It's official. It is summer, can believe it! But for many of us even though the doldrums of winter are far behind us, the world is still feeling a bit dull and grey. If you are interested in how to become a better version of your self this summer, here are 8 ways to get your mojo back and keep it flourishing through the rest of year.
The article below provides tips from Dr. Sherrie Campbell, a veteran, licensed psychologist with two decades of clinical training and experience providing counseling and psychotherapy services to children and adults from all walks of life to manage their highest highs and survive their lowest lows.
8 Steps to Get Your Mojo Back This Summer
By Dr. Sherrie Campbell
New beginnings are the most exciting and energizing times in life. Summer is always a new beginning because it’s a new season. Now is a great time to get fired up, motivated, and start making changes to get to your next level of YOU. Mojo is that magical charisma you carry that makes you feel good and infectious to others.
Most of you are great starters but not all are great finishers. If you have lost your mojo and want to be a better you for summer, commit to a new beginning right now. Here are 7 ways to get your mojo back and keep it flourishing:
1. Change your environment: Change the environments in your life which are now grey and uninspiring. Do some of your work out of the office, redecorate your house and add more color, spend time on your patio, leave your cubical and go out for lunch. If you are getting tired, get up and move to another room. Add music or white noise to create something soothing. Changing the appearance and location of your differing environments helps you to think in more different and innovative ways. The more innovative you are the more mojo you have.
2. Strive to be your best: Always envision yourself as being your ‘ideal self.’ Your ‘ideal self’ is that part of you which is in front of you encouraging you forward. This part of you is holding up the guideposts and possibilities for your growth, happiness, and expansion. What you think determines your outcome.
Strive towards meeting your ‘ideal self’ at the finish line. If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. Work backward from the ‘ideal self’ by setting small, incremental goals for each area of your life to keep your mind positive. Before you know it you will be thriving as a much better you before you hit summer. You will feel your confidence growing as you begin to manifest all you have been working towards.
3. Change Your Patterns: When you break your routines you essentially create a new life. Habits are easy but there is no risk in habit because ultimately habits are lazy. You cannot grow stuck inside the traps familiarity and comfort. To get your mojo back, be brave! Buy that Groupon for the new class around the corner and give it a go. Change your diet, change your work out, change your wardrobe, buy different make-up, and class-up your personal style. Eat at new restaurants, go to new bars. Go to the gym after work? Try raising your heart rate before you get to the office. If you eat at the same restaurant for lunch all the time, walk one block farther to check out a new spot. See what happens by simply sitting on the other side of your desk, giving you a new perspective by looking out at different wall or window.
4. Shift Your Priorities: Your daily schedule is a reflection of your deepest priorities. If you have zero fun, free time or time for family and friends actually on your calendar, and instead your calendar is booked up with meetings and other task-oriented responsibilities, then you are missing out on the juiciest parts of life. Robots do not have mojo. To re-ignite your mojo schedule time for yourself first. On a plane, they always tell you to put on your oxygen mask before helping someone else. Once you have given yourself time to refuel, block times to enjoy with family, friends, children to add joy and vitality to your life.
On your deathbed, you are not going to look back and wish you had worked more hours.
5. Invest in personal growth: The best of the best have the best of the best of the best as mentors, friends, family, and colleagues. Learn as much as you possibly can from other successful, happy people who want to share their wisdom with you. The ball is in your court: Make the effort to keep yourself in a place of personal expansion, whether that means going to seminars, meeting weekly with a coach or therapist, reading books each night and writing goals, but strive to be your very best at all time. This always gives you something to talk about and it makes you interesting to other people.
6. Change your friends: The people with whom you surround yourself heavily influence you. If you’re lacking motivation and feeling down about everything, it might be time to upgrade your circle of influence. Negativity is contagious, as is positivity. Those closest to you should be those who bring out your best qualities, including your mojo for life’s adventures. If more time with family is important to you then start planning some vacations and staycations for all you to get away and enjoy being a family without other distractions. Take time out to have dinner with the girls or watch the game with the boys or go play a round of golf. Your net worth emotionally is the average of that of your five closest friends. When you hang out with successful people, happy, fulfilled people you elevate your own mojo, so choose wisely.
7. Change Your Thoughts: You are what you think. You cannot think negative and have powerful mojo. If you think you are fat then that will be your experience whether you are or aren’t. Thinking negatively doesn’t accomplish anything, it takes zero effort and is a lazy mojo-stealing habit. Discipline your mind towards the goals of what you want to look like and be like and start putting the effort in right now to get there. By summer you will feel fabulous. In any situation suffering over your own suffering doesn’t work. Know the areas of your life you want to change and be deliberate in changing them.
8. Be Authentic: There is nothing sexier than to be beautiful inside and out. When you are committed to your loving and respecting yourself you exude a quiet confidence. Your focus is on being genuine, kind, strong, courageous, intelligent, successful, elegant, steadfast and fulfilled. You possess enough composure that if you cannot say something kind you have the wisdom to remain quiet. You make sure the kindness of your character speaks more deliberately to who you are than what designer you are wearing.
True mojo is not a loud energy, rather it is an understated energy. Loud is repulsive ego-stuff. Your mojo is that more subtle energy your personal essence leaves in the wake of your presence. This is something to admire. There is nothing more mojo promoting than authenticity and having a strong sense of who you are.
Not all of these changes are easy. They all require a deliberate change of habit, which can feel like an insurmountable challenge. Getting your mojo back is critical for your quality of life so it certainly causes for some radical changes and the outright shattering of your own tired habits. Face it – feeling passionate and motivated every day for your work, family, and self is a win for yourself and those that depend on you.
Dr. Sherrie Campbell is the author of the new book, Success Equations: A Path to Living an Emotionally Wealthy Life. She is a veteran psychologist, inspirational speaker, and radio host. For more information, please visit, www.sherriecampbellphd.com and connect with her on Facebook, @sherriecampbellphd.
