Stagnancy is a mindset and not your circumstance.

Mental fatigue is at all-time high. Economic impact because of the pandemic has been devastating for many. Being confined to home and social cut-offs have triggered a feeling of helplessness. There is a lot of uncertainties about the future. Lives are becoming mundane and dull.

Increased time on Netflix doesn’t seem to help. Nor ordering your favorite food makes much difference. Life resembles a prison with all amenities but in which one doesn’t feel free or joyful. Something is needed to break the inertia. You cannot control the circumstances. You need to find out what you can control. Reflect upon important aspects in life to take charge of your own mind.

1. Have a mechanism to listen to your heart

My cousin, Navin is 32. He is a happy go lucky kind of guy, generally cheerful. He was avoiding my call for few weeks. One day I finally got hold of him. he hesitantly told me that he was thinking of resigning from his job, with no clear plans on what he would do next. Does it sound familiar?

Everyone is receiving hundreds of motivation videos and quotes on daily basis. They think they have a way to get motivated. However they fail to take any meaningful actions.

Though these messages make you feel excited for few seconds, but the feeling soon subsides. Relying on these messages for a long period of time is sure shot way to cultivate a false sense of intelligence with no real gain. Rather in the process, you may lose connection with yourself as you will be focused on goals set by others.

It becomes important to discriminate them with what is your heart calling. If you are thinking to start any dream project, pause for some time. Then ask yourself some questions like what makes this project special for me, how many times I will be trying before calling it failed? or what will I regret if I do not even start?

2. Prepare the right way to face the future

When I was a kid, just before the day of exam, my mother would check with about my preparedness. I would invariably say “yes”. But when asked a follow-up question, I would say that the pencil box is ready, shoes are polished and so on. There would be no mention of how much studies and assignment revisions have been completed.

This example can be applied in all aspects of our life. How you define “preparation” makes all the difference. Is it just a checklist or something meaningful which will really help you to pass the exam?

3. Be comfortable with Boredom

When you go to a salon for a haircut, most people fiddle with their phones. They do this to pass their time. Next time try leaving the phone at home and sit there with eyes closed and just be there. For the first time, you may experience how boredom can give you freedom to relax and be yourself.

Being undistracted in one way means being comfortable with boredom. As then you start being more present, experience your environment and start hearing subtleness of life.

The entire world is creating and promoting all sort of entertainment for better engagement. But all these distractions are becoming a good reason for life becoming rather tiring. Rather than making efforts in reducing your screen time, can we encourage ourselves to seek boredom?

4. Cultivate at least one hobby which let you forget time

If you ask anyone which is the one activity where they do not have any idea of time, most probably the answer would be social media. But, the missing part here is another follow-up question, do you feel energetic after the activity?

The real freedom is something which makes you feel light. Often it is found in things we love, and it can be as simple as your daily walk, playing a sport or reading a book.

Knowing what you love needs mindfulness and allowing what is coming naturally to you. This requires not making strong opinions about your preferences. And trying various activities beyond your comfort zone.

5. Be generous in giving benefit of doubt in all your relationships

All parts of life are integral. Tensions in relationship can make life stagnant too. One of the key reasons for conflict in any relationship is lack of space for being yourself.

When you are looking at others from a fixed mindset, that this person is like this or that, there are high chances are that the same may be true about yourself. One example in a corporate scenario is leaders giving reasons why an employee could not grow. In most cases, the boss is going through the same challenges herself.

Easiest way to cultivate compassion for others is to first empathize with yourself. If you can simplify your own complex emotions by looking at them closely, you can also understand others complex emotions better.

Ask yourself, how much benefit of doubt I can give to others?

6. Prefer who over what, when doing any business

Every person you meet is more than what the role he is doing. One of the factors resulting in stagnation in life is taking people who come in our life for granted. Have you noticed, many times, a stranger like your building security guy is more cheerful to see you than many of your close friends or relatives?

I remember once I was working in London for a few weeks of assignment, I took a hotel cab to commute to office. I had a great chat with the cab driver on the way where he shared many stories about the city and culture. From the next day, I used to call him so that I can continue our conversation. It is difficult for me to believe that over few days, I learned some of my important life lessons from him, much more than any other well qualified person.

Let’s take another small example from daily life like purchasing milk. One of the easiest ways to decide milk vendor, you can shift your focus from milk quality or price to the milkmen. If the milkman is a humble and pure guy, there is little chance that the milk would be adulterated.

7. Focus on learning over outcome

Remember what your last conversation with anyone was today? Chances are it was either about some past achievements or some future events.

One measure of progress is to notice when you get more excited. Is it when you are learning something or when you are busy thinking of achieving your next goal?

Someone wise said that you should be proud being a reader and a listener and be ashamed to be a writer and a speaker. It means you can always choose to learn.

8. Catch your biases before it is too late

Tom Cruise is wiser than Dalai Lama! You may find this sentence weird but the message here is not to quickly conclude, as one cannot deny this possibility.

Though Tom cruise may look like a worldly person. But with so much of experience of playing different roles in movies, he could have evolved a lot internally in the process.

This openness to know things can go a long way to understand things as they are without prejudice. Making time to check regularly where you are and where you are heading in life can be quite helpful in getting unstuck. This includes reflection on important aspects of life. Like your dreams, relationships, time management, mindset and learnings. In other words, a simple pause has so much power to bring freshness in your life.