How to keep momentum when you aren’t feeling good
- Patricia Abarte
- Apr 26
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 14
There's a particular kind of frustration that comes when you can feel your next chapter wanting to begin — but your body, or your circumstances, or just life itself, won't quite let you get there yet.
I was reminded of this recently when someone in the copilot asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks. She had joined the program full of energy and clarity, finally feeling like things were starting to move. And then, a few weeks in, she got ill. Nothing dramatic, but enough to take the wind out of her sails. And she asked me: what can I still do when I don't have the capacity to go after this at full speed?
It's such a real question. And I've been there myself — more times than I can count.
Listen to the episode here:
Timestamps:
00:48 – The client question that inspired this episode
01:35 – Momentum interrupted: when life derails a new chapter
04:07 – Step one: be gentle with yourself
05:26 – Why big decisions need the right state of being
07:38 – The "sit on your hands" rule
09:02 – Give yourself permission to pause
10:47 – Shift from doing to becoming
11:16 – The journaling exercise: writing your future self
15:56 – Translating inner work into small concrete actions
18:10 – What can you do with what you have right now?
First: be honest about where you are
The first thing I told her — and what I genuinely believe — is that the most important step is to be gentle with yourself. Not as a cliché, but as an actual practice.
So many of us are wired to push through. To make it happen. To keep moving regardless. And sometimes that works. But it's not sustainable, and more importantly, it's not always wise. Because the goal isn't just to get through this one chapter — it's to be someone who can keep choosing new chapters for the rest of your life. That requires learning to work with your energy, not against it.
So step one is simply acknowledging: I'm not at full capacity right now. And that's okay.
Stay away from the big decisions
Here's something I feel strongly about: low-energy periods are not the time to make big life decisions.
When you're tired, stressed, sick, or grieving, your thinking changes. You're more likely to decide from fear, from pressure, from a sense of scarcity. And those decisions rarely serve you in the long run.
I tell myself — and I've told more than one friend this — to sit on your hands. Even when the rational part of your brain is trying to take back control by planning and deciding and acting, the wiser move is often to pause. Give yourself full, explicit permission to put the big questions on hold. Not forever. Just for now, until you're back in a better state.
That permission matters more than it sounds. Without it, you'll keep fighting yourself internally, circling the same questions, feeling guilty for not having answers yet. With it, you can actually rest.
What you can do: the identity work
But here's where it gets interesting — because this isn't just about resting and waiting.
Even when you can't take big action, you can still do something. Not the concrete, figuring-it-out kind of something, but the quieter, more internal kind. And in many ways, it's some of the most important work you'll do.
What I suggested to her — and what I do myself in harder stretches — is to shift your focus away from the doing and toward the becoming. Specifically: who is the version of you that lives that next chapter?
Grab a journal. Take yourself somewhere outside your usual routine — a café, a bench in the sun, somewhere with a bit of space. Put your phone on flight mode. And just start writing about her.
How does she move through her day? How does she wake up in the morning? How does she talk to herself? What does she believe? Who surrounds her? What does her energy feel like?
Write it all in the present tense. Don't make it realistic. Don't censor the dreaming. The world will do enough of that later — this is your space to let yourself want things fully.
I've done this many times. In Rio, when I was dealing with health issues and felt more isolated than I'd expected. After my parents died, when grief made even small tasks feel enormous. What I found, every time, was that writing about her — this future version of me — shifted something. I felt lighter afterward. More elevated. Like there was more air in the room.
Then take it one step further
Once you've written it down, you have something quietly powerful: a small, concrete list of who you're already becoming.
If your future self is calm and present, you don't need the new job or the new city to start practicing that. You can practice it today. It costs nothing in terms of energy — it's just a subtle internal shift. But over time, those small shifts compound.
After my parents died, I couldn't do much. But I could put on nicer clothes. I could smile more. I could go for a walk instead of scrolling. Little things — but they changed how I showed up, and that changed everything else gradually.
A final question worth sitting with
If you find yourself saying "it's not the right time" very often — regardless of how you're actually feeling — it might be worth asking yourself honestly: is this a genuine low, or has waiting become a habit?
Because there's a difference between honoring a difficult season and using it as a reason to stay still indefinitely. A question that helps me: what can I do right now, with what I actually have available?
Not the ideal version of the day. The real one. Sometimes the answer is 40 minutes at the gym instead of a full workout. Sometimes it's one phone call to a friend instead of a dinner. Sometimes it's just taking your lunch outside.
Compassion and forward movement aren't opposites. You can honor where you are and still keep going — just more slowly, more quietly, and more gently than you might have expected.
That's enough. It really is.
This is what I dive into in episode #103 of This Expat Life.
Listen here:
If any of these notes resonated with you, and you would like to explore more of yourself, my programs are the right containers for you to accelerate your growth or your next chapter:
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