Fix The Funk: 5 Steps

Yes, it might be Mercury Retrograde.  

It might also be something much closer to home. 

If you find yourself lacking motivation, losing interest in things that typically light you up, or worrying about realities that used to seem easy, you just might be in what is informally known as “a funk.” Nothing is damaging or dangerous, nothing is clinical, but nothing is awesome.

The work of strengths-based development is made to help you perform at your best. But it’s also steeped in the self-awareness necessary to name what’s troubling you and play with possibilities that are tailor-made to your natural pathways of curiosity and imagination.

Can you strengths your way out of a funk? It’s worth a try. Strengths is a study of extremes, and self-awareness should account for how we move through our highs and lows.

When you can name that, you can self-regulate.  You can spot when you are out of your natural rhythm, and then go to your strengths not for happiness or comfort, but for a clue to where you need to stretch and relax.  When was the last time you felt a bit “off?”  With the executives I coach, we typically discover the root of the funk when we begin with two options.  Imagine this as the top of the flow chart.  

Option A: Are we completely out of alignment with strength?  

Option B: Are we working in alignment with strength, but needing a different dosage of challenge? 

The first option, a misalignment between soul and role, is sadly quite normal.  Worldwide, only about 35-40% of working adults agree they get the opportunity to do what they do best every day.  And coaching, especially at the executive level, is crucial for helping leaders navigate their own best way of showing up.  There are far too many choices for a leader to make where they can fall out of alignment with their talent. Option A is rarely the whole truth, and deserves its own blog, if not entire book.  But even if this misalignment between what you have to give and what is expected of you is the root cause of your funk, Option B is worth exploring. More often than not, clients discover a different way of going about their work when they apply their own personalized way through a problem.

When it’s Option B, we can turn to our strengths for guidance.  Specifically, we can imagine our strengths mapped against a continuum of stress or challenge.  Imagine each strength along a line of ease and difficulty, recovery and reach. 

Challenge is a highly individualized experience. Picture your talents as a rubber band.  When you apply a specialized challenge, something that you have the natural capability to excel in–something that might look overwhelming to others but to you seems inviting–that’s a reach.  While this won’t be the comforting answer of “feel better,” or “just don’t worry about it,” sometimes a challenge is exactly what you are craving to solve your funk. Reach is hard.  Reach is transformational.  Reach is going for it before you think you are ready.  Reach, in my experience, is what our talents crave.  It’s the promise that we are made for more, and that stretching beyond our comfort zone should be a regular, disciplined practice. 

Here’s an example, using the CliftonStrengths theme of Responsibility. Those who lead with Responsibility are known for executing on what they promise. They are natural referees of tasks, always aware of outstanding deliverables and those who are counting on completion. Reach for Responsibility is handing this person the clipboard and megaphone. Raise your hand for managing more than just your daily tasks. Lean in and have a say on the execution of promises for a meaningful team or challenge.

But life is cyclical, and staying stretched all the time does not help the structural integrity of the rubber band.  In the same way, living in full Reach mode with challenges all the time does not benefit your work experience, even if the challenges are tailor made to meet your strengths. 

Giving your strengths what they crave, without the expectation that they use it to do more, go faster, or get promoted—that’s recovery. Someone with strong Responsibility might find this in making a commitment to someone they value, or sharing something that matters to them with someone who they know will give of themselves in reciprocation.

There is a reason that telling a stressed out professional to take a vacation is met with silence or eye rolls.  It’s because it’s painfully static and uniform.  It’s also because it’s a solution, but not one to the problem they’re feeling. When you’re craving something specific (a recovery act for your strengths), a vacation is the opposite of satiation. It’s just a void, not a salve. With this magical rubber band, recovery is a way to release the tension beyond resting baseline.  It’s an activated experience that restores you to an inspired state.

Maybe for me, Recovery is a date with 50 strangers and a blank canvas.  For someone else it might be a solo trip to a library.  But nowhere is Recovery the same as “just go do what makes you happy.” No, Recovery is “go be mindful of how your talents are experiencing this life, and what they crave to feel cared for.”

Somewhere between reach and recovery, you’ll find a sweet spot. This is the area of wellbeing that we strive for over time.  But you won’t find a perfectly straight line in nature, and you shouldn’t expect a constant experience of this sweet spot.  Strengths, like life, are the study of extremes.  Be kind to yourself as you stretch through the highs and lows, and pay close attention to what your strengths are telling you.  Knowing you have natural talents is just the starting point. Naming them, and understanding the dose of challenge they crave is how you own your talent, and honor it like the precious gift it is. 

5 steps to exploring your funk, assuming it’s a challenge issue.

1. Explore Reach:

   1. What is the hardest thing you’ve done this week?

      1. Which of your strengths showed up for you?

      2. How might that strength excel in the future if you did the challenge again?

2. Explore Recovery:

   1. When was the last time you felt inspired, or in touch with your imagination?

      1. Which of your strengths enjoyed that?

      2. What else does that strength enjoy just for the fun of it?

3. What’s the balance right now?

   1. Create a percentage breakdown of reach and recovery. Are you 100% reach? 100% recovery?

   2. Ask yourself: How do I feel about that balance? What options, within my control, could I tweak?

4. Name a change

   1. What will I do differently in the next 7 days than I have in the past 7 days?

5. Take the easiest first step.

   1. What have I done? What will I do next?

Learn more about the continuum of Recovery, Reach, and warning signs of Red Flag as they relate to all 34 CliftonStrengths themes in the Strengths & Resilience Workshop.