How Do You Save Yourself?

We all feel emotions, and sometimes fall into a slump. You're tired, sad, unmotivated, or depressed for a few days, weeks or months. Sometimes it's easy to snap out of and other times it feels like it's never ending...

I've been feeling this 'slump' for the past maybe two months. I have neglected my gym/health time, I have hardly seen my friends, and I just feel like I'm stressed about stress and it's stressing me out.

I recently went to a conference for photography and a lot of the classes were related to techniques and business strategies. But one speaker I remember talked a lot about your mood and how you work and inspire yourself. There were different stages of learning and they talked about the moods and feelings that you felt in each stage. As I listened, I identified a lot with what this speaker was saying and I kept thinking wow. I really am unmotivated, I really DO need to find that spark and inspiration again.

I know we all lose it from time to time. We get so overwhelmed with life, work, money, stress, and relationships that we forget to exercise the creative part of our lives. I used to love going out once or twice a week for a few hours with my camera or notebook, and just taking pictures or writing. Now, after work I have no energy and I usually just come home and dive into my bed with Netflix. I just don't want to deal with anyone, and I don't want to do anything productive.

It kind of hit me today as I was writing out a book list for myself. There were a lot of books recommended for us to read from these speakers and a lot of them are about motivation and written by people who struggled with their passion or debt or life situations that just made them want to completely give up. One thing a speaker suggested was to take a notebook with you and write things down everyday. Write down what you see, how it makes you feel, and where you see it. So each week, and each day, my goal is to write and do things that make me feel happy or make positive changes to my life. So every Sunday I set my intentions and this week I'm keeping it simple:

- set up a coffee/dinner date with an old friend
- read more, watch TV less
- walk/run every day
- pay it forward