Just aint feelin’ it

Ever have one of those days where you just seem to have lost the zest for something you’re working on? Running a business? Participating in volunteer work? Helping someone long term? Maybe yesterday you were on top of everything and feeling energized, ambitious and hopeful…then today…it’s all different.  Maybe you’re questioning your motives, your purpose or maybe you’re questioning your decision in the first place!

Well, I am right there with you! My past few days have been ‘blah’ at best.  I’ve been feeling overwhelmed and under-prepared. Well, the reality is that every day isn’t going to be awesome. John Denver sang it in a song way back when:

Some days are diamonds, some days are stones
Sometimes the hard times won’t leave me alone

So the thing we need to figure out is what to do during these ‘less than’ days. Especially if we have people looking to us for answers or direction or motivation. How do we give to others what we don’t feel ourselves?

Several years ago, I heard a great interview with Jerry Goldsmith, an American composer who had composed the scores to five of the first ten Star Trek movies and MANY other movies you would recognize. He was one of film music history’s most innovative and influential composers. I was considering a path to writing movie music, so I was like a sponge to anything Mr. Goldsmith had to offer that may help me with my possible future career. In this interview, he was asked a question that I had pondered for a long time. I was amazed that someone as big and famous as Jerry Goldsmith dealt with the same issues I was facing! Basically, he was asked how he wrote scores for movies when he was NOT in a creative mode. We all sway in and out of creativity. When you are deep in it, things just seem to effortlessly ooze out of you. But what about the times you are committed to doing something that requires creativity, and you just ain’t feelin’ it? Then what? His response was gold, and I have reminded myself of it many times throughout life thus far. He simply said that when he was on a creative roll, when he could produce with hardly an effort because it was coming out naturally, he worked on his “craft”. This was the root of his skill. It was the logic behind creativity, the mortar that held everything together when it didn’t seem like there was any solid base. So when he was hired to write a score while he was in his upswing of creativity, he not only wrote the music but took note of what “worked” with little attention to WHY it worked; just knowing that A+B=C. With that, he could reproduce the system and end up with a viable product despite his emotional or mental state at the time. When you have your craft to rely on, you are wisely preparing for the lean times. You can continue to be effectively productive despite whatever funk you may be going through.

Be sure to continue to develop your craft, though. Don’t get to a point where you stop honing your craft because you feel like you have enough ‘in the can’ and can coast on that. Always be making your craft better. Take a positive advantage of the creative up times so you can have more to offer even when things are not clicking.

I can attest that there will be days when even committing to taking small steps will seem very hard. I remember one day in particular when my whole world had come to a brutal and harsh stop.

It was like skiing in fluffy snow and then suddenly hitting a large patch of mud. Skiing once in Colorado, I literally saw people thrown out of their skis and painfully tumbling down the slope when they were going very fast just seconds before, but then hit mud. Yeah, I was doing okay, and then BAM…I was suddenly without any of the ‘solids’ I thought were in my life. I even lost some very important people that were around during the good times, but when the stuff hit the fan…I was suddenly alone.

I remember getting to my office about to go in and have the biggest confrontation of my life. I was thinking “I just have to get from this side of the parking lot to that door.” It was a simple path I had crossed many months prior, without ever giving it a second thought. Now here I was, unsure of how I would even cross those mere fifty feet. Could I make it? At that point, I realized: I couldn’t even think about the door..I had to literally look at my foot and say “Okay, right foot…take a step. Now left.” That was all I could do, and all that was required! I was down to the bare minimum of thinking ahead. With so much at stake, with no idea what was about to happen, all I could think about was placing one foot at a time. Not even even the process of “walking”––no, just one foot at a time.

Don’t expect too much out of yourself when things get tough. Just go to your basics and set small, maybe even VERY small goals.

When you are blessed with creativity, freedom and productive days, learn from them and store some of that for future use. Take note of what makes things work and write it down so the next time you are facing a gloomy “pointless” day, you have something to rely on. Usually, once you get started on your task and relying on your craft, your creativity or passion or drive will get kick started and before long, you’re humming along.

And one final tip: remember to stay grateful. Being thankful for what you have can change your perspective and give you a kickstart out of a “aint feeling it”  kind of day.