How to Snap Out of That Post-Pandemic Exhaustion You’re Feeling
Here’s the advice I’m giving my coaching clients
I recently tweeted a piece of advice that I often tell my coaching clients: If I had to feel motivated to start a workout, I would have done 23 workouts last year, not 230. If I had to feel inspired to start writing, well, there’d be hardly any writing. If you want to stop 20 minutes in, fine. But give yourself a chance.
It’s a platitude, yes. But it’s also true and not just for the concrete tasks on your to-do list. In every part of life, there are highs and lows, periods of energy and periods of exhaustion. Sometimes all you can do is nudge yourself to show up and get started. Even, and perhaps especially, when you don’t feel like it.
Coming out of the pandemic, lots of people are feeling tired—physically, mentally, and emotionally. Psychologists call this languishing; in a New York Times piece earlier this year, organizational psychologist Adam Grant described it as “a sense of stagnation and emptiness.”
“It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield,” Grant wrote. “Languishing might be the dominant emotion of 2021.”
Sometimes you actually need rest. Your mind and body are truly tired. Shutting it down…
