Stopping the Downward Spiral
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Wake up late.
Be exhausted (and maybe hung over).
Already be behind on stuff for the day.
Struggle to do anything better than “good enough”.
Not have the time, energy, or willpower to exercise.
Eat garbage - fast food, frozen pizzas, or chicken tenders.
Stay up late scrolling social media, watching Netflix, or playing video games.
Go to bed late.
The cycle repeats day after day after day.
Fall further down the spiral until I hit a new “bottom” or I find a way to change.
I’ve had a few periods of my life where that pretty much summed up my existence. I realized I needed to find ways to stop myself from falling further down the spiral - and ways to climb back up out of it.
I think many of us have had times like this. If you’re going through one now, read on, and I’ll share what I’ve learned along my journey.
Think, Stop, Change
Remember the last time you found yourself heading in the wrong direction while traveling?
You thought “wait… this isn’t where I wanted to go… I shouldn’t be here”
So you stopped, turned around, and went in a different direction. If you’re like me, you also pulled up Google Maps so you could see the actual way you needed to go.
You can use a similar strategy in your life as a whole.
Think about your current goals. If you don’t feel like you have any clear goals, you can learn how in this article here. Your current goals are your future destination.
Do you feel like you’re moving closer toward those goals? Or are you stuck in place, or maybe, moving further away from them?
This sense tells you what direction you’re heading in.
Say, for example, you have a goal of losing weight. But when you think about that goal, you’ve actually gained weight lately, which means you’re traveling away from your destination.
Or perhaps your goal is to build your own business. But over the past few weeks, you’ve seen less growth in your following, engagement, and revenue. You’re moving away from your goal.
Here’s a harsh reality:
Even if you’re stuck in place, you’re still moving away from the goal. There is no inertia in terms of our lives. Why? Because even if you’re not losing progress toward your goal, you’re still losing time.
You may be one of those people who can bring your A game even when the rest of your life is going to hell. I was one of those people. I would occasionally show up to an engineering exam at Georgia Tech hung over but still get an A.
Note: I’m not glamorizing that. Yeah, the first time or two, it felt cool, but after that it led to a “why am I like this” feeling.
And here’s the thing… it always catches up to you sooner or later.
Don’t believe me? Think about all the celebrities we hear about who die because of obesity, alcohol abuse, or drug addiction. They were high performers at what they did… but the problems they had in other aspects of their life eventually ended their life.
This is why stopping the downward spiral is so important.
The first steps toward reversing the downward spiral is to:
Think about the direction you’re going
Stop yourself from moving in that direction
Change your direction by changing your actions
I know what you’re probably thinking… stopping is easier said than done.
How to Start Stopping
Say you’re living a life like I outlined at the beginning. You have a lot going on. You’re drowning in a sea of to dos. You’re focused on surviving.
I’ve been there.
In my personal experience, the realization of being on a downward spiral hits you out of nowhere. One day you realize you’ve developed bad habits, gained weight, or lost productivity. You pause for a moment, think about things like I mentioned above, and realize you’re headed in the wrong direction.
Then you decide it’s time to change.
The mistake many people make when they decide to change their lives is they try to change too many things at once.
They quit drinking. They start exercising. They go buy healthy food. They plan to go to bed earlier. They wake up earlier. This is what a lot of people do when they make New Year’s resolutions - and why a lot of those people fail.
It may work for a few days.
Then something comes up that demands more time, energy, and/or attention. Often this is work related. Work sustains our livelihood, so when we sense our job may be in jeopardy, we get stressed out.
We have to prioritize work - or whatever’s taking up our time, energy, attention - and so in exchange our behavioral changes get deprioritized. Then we find ourselves going right back to our old habits - and slipping back further down the spiral.
So what should we do?
Focus on changing one thing at a time.
Think about your bad habits. Don’t lie, we all have bad habits, even you (and I). How would your life change if you broke one of them? It probably doesn’t feel like it’d have much of an effect… but I bet it would.
We humans are impatient creatures. We don’t want to wait for good things to happen. We want it all right now.
But change takes time. Trying to take shortcuts - such as changing everything all at once - will only serve to make your journey longer.
Pick one thing to change. Focus on improving it for 30 days. Pick another thing to change. Focus on improving it for 30 days (while maintaining the other improvement). Repeat.
In 30 days you’ll have stopped the downward spiral.
In 90 days you’ll feel better about yourself.
In 180 days you’ll be a new person.
But here’s the thing:
It starts today.
Are you ready?
Joey Justice
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