Ways to Breathe New Life Into Your Work

I came across this post on the Paid to Exist blog which has some great ideas for how to breathe new life into your work.

I hope you enjoy it. Let us know if you use any of the ideas.

“Sometimes every day at work can feel like a battle you’ve already lost. You nestle down only to find that you’d rather punch yourself in the face than go through the same routine yet another day.

Resistance sinks in like a battery that slowly drains every ounce of energy in your being. Inspiration is nowhere to be found — just the same old self-doubt and stuckness. You feel like one of those wind-up, key-turn dolls. Programmed to move toward inevitable defeat.

Another blog post, email, phone call. Repetitive, tedious, uninspiring. Your work has gotten stale, and you desperately need something to shake things up. You long for the days when you first started, when you were excited, optimistic and hopeful.

Getting nostalgic won’t help you, though, and what got you here won’t get you there. Every day we’re given 24 brand new hours to live and do our work. You get to decide how you’ll use your time.

Here are 11 ways you can break the cycle of resistance and monotony, and reclaim your passion.

1. Pretend that nothing matters.
Release your desire to be perfect, to be great, to even have your project turn out the way you think it should.
Relax what you think your work should be to make room for the beauty of what is.

2. Get off the screen.
Try using your hands. Sketch, collage, paint, dance it out.
Get off the screen and into the world, then bring it back into your digital masterpiece.

3. Give as if you’ll die tomorrow.
Your last breath might be in fifty years or 50 seconds. You never know. Why not give completely before you die?

4. Act as if you know nothing about what you’re doing.
Pretend that you’re a complete beginner, exploring every facet of your project for the first time. Dare to believe that you might be able to learn something new, that you don’t have everything figured out.

5. Ditch your list.
Terrifying, I know. We all to some degree or another identify with our achievements and checking things off a list.

Find out what happens for a day when you set intentions and go with the flow, but don’t make any lists.”