, and forgive yourself in advance for the things you're not going to do optimally for however long the slump lasts. There's nothing to be gained by feeling guilty or ashamed. You're doing your best.

It may not be a best you're proud of, but that's the problem. Now I am a card caring, overachiever, workaholic perfectionist, and I will be working on this stuff for the rest of my life. But I still choose to forgive myself for not doing or being at my best at any given time and I still choose to believe that I deserve love, acceptance, even approval during those times. I can't convince you. You have to decide to claim that belief for yourself. Those are some of the mindset things, alright? Radical self acceptance and forgiving yourself. Now here are some of the practical things. Remember I said a few minutes ago that during these times, let's just call them slumps, right? When you're in a slump, you need to make the distinction between optimal and minimal. This is something I teach my 1 on 1 coaching clients, and I practice for myself. I am one of those overachievers that would actually try to strive for a 100% score on a pass fail test when I was in college. How dumb is that?

The amount of effort and energy and focus and attention and sacrifice that it took to get anything close to a 100% when all I had to get was 70 to pass, and nobody but me would know the difference. I would like to think I wouldn't do that now, given all the learning and healing I've done since finishing college, but I know I would still feel the urge to do it, and maybe you do too. This is where the black or white thinking comes in. This is where the all or nothing thinking actually makes us suffer more. Because the truth is, if you can't do a 45 minute workout right now hey, you can't do a 30 minute workout right now. You can probably do 10, and you can for sure do 5, so what if you decide, instead of hitting the on off switch well, if I can't do it the right way, I'm not gonna do it at all. You're only hurting yourself.

Remember, the goal is to get the mood, energy, and motivation trending upward again. If you can decide that 10 minutes of movement let's not even call it exercise, 10 minutes of movement a day is enough. You're hitting the minimum. You get a gold star for that day, honey. Don't even think about the 30 minutes or the 45 or God save me an hour. That is optimal, and that's for another time. You're in a slump right now. That's not only unachievable, it's grossly unrealistic. And we're only punishing ourselves when we insist on those standards, chronic disappointment is very depleting. But when we're the one who's setting the standard, we have no one to complain about but ourselves. And it's an internalized competition with nobody who even counts. You do you. You decide. Always do your best. My best right now is 10 minutes a day and you get to decide that that's enough, and you even get to audaciously decide that you can feel proud about it.

This is all under your control and like I said, I can't convince you to do this. I'm strongly encouraging you to do this because I know from my own personal and considerable professional experience over many years, everything counts. Every little thing we do to feel better, to boost our mood, our energy, our motivation, it all counts. It all moves the needle. It all begins to shift our hormones and our brain chemistry toward a positive direction that we can feel in our body, mind, and brain. You ready for a few more practical tips? Okay. I'm sure you've heard me say before, unless this is your first time here, sleep is the most important metric for self care. Self care is not getting your nails done, darling. That's to me the equivalent of mowing the lawn or taking out the trash,- it's grooming, it's maintenance. Self care is getting enough sleep and chances are, right now, you need more than usual.

Some of my clients tell me during this time of the year, they routinely feel a slump, and they need 9 hours of sleep. I've had other people tell me if I got 9 hours of sleep, I'd go out of business. That's probably not true, but you can probably get 30 minutes more than you are. It may come down to making the determination between 30 more minutes of sleep and 30 minutes of scrolling. And I guarantee you, you're gonna get more out of the sleep, even though in the moment, the scrolling may feel more gratifying. We don't know how long this slump is gonna last, my friend, even if we've got past history of previous slumps, because we're different humans as time goes by. Our needs evolve, and most of us are really underestimating what we actually need in terms of sleep.

So give yourself the sleep you need. Take breaks during the workday, especially when I'm working with clients with ADHD, they often have so much trouble getting into a state of focus that once they're there, they don't want to break the spell, and that includes everything from skipping meals to trying to avoid going to the bathroom. I've been that person, it's kind of ridiculous. I used to justify not drinking enough water because I didn't wanna take the time to go pee. And I thought it was just me, but the more people that I've talked to who have ADHD, they're like, oh, yeah, same. Same, girl, same. It's not healthy.

