This post originally appeared on Forbes.
Not everyone left their jobs as part of the Great Resignation. Many people have labored on, working hard to serve customers, manage projects and develop staffs. But all of that labor, on top of today’s varied and difficult challenges, can be intensely wearing. Even if these stalwarts don’t drive themselves all the way to burnout, they can still feel miserable: stuck, lost and/or out of juice.
If no one is coming to your rescue, how can you revive and reenergize yourself instead of languishing in a dead-end situation? Try one or more of these three gambits.
Take Inspiration From Your Heroes
In her book Design the Life You Love: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future, Ayse Birsel, award-winning industrial designer and cofounder of Birsel + Seck Design and Innovation Studio, encourages people to think deeply about who their heroes are. You can gain a new understanding from the particular individuals you hold in such high regard. Heroes can be historical figures, family members, or even fictional characters, says Birsel, but they “tell us something about our values, beliefs and the kind of life we aspire to live.” Birsel recommends writing down the name of each potential hero as well as the qualities you admire in that person or character. Then, when you have a list of inspiring qualities and values, cross out the heroes’ names and substitute your own, because “their qualities are your qualities. The values you recognize and admire in your heroes are your values.”
Now you can think about how to manifest more of those values in your daily work life. If you see certain ways of being as admirable, how could you demonstrate them a little more? Depending on the heroes you’ve chosen, taking courage from their experiences or choices can help you be a little more patient, forceful or visionary. It’s beneficial to do the exercise of thinking from your heroes’ perspectives, assessing your situation as they might and acting as if you had their insights or successes. You’ll be able to view your own circumstances in new ways and generate richer and better alternative courses of action.
Set The Right Kinds Of Goals
Sometimes the hard part is not figuring out how we want to be, but what we want to accomplish. Having the right goals can help you generate a refreshed sense of commitment and find new energy for even the parts of your role that feel like a grind. Michael Bungay Stanier, noted coach and author of The Coaching Habit and How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters, emphasizes that goals need to be “worthy” to be motivating. The kind of goal-setting that helps you shift your perspective and renews your sense of purpose should not simply be focused on the classic SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound) goals, as if you want to cross them off your list.
Instead, says Bungay Stanier, you need goals that will be “thrilling, daunting and important” to drive you forward as you try to make more of a difference or be a force for change. It’s crucial to feel pride in your goals, even a sense of adventure. A goal should be significant enough to push you out of your comfort zone, which will give you “a bigger win than just self-satisfaction or self-gratification.” If the goal is too small to be satisfying or too big to even be within the realm of possibility, it won’t be sufficiently motivating. Expect to feel some resistance to your own plans, so check in with people who know you well and can provide support. And recognize that you’ll need to take small steps toward your goal, particularly at first, because “the only way you can keep making your way forward in a complex situation [is to] keep checking where you are, try some things out, collect feedback and decide what’s next.”
Build On Your Track Record
How can you have confidence that you can actually make a shift successfully? If you’re concerned about the practicality of your inspiration and goals, it helps to review the ways in which you’ve already been successful. According to Marshall Goldsmith, who is recognized as the world’s leading executive coach and whose newest book is The Earned Life: Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment, “The odds of success favor the people who do not stray too far from their expertise, experience, and relationships.” He advocates for the concept of “adjacency—some connection, however indirect, to our track record of accomplishment.”
Even when you’re considering a change that represents a significant leap, look for connections between the requirements of the new opportunity and some professional or personal talent, quality or know-how that you’ve already got. Evaluate the profiles of people who have already been successful at the new role or approach you’re considering and size up any aspect where you have a match. Knowing that you already have some connection to your desired future state makes it more likely that you can achieve your new goals and also gives you confidence that the change will be achievable.
It can be hard to lift yourself out of a rut or even to think about what could be different, particularly when you’re working hard at just keeping things going and not falling behind. But try spending a little time and emotional energy seeking out inspiration, planning for personal stretch goals and grounding yourself in your own previous successes. You’ll be able to reinvent your sense of what you can accomplish—even if that means that you might start thinking about a new job yourself.
Onward and upward —
LK