If You’ve Been Feeling Off: Today Is a Good Day to Reset & Refocus

January 21, 2026

Today is a good day to reset and refocus.

My year started off with a bang. I turned fifty and had a wonderful party with family and friends. I was able to pivot and keep my day job when changes and layoffs were afoot. I was working out and feeling good. I came into the new year with a can-do, can-win attitude. Everything felt great, like things were going the right way, until it didn’t. My body feels ugh. My mind feels muddled, and my attitude is not faring any better. Don’t get me wrong, I am getting through my days. Doing all the things I am supposed to be doing, but yet and still here we are feeling blah.

Listen below now or on your favorite streaming platform!

Now, I know many of us are out here who are getting through. You are doing all the things and making it look damn good while you are at it. All the while, you are feeling blah. We are feeling blah. That blah feeling can be for a myriad of reasons, right? Health, wealth, and self can all be taking a hit while we are maintaining. This is a normal cycle. It is life’s ups and downs. But I know, like me, we don’t want to stay with this blah feeling, this hamster wheel feeling. Over the years, I have written numerous articles on resetting, and I have compiled a list of them here for your reading pleasure. I think I write so many of them because I might be the expert in the art of getting stuck and unstuck while making it look like I got it all together. Actually, we might all be experts in our own way.

But can it be that we are fatigued with doing all the things? Especially now, with so much information entering our brains every day. There is just too much social fodder and turmoil to process. This can lead to a level of fatigue that goes beyond physical. Let’s talk about cognitive fatigue. Cognitive fatigue has been described as mental exhaustion, burnout, or brain fog. Brain fog really shouldn’t be synonymous because it is a collection of symptoms that one experiences when they have cognitive fatigue. It is more widely known so often used to describe cognitive fatigue. It is the tiredness of the mind. The problem is that we don’t always recognize it.

Mary West, in her Medical News Today article, What to know about cognitive fatigue, describes it as “the deterioration in the ability to think effectively and maintain focus. Just like physical fatigue, prolonged mental activity can cause tiredness that affects the mind.” Tiredness that affects the mind can cause issues with problem-solving, memory, and even impact our ability to learn new information. Things just don’t stick when we are mentally drained. In the article “How to ‘Unfry’ Your Brain,” Crystal Raypole describes cognitive exhaustion as feeling out of touch with your emotions, feeling overwhelmed, or even feeling run down. “You might also experience other changes in mood or emotions. Cynicism, apathy, lack of motivation, and trouble focusing can all be signs of an overworked brain.”

Brain fog is a collection of cognitive impairment symptoms that can also be caused by cognitive fatigue. Cleveland Clinic lists things one might experience with brain fog:

Difficulty concentrating or focusing
Confusion
Fatigue
Forgetfulness
Losing your train of thought
Mental exhaustion
Not having the right words
Slow thought process and reaction time
Trouble paying attention

And I personally like to simplify all of these things by saying I feel blah, and there are a lot of things that can contribute to feeling blah. Life, lifing and us trying to keep up with it but not taking the time to take care of ourselves. We are trying to meet demands and are not getting enough sleep. Stress has got us in a chokehold, and that in itself can lead to other things in addition to the mental fatigue. West cites other potential causes such as medical conditions, age-related cognitive decline, multitasking, mental health issues, and environmental factors. I like to throw in socioeconomic factors as well.

But how do we get out of the funk? How do we reset, refocus, and rejuvenate? Let's start with a little self-awareness. Take a beat to assess what’s going on with your health, emotions, and feelings. Take a beat to breathe and really see what’s happening around you and with you. What are you giving up to “maintain?” Sleep, eating right, exercising or just small moments to yourself?

The highlight articles all provide great suggestions on how to get back to yourself. Because at the end of the day, that’s really what we have been missing. We have been taking away little bits of ourselves to meet the demands set before us, and we are not replenishing. Stress management is having a level of awareness of our depletion and then being mindful enough to refill our cup. Sometimes we can do that in the most basic of ways.

Ways to deal with cognitive fatigue:

Improving sleep habits
Improving our diet by eating healthy meals
Getting active and moving that body
Journaling
Get help whether it’s for medical or mental. Don’t be afraid to see a professional
Check in with a friend, and have confidence to talk to
Practice kindness and gratitude
Be more mindful
Get balanced
Just say no sometimes
Do something new, change up the routine
Prioritize your wellbeing