Regardless of your current situation, you aren’t alone if you feel a bit weird “traking” through 2023.  If it occasionally feels like you are a character in a movie, you’re in good company.  The last few years have been odd at best and will likely become a chapter in the history books of the next generation. 

The transitions have been plentiful, and whether you happily obliged through some of those changes or rebelled, the world was spinning on some kind of different axis – and arguably, still is.  Now, you are left to navigate through whatever this new normal is.  How, you ask?  A few things are helpful regardless of your deviation from the spinning axis.

PAUSE

A nice little reset never hurt anyone.  If you have experienced loss of some sort – job, loved one, sanity, direction, structure, or understanding of what the hell is going on, taking some time is beneficial.  The amount of time doesn’t matter.  You may not have the luxury of a weeklong vacation to sit on a beach or stare at a wall, but a quiet moment will do the trick.  Really.  Turn off all the noisy things, close your eyes, and breathe.  That’s it.  Start there.  As you start to feel your mind clear, you should feel a tiny sense of peace.  Cling to that peace.  It is a necessary part of moving forward.  Repeat this as often as it feels good to you.  The more peace you can find, the more you will become peaceful.  Repeat this exercise every morning after you brush your teeth or every day when you sit down to put your shoes on to leave the house.  Find a time and stack it to a habit that you always do and guess what?  You will always do it – that is if you do not forget to brush your teeth or put your shoes on before you leave.  When you purposely take a moment to ground yourself and clear your mind, you will have more control over this through the day.

RELEASE JUDGEMENT

You judge yourself and others all day without much thought.  Passing judgement is absolutely exhausting – especially in an everchanging environment, as there tends to be a plethora of things to judge.  Think about it.  You are literally setting yourself up to lose and allow negative energy into your mind every time you turn to judgement.  Give yourself permission to cross that off your proverbial to-do list.  When you catch yourself giving something the side eye, smile and think about something positive.  In fact, think of something positive right now.  I’ll give you a moment. . . got it?  Struggling to come up with something?  It doesn’t have to be elaborate.  Do you like pizza or ice cream, puppies or a hot shower, the smell of lemons or a pumpkin candle?  See.  You got it!  Whatever positive thing you thought of, repeat it to yourself three times.  This will become your positive thing.  Feel yourself judging?  Puppies, puppies, puppies!  Congratulations, you have successfully hijacked your brain and saved yourself from feeding your mind negativity and flat wiping yourself out.  Pair this with your peaceful moments and you are taking some serious control.

BE WHERE YOUR FEET ARE

Navigating a transition tend to make your mind very scattered.  A scattered mind is distracting and makes it difficult to focus.  Losing focus frustrates you.  Frustration puts you in some sort of funk that usually likes to hang out for the day.  Sometimes a day turns into two and you aren’t even sure what your problem is.  See how this has a stack effect that isn’t particularly beneficial?  When you sit down to reply to an email, type the email.  When it is time for dinner, eat.  When you set out on a mission to clean the kitchen, clean the kitchen.  This may seem overly simple and in theory, it is.  In real life execution, it is not.  It may seem easy to write the email until your phone pings, your dog has to potty, or your kid starts tapping you on the shoulder.  That task of sending an email may still be hovering over your head hours later because you fell into the abyss of your phone, then it was time for lunch, and then a meeting or school pick up.  Likely, you are then annoyed with yourself (puppies, puppies, puppies!) that you didn’t reply to the email.  Whatever task is in front of you or whatever part of life you are staring in the eye, make your best attempt to be present.  Pro tip: timers or time goals are helpful.  Tell yourself you have 20 minutes to clean the kitchen or give your child 15 minutes of undivided attention.  When you set a specific amount of time for something, you have a greater chance or allowing your feet to be where they are because you have a concrete ending, be it time is up or task is done. 

OPEN THE DOOR

When any kind of transition hits, you are likely to feel overwhelmed with choices, ideas, and an entire fleet of thoughts.  You may experience excitement, fear, or some odd mix of the two.  Your mind will likely be quite busy.  You may solve all the worlds problems one minute and feel like a tangled mess the next.  You probably alternate between two extremes – hyperactive and fatigued.  When faced with this sort of mind mush, consider allowing yourself the opportunity to simply open the door.  Open doors provide you a chance to walk through if you so choose at some point.  Open doors give you choices.  Open doors may provide a backup plan.  Open doors may bring options you hadn’t previously considered.  Open doors may lead you to a new hallway.  That new hallway may well have another set of doors available to open.  In the end, you can feel confident in the door you chose to walk through.  You provided yourself with the gift of knowledge and choice.  You collected data points to make an informed decision.  Another thing about open doors: you may have done the best and most thorough assessment of which door to walk through, only to realize it was not right for you.  The good news, you can walk right back out into that hallway.  Some doors may still be open and new doors might exist.  Nothing has to have a permanent stamp on it. The qualities and skills you had still exist and you can waltz them right through another door if you need or want to.