I don’t think mental fog is random.
In my experience, it shows up when I ignore what my gut has been telling me for too long.
I feel it in my neck and shoulders.
I get tension headaches.
I’m suddenly exhausted right when I wake up for the day.
But the tension, fatigue, and brain fog are signals—not flaws.
I’ve since learned to trust those signals — and figured out what to do about them.
When You’re Out of Sync, Your Body Lets You Know
I remember driving to work a few years after graduating college, and while my work was, in theory, pretty easy, even allowing me to do side projects, I was struggling.
I would wake up and feel so extremely tired that even driving to work seemed daunting.
It was pretty clear that my body’s internal alarm was telling me NO, NO, NOOOOOOO!!!
Thankfully, I started listening to my internal alarm and working towards a new path.
Though it took months and months, I was eventually able to network my way into two new jobs that excited me and stopped my internal panic button from buzzing.
When I finally switched jobs (to not one, but TWO risky startups), rather than feeling like I was going to fall asleep at the wheel, I felt alive and excited to come to work every day.
This doesn’t mean I wasn’t scared as hell sometimes, but your body knows. It is smarter than you in that sense. It knows when it is doing what it is supposed to be doing!
Action Breaks the Fog
A lesson I wish I learned earlier: Clarity isn’t found in thinking. It’s found in doing.
– Sahil Bloom
So if you are feeling sluggish and depressed, and you know the cause is because there is something you don’t want to be doing — your job is to find the thing that you do want to be doing and to get the hell out of your current situation.
Sometimes the relief begins the moment you decide.
“I do not want to work at this job anymore.”
Once you decide that, AND you take action towards something new, the stress and the tiredness seem to melt away.
I experienced this most recently with my Affiliate Website. I decided I was going to sell it after several years of debate, and when I finally took the action to list it, the stress and tiredness over that decision went away.
No matter what happens now, so long as I am moving forward in sync with my gut, I won’t feel that sluggishness.
In fact, I wasn’t able to sell that affiliate website, but that was fine, because at least I tried. I took action, collected more information, and my body responded in kind.
The best thing you can do is take action (on your hunches, dreams, ideas), because only action will give you the next bit of information you need.
In fact, you may not even really want to do the things you dream of doing, but you don’t know until you try.
You need that information. You need to act!
It is imperative to listen to your gut and keep course correcting.
You may not know what the hell you really want, but you do know what you don’t want.
I should also note that this phenomenon is not just related to work projects and activities. This goes for nearly anything.
You may feel a certain way about family events and pressures, or even where you are going on vacation.
If you’re feeling sluggish and something is bothering you mentally, it will drag you down in EVERYTHING.
The best solution then is to make a decision, or if you can’t make a decision, to create an action that will help you to make a decision.
Don’t know where to go on vacation? Start planning it – check the flights, check the prices – that may show you it’s too expensive, and so now you look at a different vacation option.
Perhaps that new option may end up being cheaper and more exciting, and bam, before you know it, you are there!
Action provides information and tempers worry and anxiety.
So if you’re feeling off, that feeling is NOT wrong.
Trust it.
Figure out what the problem is — and take action to resolve it!
As Sahil says above, clarity isn’t found in thinking: it’s found in doing.
Momentum is hard to break. It is a huge flywheel that takes a big force to get it to start. That is what feeling down is. The momentum of doing nothing.
I call “Do” a superpower. It is what breaks that momentum