The Dragontree

You know when you are in a major funk for no real reason and you just can’t seem to snap out of it?  Well, sometimes, right around the corner is the feeling of fantastic!  It’s all just about getting there.  Here is the quickest, easiest and most guaranteed way to make it happen:

1. Choose!  You must actually decide that you don’t want to be stuck in the muck of your own despair.  If this step is difficult for you, it is helpful to observe what you might be getting out of your current state.  Are you avoiding work and therefore getting to rest more?  Are you getting attention from your friends or partner?  Are you using it to procrastinate?  Or is it something else altogether?  There are lots of things we can get out of being in a funk; most we aren’t even conscious of.  But, if we bring these into the light, we often discover that there are more productive and direct ways to get what we need or want.
2. Serve others.  Take the attention off yourself and put it on other people.  Mohandas Gandhi once said “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”  He knew that the joy we find in our own lives is most felt when we are helping the people around us.
3. Move it and shake it, baby.  Pain, mental or physical, is caused by stagnation.  There is a seamless continuity between all parts of us – our thoughts, our emotions, and our bodies.  A melancholy mood almost always involves mental and emotional stagnation, and physical exercise helps.  .  This is because, . by promoting physical movement, we move our mind and our emotional body, freeing ourselves from the rut we’re in.
4. Resistance is futile!  Have you heard the expression, “What you resist persists”?  This is certainly true when we try to resist a funk.  I’m not suggesting that you should wallow in it and never let it go.  I am, however, suggesting that you don’t actively resist it.  In fact, feel it, observe the feeling in your body, try to give it some characteristic – what color is it, what size is it, what shape is it?  Really get in there and welcome this feeling head on with the objective of experiencing it willingly and fully – rather than judging it or needing to figure it out.  Then breathe into it and consciously let it go.

And if all else fails – take a vacation!  That’s what I am doing.  I am off to Mexico, mañana!  I’d love to hear how you get from funk to fabulous in the comments below.

Hasta Luego,

Briana Borten, Founder of The Dragontree