How to get back your mojo?
I have not written for a while as I was discussing this with my husband on why this might be. The topic came out. Yes, for a while I feel that I have lost my mojo. And I know for some of you this will also be true. For the ones who are not familiar with the word mojo, I use it as an abbreviation for motivational joy.
So many things have happened in the last 1,5 years, for me, not being able to see my parents, my sister, and my home country (18 months and counting), the continual job hunting, the long lockdown, wretched cold long winter. For many of you, the same external factors apply too, maybe even worse for the people who have lost their loved ones to covid19.
Many of us have been caught off guard, it feels that we are being tested to our limits in ways we never have anticipated. Mental illness is becoming like a pandemic as people try to cope with the situation. And young people pay the utmost price because they do not have the coping tools that they can fall back onto. This obvious deterioration in young people`s mental health is apparent in a 1000% increase in suicide hotline calls (Cloutier and Marshaall, 2020).
It is no surprise that there is a significant increase in clinically mental ill when people are plagued with thoughts of `when this pandemic going to end`, `am I going to find a job` or `am I going to be fired` or `when I will be able to travel to see my mom` etc. Studies done in 2020 show that there is a big group of people who fear, who are anxious and depressed. (Patel, 2020). Several studies are being published documenting the rise in suicide rates (Nomura et al, 2021). COVID 19 pandemic adds extra layers of challenges – extended periods of social isolation, social fear, limited access to mental health help – that already exist in our society that makes people more vulnerable. As the health system is struggling to respond to the waxing and waning demand related to COVID19, the mental health support is nowhere sufficient to handle the issue.
Before the joy completely runs out of our lives, we need to make sure we do something about it. How do you get it back, especially when the external factors do not seem to go away as quickly as you would have liked? Your mojo will not come back on its own. You got to work hard to get it back. When you feel everything that makes you happy has been taken away from you, your inquest to get back your mojo might be quite elusive. But we got to try!
Remember! You`re in control of your Attention, thinking
The first step would be to get a hold of your attention. Most of us start to attend stuff that troubles us, and that brings on negative thinking. A lot of attention, energy is spent on stressful issues, that we rarely have control over yet seems to consume our thoughts. This kind of thinking takes away from our energy, our light, our joy. Our time is better spent on things that we have control over. We need to learn to attend to things that make us happy and things that we can be grateful for. A shift in attitude that enables your attention not to wander off, but to stay on things that will lift you, things that you are grateful for, things if not there you will miss greatly, things that have become normalized, yet you have a psychological dependency on.
Along with this step, just take some time out, to think about things that bring you joy, taking time to savour them as you would a lovely meal or a cold beverage on a hot day. Generally becoming more mindful, and thoughtfully aware of your circumstances. It’s a discipline.
Mindfulness practice is a way to discipline attention. When you say mindfulness, some people think it is a complex practice. Just keep it in your mind that some people are naturally mindful, they do not need to be taught, so it is a state where all of us can achieve with enough practice. Training your attention is the key. Being mindful enable us to look at our experience – even the ones that are distressful – from a distance, acknowledge them but not let them overpower us. It involves being compassionate towards ourselves. Being kind towards ourselves during these strange times is crucial. Maybe nothing is going the way you imagined to be going but do not blame yourself, just let it be.
Additionally, I control what I watch, this might involve not watching the news sometimes, or dark movies…This is also relevant for the things I read, to music I listen to, the social media I follow etc. all of this has a direct effect on our psyche. I watch and read things that lift me, travel programmes, sports, scientific news etc.
Nowadays I make a conscious effort to focus on things that make me happy. We must create a ball of light in our thoughts, whenever our thoughts get dark, we need to revert to that ball of light. These delightful thoughts can be anything, a project/ hobby that you are planning, a travel plan. It can be in future or it can be in the past. One of the things we mostly do as a family is to talk about our past holidays, open the photos and videos to relive the positive emotions. We make detailed summer holiday plans; we think through it as a family and visualize all aspects of the vacation. What car we are renting, where we will be staying, when was the last time we went there, what did we eat, who we want to see most.
You can be Active!
Another step is to become more active. Get off the couch and start exercising. I do not need to go on and on about how exercise is so important to our happiness. For someone like me who `pretended running` throughout my school PE (physical exercise) classes, it’s been tough even to visualize myself running, and then to go out and actually start running. It was my son who encouraged me, I was trying to help my son to clear his head through meditation when my son went out for a run and told me how super-effective running was. I had to be pushed out of the door to run, but once I had that clarity & peace of mind because of running I wondered why I have not done it before. And so will you…
For those of you who have a limited capacity to exercise due to medical conditions, being active means developing a new skill, having a new hobby, or developing an existing skill. My husband started sewing, he made lovely complete cot sets for his grandchildren, made bags & aprons for friends and me.
Go on… and Help others
And finally, get out of your own bubble…mentally…Find ways to help others and listen to their troubles and try helping. Compassion is a strong emotion. The light it creates will lift you. The mere act of helping others enables you to help yourself. It creates a shift in perception. You understand you are not alone; your troubles are not unique or as big as you might have thought. Thinking on your own, and only about yourself blows up your problems out of proportion. You will see that even just listening non-judgementally is a relief you can provide to your friend.
In an era, where so many issues – pandemic, economic crisis, climate change, natural disasters, and on the top political environment, self-serving dictators, racists & bigots – is pushing our society to almost collective meltdown, individually we must protect ourselves and thrive. Until life flows more naturally, we need to develop strategies to meet this mental battle head-on. Of course, in these unprecedented times, we need to do things that we may have not done before. So, by doing, we increase our fortitude and resilience. What changes do you plan to undertake to protect yourself from the negative fallout of these times?
Cloutier L. R., Marshaall R. (2020) A dangerous pandemic pair: Covid19 and adolescent mental health emergencies, The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, ISSN 0735-6757, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajem.2020.09.008.
Nomura S., Kawashima T., Yoneoka D., Tanoue Y., Eguchi A., Gilmour S, Kawamura Y., Harada N., Hashizume M (2021) Trends in suicide in Japan by gender during the COVID-19 pandemic, up to September 2020, Psychiatry Research, Volume 295, 113622, ISSN 0165-1781, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113622.
Patel V. (2020) Empowering global mental health in the time of Covid19. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, Volume 51,2020, 102160, ISSN 1876-2018, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102160.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876201820302720)
