Everyone goes through phases of feeling demotivated or being confused and fuzzy about the route ahead. Being your own hype girl means relying on nothing other than yourself to escape unhelpful thought patterns. It’s powerful. It’s life-changing. Most people can’t do it. It involves having a set of tools that you know you can visit and revisit to get you back to feeling in charge and ready to take action.
When you are your own hype girl you don’t need to look to anything outside of your control to change your mood, because you know full well you have everything you need to make it happen. Here’s how to be your own hype girl.
1. Prepare for the hype
Cheer squads don’t walk out, unrehearsed, on the field to support their teams. They practise routine after routine so they know the drill when they’re needed. Given that it’s inevitable that you will, at some point, need encouragement, reassurance or confidence: make a plan. When low moods happen, learn to recognise, without judgment, that you need to find a burst of inspiration to feel differently. Line that inspiration up. Make a list of the songs, videos and books that you know trigger a positive mindset and move you further away from fear and worry.
Your hype prep can be private. What works for you might not work for everyone, so focus on your unique needs and those things you know make you feel good.
2. Find mantras
There are millions of inspirational quotes out there. Most of them won’t do anything for you, but some will resonate so deeply that you’ll want them tattooed on your forearm. Write down the quotes that remind you to step away from negative thoughts and act like the best version of yourself. Recite whatever you need to hear to become that person.
Set them as the background to your phone or laptop, write them at the top of journal entries, have them printed and displayed on your wall. All you’re looking for is that split second of realisation to snap you out of your funk and onto a different trajectory.
3. You’ve got this
If you’re feeling low you might look to others for reassurance or compliments. Perhaps a conversation with your best friend is enough to remind you of your strength in dealing with whatever you’re facing. If so, great. The next step is getting there without that conversation.
You could revisit your most recent achievements; you could remind yourself of something else you recently overcame. You could imagine the advice someone would give or you could choose to tell yourself all of the things you’re great at. Being able to progress yourself through mini emotional rollercoasters means you save the pep talks from others for when you really need them.
4. Heighten awareness
Being able to recognise when you are feeling irritable or low helps you work through the mood but also helps you avoid it before it happens. Work out why you’re feeling like that. Perhaps it’s something you’ve eaten or drank, the effect of someone you’ve recently spent time with or perhaps you haven’t been sleeping well. Solving the issue at its cause can stop you needing the hype in the first place.
Thinking in this way helps isolate feelings and not get carried away with speculation about what they might mean. Feeling stressed at work might be a result of a bad night’s sleep rather than being on the wrong career path. Not being able to focus could have more to do with the sugar you just consumed than not having the skills to complete the work. Don’t confuse the cause and the effect and don’t make long-term decisions based on short-term and transient emotions.
5. Always be improving
See yourself as an apprentice who is continuously learning, rather than pressuring yourself to have all the answers. It’s fine not to know exactly how to solve something yet; you can always find the answer from somewhere. Plenty of people have gone before you to solve the exact problems you’re solving now. Remind yourself of that every time you need to.
As well as not relying on others to build you up, don’t rely on others to point out your weaknesses. Identify them yourself and keep on getting better. There is so much to learn, but that’s true of everyone else too.
Become your own hype girl by noticing how you’re feeling and why, and knowing exactly how to move past it. Trust that everything you need is within you and trust it can be found.