We’ve all had them. Days when we can’t seem to form a thought that is remotely helpful or particularly inspiring. Days when we can’t get any momentum or traction going around the dream. Days when we don’t even know what the dream is anymore and are sick of searching for it. Days when everything feels blah.
We’ve lost touch with the essential part of ourselves that knows we are incredibly interesting, fully-alive, and on track with our personal mission.
We have fallen into the pit of hell known as the doldrums.
The doldrums are that unfortunate state where everything feels like it is at a standstill. No energy or growth – it seems – around anything. Just stagnation, gloominess, and sluggishness.
Sometimes the doldrums last more than a day. They linger. Suddenly, a week or two has passed and we feel like life is passing us by.
Panic sets in.
We can’t just sit here! We’ve got to do something!
But we have no idea what that something is or should be.
Now we feel worse.
We are stuck.
Getting unstuck isn’t as hard as it might seem. It just requires that we embrace the reprieve we have been given.
Yes, a reprieve.
The doldrums are a sign that we need to stop throwing ourselves against the wall of activity. We need to stop doing things in an effort to make something happen.
Instead, we must turn our attention to experiencing things.
The doldrums show up when our inner reserves have been depleted or when we haven’t given ourselves anything to grow with. We haven’t filled up the proverbial well.
And so we fall in the pit. And it feels like hell.
In order to climb out, we must nourish ourselves with experiences designed to reacquaint and delight.
What delights you? Do you know? If you were told to go out and experience something, would you know where to begin?
Consider these simple examples:
- Do you really know what your favorite color is? Head to the paint store and immerse yourself in color chips. What speaks to you and why?
- Do you always eat spaghetti on Wednesdays and fish on Fridays? Maybe it’s time to try Vietnamese take out and let your tongue explore the fresh tastes of lemon grass and basil.
- Have you been listening to the same radio station for the past 20 years? Turn the dial and savor new sounds.
- That park down the street? The one you always pass on the way to work but never visit? Pull the car over. Stop. Get out for 10 minutes, feel the solidity of the earth and inhale all the shades of green.
- Your favorite chair? The one that faces the TV? Move it so you are looking out the window. Take a moment to enjoy the world going by. Engage your imagination and create stories for the people you see on the street or the squirrels scurrying in the garden.
Experience the wonder that is you until that pit becomes nothing but a distant memory.
Explore. Feel. Sense. Savor.
What are your favorite ways to reconnect with yourself when you hit the doldrums? What do you struggle with the most when you enter that stagnant state?
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Books and silence are my go-to reconnectors. In my younger years it used to be people and music; interesting to notice the shift. Some days I feel much more of an introvert than my ENFJ profile tells me!
Sandi Amorim recently posted..The Space in Between
It is interesting to note the shift! That’s why it is so important to go back and re-visit what you think is true about yourself, right? Thanks so much, Sandi.
Love this – as always. Leave it to you to brilliantly turn what can be frustrating into a gift, a grace, an opportunity to learn and grow. SO appreciate this about you, Andrea, and I’ll be looking for the subtle, small shifts I can make that just might change everything!
Ronna recently posted..Join an adventure. Support an amazing woman.
I love to learn and learning about ourselves, even in the smallest of ways, is fascinating to me. Thank you, my friend!
Inside ourselves is such a paradox isn’t it? When we’re in the doldrums we are living inside ourselves, lost, unable to look out. To come out of them we look inside, to reconnect with ourselves. It’s all done inside, but from very different angles!
Jackie Walker recently posted..Can you give and take without feeling used?
Oooh! I love the way you put that, Jackie. Spot on – as usual!
Ohhhhhhh… I loved this. The Doldrums is a Place I remember first learning the name of in The Phantom Tollbooth oh way waaaaaaayyy back, and it’s often referred to by ME, Now, as the gloom-and-doom place. I have 3 windows in the Wee Cottage, and anywhere I sit I am poised to look out one and sometimes, two of them.
I made up a rule for myself some years back, that I would NOT think or talk about a thing one second longer than it would take me simply to DO it. Or at least start it. When I get into that “pit” place, I ask myself what am I pondering, tossing about, sticking my tongue into like where a tooth used to BE.
And then I act. Right Then. And sometimes this yields the most amazing surprises.
Thank you for this delightful peek and your wondrous suggestions.
Currie – You made me smile. The image of the tongue revisiting the place where a tooth used to be is just perfect. Thank you!
What a coincidence..?…I have been in the doldrums for the last couple of days. I had a birthday go bad (hate it when that happens…an argument over, of all things, the garage) and I felt sad and depressed today over it all. I took advantage of the sunny, clear and sparkling winter
day and walked and walked. I went down to the water and walked along the beach, focusing on the expanse of the ocean and the brilliance of this world. I didn’t “try” to pull myself out of the pit, yet when I returned home and had some lunch, my entire being had shifted. My troubles seemed small in comparison to all that is available to me and I felt my place in the grandeur of life. I decided to learn from my disappointment and to allow a low place to ‘be here’, to teach me. I am still learning…
I’m so sorry to hear your doldrums, Lorrie, but it sounds like you are did exactly the right things to take care of yourself. Allowing things to be and letting the experience exist is so important. Take care.