You’ve been staring at the fresh, crisp page of a new document on your screen for longer than you ought to. There’s a proposal you need to write, an outline you need to draft, or a timeline that needs to be mapped out. There’s something that needs to be typed onto that space and yet your hands feel frozen on the keyboard.
The ideas just aren’t coming. You know where your thoughts need to get to, but you can’t seem to get started with the first few words, let alone fill the space between those and the final thoughts.
Maybe you’re not stuck in front of a screen trying to assemble your thoughts. Maybe it’s bigger. As a business owner or leader, you’re the one tasked with piloting the ship and navigating the way for your organization, and yet you’re starting to feel like an imposter who has been tasked with getting others to do the thing you just can’t seem to muster. How do you inspire others when you’re struggling to find your own inspiration? How do you motivate when you’re unmotivated?
When you’re mired in an inspirational slump, it can start to feel like it’s a never-ending phase of existence. You don’t see an end in the lack of ideas or the inability to wrap something tangible around the glimmer of a thought. The first step to overcoming this creative or motivational block is to recognize it’s temporary. The second step is to recognize that you cannot will inspiration to appear or press it into being by brute force.
Motivational lulls can stem from overwhelm. Sometimes, however, we’ve been chugging along just fine until we’re not. Regardless, pressing too hard to spark something can make it worse. The first step to getting back on track is to hit pause and catch our breath.
Get up from the desk and walk away from that blank screen. Put the big project on hold for a day and focus on simpler tasks you’ve been putting off like organizing your workspace and clearing out your inbox. Take a PTO day and do something fun without your phone or your laptop in reach. Just step back and disengage from whatever has you spinning your wheels.
It’s not that you don’t love your job (hopefully you do!). It’s that you need to reset your line of sight by focusing on something else for the moment. Make space to do that thing that gets you fired up. Pull the wrap off a fresh blank canvas and cover it with paint. Hit the hiking trail and explore new spaces. Sit in a cool, dark space with your earbuds and listen to that podcast you’ve been waiting to get to. Play the music. Read the book. Take that class at the gym. You’ll come back to the work that awaits with a fresh spirit and mind.
Reach out and connect with your mentor, your peers, and others in your support network. You don’t necessarily need to hash out the specific project or challenge before you (although you can). Check in and chat about how you’re feeling. Meet to catch up and laugh about nothing and everything. Talk about past successes. Get caught up on what they are working on and cheer them on. Your network can inspire you and motivate you. Giving support can too.
Sometimes we see a problem, and we jump into imagining solutions. At first blush that may seem logical, inspired even. It’s not. At least it’s not if we haven’t also taken the time to fully understand the challenge before us. As an example, sales of your best-selling service have dropped dramatically. You want to boost your revenue and getting that service back on track is step one. You decide to offer a discount. Surely the reduced price point on a popular service will help. Right? Maybe. But maybe not.
Without taking the time to understand why clients have stopped showing up for that service, you can’t really know for sure if a price drop is going to spark sales. Take the time to understand why. Be clear about what your goals are, who your target market is, and what their needs are. Then work to identify the solution.
Perhaps sales dropped because you’ve saturated your target market for the service you’re offering. Perhaps your customer model still looks the same, but you need to expand your reach to get your message out to more of the target demographic. Maybe repeat sales are lagging and you see a pattern of marketing and customer service misses that are impacting that end of the business. Maybe it’s a lot of different things that a simple price cut wouldn’t address.
You need to get clear about the problem before you jump into solution, or we risk feeling like we’re spinning our wheels with no progress (which in turn, can jettison our motivation and inspiration!).
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