We all hit those walls. The ones where your inbox feels like a black hole, your boss keeps asking for miracles with zero resources, and you’re pretty sure you’ve forgotten what feeling accomplished actually feels like. It happens to everyone, even the most driven professionals who seem to have it all figured out.
The problem isn’t that you’re failing. The problem is usually how you’re looking at everything around you. When you’re drowning in deadlines and unfinished projects, your brain starts filtering out anything good and amplifying everything terrible. It’s like wearing glasses that only show you what’s broken.
Write Down What’s Actually Working
Here’s something most people won’t do because it sounds too simple: start keeping track of the good stuff. Not in some elaborate gratitude journal with fancy prompts and morning rituals. Just a regular list of things that didn’t suck today.
Maybe you had a solid conversation with a coworker that actually moved something forward. Maybe you learned something useful in a meeting that wasn’t a complete waste of time. Your kid did something great. You fixed that annoying thing at home that’s been bugging you for weeks. Put it on the list.
The weird thing about our brains is they’re really good at finding what we tell them to look for. If you keep focusing on everything falling apart, you’ll find more evidence of things falling apart. But the opposite is true too. Start looking for what’s working, and suddenly you’ll notice you’re not drowning quite as badly as you thought. This isn’t toxic positivity nonsense. It’s just being honest about the whole picture instead of the disaster highlight reel.
Stop Waiting for the Finish Line to Feel Good
One of the fastest ways to stay miserable is waiting until everything is perfect to celebrate anything. That’s a recipe for never celebrating at all because nothing is ever truly finished in business.
Think about losing weight. If you needed to drop 50 pounds, would you really wait until you hit that exact number to acknowledge any progress? Of course not. You’d notice when you hit 10 pounds, 20 pounds. You’d probably also celebrate the behavior changes that got you there, like actually making it to the gym or cutting out the late-night junk food binges.
Work is the same way. Break your massive, overwhelming projects into smaller checkpoints. Notice when you’re making progress, not just when you’ve crossed the final finish line. Celebrate the actions you’re taking that lead to results, not just the results themselves.
If you don’t do this, you’ll burn out before you get anywhere meaningful. People need to feel like they’re moving forward, not just spinning their wheels.
Change How You Talk to Yourself
The stories we tell ourselves matter more than we think. Most people walking around stressed and frustrated are running a constant negative commentary in their heads without even realizing it.
Someone recently told me they “wasted an entire day doing nothing” and felt guilty about it. But here’s the thing: they didn’t waste anything. They were completely burnt out and needed rest. Recharging isn’t lazy. It’s necessary maintenance so you don’t completely fall apart.
How you frame situations changes how you feel about them. You can beat yourself up for taking a break, or you can recognize that you needed recovery time to be effective later. Both describe the same day, but one makes you feel terrible and the other makes sense.
I’m not saying excuse genuinely bad behavior or pretend problems don’t exist. But if you’re doing your best and still struggling, maybe cut yourself some slack. The constant self-criticism isn’t helping you solve anything. It’s just making you more miserable while you deal with the same problems.
Force Some Joy Into Your Schedule
You cannot survive on pure misery and drudgery. I don’t care how important your work is or how many urgent deadlines you have. If you’re spending 100% of your time on soul-crushing tasks, you will break.
Block out at least 10% of your work time for things you actually enjoy. If you work 50 hours a week, that’s five hours doing something that doesn’t make you want to throw your laptop out a window.
A few years back, I spent months in brutal budget meetings trying to figure out what to cut and who to let go. It was my least favorite part of leadership, and it was draining the life out of me. So I made sure I still hosted a weekly book club with other leaders who cared about development. I recognized people doing good work. I read success stories employees sent me.
Those small pockets of positivity kept me functional during a really difficult period. If you’re miserable and not scheduling anything enjoyable, you’re choosing to stay miserable. Find something that makes you smile and put it on your calendar like it’s just as important as everything else. Because it is.
Remember Why You’re Doing Any of This
When everything feels hard, it helps to zoom out and remember what actually matters to you. If you don’t have some kind of vision for your career or your life, make one. If you have one but haven’t looked at it in months, that’s probably part of your problem.
Your vision doesn’t have to be some grand world-changing mission statement. It can be simple. But it needs to be something you can actually act on. If you look at what you say is important and can’t connect it to anything you’re doing right now, you’ve found why you feel so disconnected.
Even if you’re not sure where you want to end up career-wise, you probably know who you want to be as a person. What values matter to you? Honesty? Courage? Creativity? Compassion? Whatever they are, start each day asking how you can live them today.
That gives you back some control when everything else feels chaotic. You might not control the workload or the deadlines or your boss’s unreasonable demands, but you control how you show up and who you choose to be while dealing with all of it.
Hard times are part of the deal for everyone. But staying stuck in a bad mood about them is optional, and these five steps work because they shift where you’re putting your attention and energy instead of just telling you to think positive and push through.
