How To Stop Feeling Low

Whether you’re working on yourself to be the best you can be or you just hitchhike through life, you know that not every day goes perfectly and life is far from a smooth ride. Some days you may be feeling low and other days majorly suck.

First of all, it’s absolutely normal to feel low sometimes, and there’s no reason to panic. Life isn’t always amazing. 

As Jessie J says in her song “Who You Are” – It’s OK not to be OK. (Kind of dancing around my ‘OK is NOT enough’ there Jessie!)

In this article, I want to give you five tips what you can do when you are feeling low to make yourself feel better pretty quickly.

1) Causal check

If you’re feeling down, there should be a reason for it. Maybe it’s problems in your relationship, someone else got promoted at work, had an argument with a friend, or received a “We, sorry to inform you…” email from a potential employer. If you feel low because something didn’t go right, that’s totally natural reaction.

However, if you feel down (especially for a long time) with no apparent reason, I highly recommend you visit your GP and tell them about it. It could be a deficiency of some sort. The human body is a complex machine, and sometimes it’s trying to tell us something.

So, do a quick check of where this blue is coming from. 

When you find it, just go: Ahaaa! Gotcha!… because it’s good news. It means you’re a human being with emotions and not one of the robots from West World with a tin hollow chest (instead of heart and all the rest). 

2) MOVE OUT OF THE FUNK

Our life and our emotions are one big cause-and-effect system. In other words, one thing triggers another or at least contributes to the trigger.
When you’re feeling low, the worst thing you can do is to do the same thing and stay in the same place, like staying in your bed or on the sofa stewing in the temporary low.

Think about what you or people typically do when they are feeling low. They stay indoors, inactive, watch TV or scroll through Facebook, eat comfort food, wear PJs, postpone things like taking a shower etc. You know the typical movie scene. There is a stereotypical image of someone feeling low.
Guess what? If you engage in the activities that we have associated with feeling low, it will add to you feeling low.

On the other hand, if you remember (or imagine) feeling tremendous and ecstatic, or at least centred, what do you or people do? They get up, take a shower, get ready for the day, put some nice clothes on, and probably head out. Maybe you go to your favourite restaurant or have something ultra healthy, like a green smoothie. You will reach out to your friends and suggest a catch-up, or just go for a walk outside people watching.

Your environment will impact your emotions.

With that in mind, if you’re feeling low then change that. Stop doing things people who feel low would do and do something happy people would do, it will change how you feel, guaranteed.

3) Use your body

Not only our environment impact our emotions but also our physiology.
This is a well studied and tested phenomena in the field of psychology.

If I asked you to imagine a person who is feeling really low. What do you see?

Perhaps someone sitting down with their head in their hands, looking down, hunched over, sighing, with the ‘long face’ facial expression.

Amazingly, if you took on the same body language for as little as 10 minutes, you would start feeling similarly.

On the contrary, if you were to imagine someone who is energised, determined, feeling unshakeable. What do you see?

Probably someone standing tall with their chest puffed up, having a determined expression in their face and holding their chin up.

Again, if you were to take on such body language for even a short time, it would make you feel a bit like that. Isn’t it amazing?

So what’s in it for you? Well, if you’re feeling low, are you enhancing it with your body language? If so change it! It works.

4) Get moving

It’s no secret that movement is good for the body, but it’s also good for the mind. When you move your body is more alert, there is more oxygen going into your muscles but also into your brain. Oxygen is good!

So if you’re feeling low, get moving.
It can be a brisk walk, run, yoga class, or any gym class frankly.
Even a few minutes will make you feel better.
You have my word.

5) Get a grip

What I mean by this is not just to be a victim to your circumstance.
One of the main reasons why we feel low is that we lack certainty or control over what is happening in our life.

The best thing you can do is to get a grip on your situation and re-take control over the situation.

Sit down with a pen and paper and write down all the things that you’re not happy about.
Then ask yourself a simple question: What can I do to improve this or the way I feel about it?
There is always something you can do.
Write down as many things as you can and then take action on them.

Do something. Start with the most appealing task (or the one that you have the least resistance to) and get it done. Then another one.

When you take action, you’ll start feeling like you actually have some level of control over the situation and that will make you feel better.

 In summary

Some people say you should not resist your emotions and embrace them until they go away. I believe this is relevant to deeper feelings and problems, but entirely unnecessary for some minor turbulence.

If you want to waste a day feeling low and then having to get on with life and sort the problem out anyway, be my guest. I think that time is precious, and we all have a finite amount of days on this planet, and I’m not going to waste it by marinating myself feeling low because in my opinion, feeling low sucks and I don’t like it, so I want to spend a minimum amount of time down there.

Don’t waste your time.
Do something.

If you need the support of a life coach, you’re always welcome to contact me and let’s find out if we’d be the right match.