In fact, if you are a person who gets into a state of hyperfocus, and you may set an alarm and then ignore it because hyperfocus can be very compelling. It's really hard to pull yourself out of it even when you've set the intention and the alarm. So what I tell those clients is you need to push water. You need to hyper hydrate because if you're a person who doesn't take breaks, you get into a state of focus, you won't go to the bathroom, you won't go to lunch, you won't step away from your desk. Because you're afraid it'll break the spell and you won't be able to get back into a state of focus, I try to get them to do this experiment with me. Hyper hydrate. Drink lots and lots and lots of water. You will be forced to take breaks if for no other reason than to go relieve yourself in the bathroom. And once you've taken that brief break, it also increased your movement for the day.

So do a couple of stretches on your way back to your chair. You might think it doesn't matter because it's a 5 minute break. It matters because you're teaching your brain that you can step away and reengage. I'm gonna beat this drum forever. Everything matters and when we place unrealistic expectations of ourself, like, oh, I can't take a break. I have to stick with this till I finish. I promise you, you do not stay productive throughout that entire period of time. There is a law of diminishing returns. The longer you sit at that screen, you may think you're maintaining the same level of productivity. But multiple studies from neuroscientists way smarter than I am say otherwise. In fact, if you are sitting for more than 90 minutes, you must get up. Not because you have to go to the bathroom or you need to stretch, although those things are definitely helpful. I mean, if we want to improve our mood, energy, and motivation, they are always, always helpful.

But the brain cannot sustain attention indefinitely. Even if you're in a state of hyperfocus, you need to take breaks so that you can break up that hyperfocus state. It's a hard one, I understand. But there are ways to do it and if you want help with that, send me a DM. I'll give you more specific information about how to get out of a state of hyperfocus. So we talked about sleep. We talked about hyperhydration. We've talked about breaks. We've talked about the difference between optimal and minimal, we've talked about radical self acceptance, and we've talked about forgiving ourselves. There's one more thing I wanna share with you today. Cancel the unnecessary, that's right. Look at your calendar. Look at all the things you have obligated yourselves to, cancel the unnecessary.

Most of the time, you've overcomplicated, overloaded, overwhelmed, overcommitted your schedule. You won't be missed, if you scheduled yourself to go to a bunch of meetings, unless you're running the meeting and you absolutely must, don't go. Many of the things we sign up for these days' master classes, webinars, you will get the replay, I promise you. You do not have to show up when it's scheduled. You can watch it at your leisure while you're petting your dog, knitting, doing your toenail polish? Or just skip it all together? A lot of the women that I've met are course horse, meaning they sign up for all these courses, and then they feel really shitty because they don't actually open the course, consume it, and complete it. Forget about it for now. Forget all about the courses, the programs, the webinars, the master classes, all those enticing things that you think you need to do because they're free, and it's a limited time offer. And you know what, you don't have the bandwidth for it right now.

I was just chatting with one of my friends today, Shulamit Ber Levtov, she has been a guest on the podcast. Like me, she is a therapist, and she works with entrepreneurs, she also has ADHD. So we often have conversations on Voxer that are very meaningful and a lot of fun. She was just saying to me today that she's experimenting with something during this season of the year and of her life, where when something gets canceled, instead of filling that slot with something else, which is what she typically does and frankly, what I have typically done, she's deciding to let that cancellation trigger a period of rest. So client cancels, I'm gonna use that time to rest. A class that you were gonna take cancels, use the time to rest. Now that doesn't mean you have to go to sleep or take a nap, but you could just sit and read a book that's been gathering dust on your nightstand.

You could sit and stare out the window. You could paint. You could cuddle with your fur baby. You could take a leisurely walk. Something restful and restorative, not more work. I hope that you will let me know if some of what I've shared today is helpful, if for no other reason than it validated your current experience. And I hope for you as a listener to this podcast, that you take the lessons that we could and should all be learning right now about how important it is to maintain our mental health awareness, not just October, but all year long. Be well friends, and I'll see you again next week.