12 Things to Do When You Have No Energy

There is a specific kind of low that has nothing to do with anything going obviously wrong.

No big event. No dramatic reason. Just a day  or a few days, or sometimes a whole week  where everything feels slightly heavier than it should. Where getting out of bed requires more effort than it has any right to. Where you scroll through your phone looking for something that will make you feel better and nothing does and you put it down and pick it up again five minutes later doing the exact same thing.

I know that feeling well. Better than I would like to admit.

And for a long time I handled it the same way I waited. I waited for it to pass on its own, which it usually did eventually, but not before I had lost several days to the heaviness and the scrolling and the doing nothing while simultaneously feeling terrible about doing nothing.

Then slowly, through a lot of trial and error, I started to figure out what actually helped. Not the advice that sounds good in theory but falls flat when you are actually in it. Real things. Small things. Things that did not require me to be okay first in order to do them.

This is that list. Written for you on the days when nothing feels right and you need somewhere to start that does not ask too much of you. Take what helps. Leave what does not. And know that the fact you are even reading this means some part of you is already reaching toward feeling better and that part of you is right.

✨ Save this for the days you need it. And share it with someone who might need it today.

Let Yourself Feel It First 

I know this is not what you came here for. You came here for things to do, not permission to keep feeling bad. But this one comes first for a reason.

Most of us, when we feel low, immediately try to fix it. We reach for our phones, we distract ourselves, we eat something, we watch something, we do anything that will put enough noise between us and the feeling that we do not have to sit with it. And the feeling does not go away it just gets pushed down, packed under layers of distraction, waiting.

Give yourself twenty minutes just twenty to actually feel what you are feeling without trying to fix it or explain it or make it make sense. Sit with it. Let it be there. You do not have to understand it to allow it.

Feelings that are allowed to exist tend to move through faster than feelings that are constantly being suppressed. You are not weak for feeling low. You are human. And humans feel things. All of them, even the uncomfortable ones, even the ones with no obvious reason. Let it be there first. Then we move.

Get Out Of The Room You Have Been Sitting In

This sounds too simple to be real advice. It is real advice.

When you are low, the room you have been sitting in starts to absorb the feeling. It becomes the physical location of your bad day and staying in it keeps you marinating in the same energy, the same thoughts, the same heaviness on a loop. The walls know too much. You need new walls.

Get up and go somewhere else in your house. Or better go outside. Even if it is just standing at the front door for a few minutes. Even if it is a five minute walk to the end of your street and back. Even if the weather is terrible and you do not feel like it and going feels like climbing a mountain.

Something about physically moving your body to a different location breaks the loop. It interrupts the pattern your brain has settled into. It reminds you in the most basic, physical way that the world is bigger than the room you have been stuck in and that you are capable of moving through it.

It will not fix everything. But it will shift something. And a shift, when you are low, is everything.

Drink Water And Eat Something Real 

I say this without any judgment because I have been that person lying in bed at 3 PM having had nothing but chai since morning, wondering why everything feels worse than it should.

Your brain and your body are not separate systems. When your body is dehydrated and running on empty, your emotional state suffers directly. The heaviness feels heavier. The thoughts feel darker. The effort required to do anything feels higher. And sometimes not always, but sometimes a significant part of what you are feeling is your body simply not having what it needs to function properly.

Before you try anything else on this list, drink a full glass of water. Then eat something real not whatever is easiest and fastest, something that actually nourishes you. Warm food if you can manage it. Something with substance.

It is not a cure. But it is the foundation everything else is built on. You cannot think your way out of a bad day on an empty stomach.

Have A Shower And Put On Clean Clothes 

On low days, personal hygiene is often the first thing to go. And staying in yesterday's clothes in an unwashed state feeds the low energy in a way that is almost circular you feel bad so you do not shower, and not showering makes you feel worse, and feeling worse makes the shower feel even more impossible.

Break the loop. Have the shower. Make it warm and long if you need to. Use the good products, the ones you save for special occasions, because feeling low qualifies as a special occasion where you deserve extra care. Wash your hair if you can manage it. Put on clean clothes not pyjamas, actual clothes, even if you are going nowhere.

The person who comes out of that shower will feel measurably different from the person who went in. Not fixed. Not suddenly fine. But lighter. More like yourself. More capable of facing whatever the rest of the day holds.

It is such a small thing and it does such a disproportionately large amount of work. Do it before you feel ready to.

Put On Music The Right Kind, Not Whatever Is Easiest

Music is one of the fastest ways to shift your emotional state and one of the most underused tools we have on bad days.

But there is a catch: the music needs to match where you want to go, not where you are. Sad music when you are already low will keep you there it might feel comforting in the moment but it confirms and deepens the emotion rather than moving you through it. And aggressively happy music when you are genuinely down can feel jarring and fake.

What tends to work is music that is calm but not sad. Warm. Something with movement in it not frantic, just forward. Instrumental playlists, lo-fi, artists that feel like a quiet room rather than a crowded one. Let the music run in the background while you do the other things on this list.

Sound changes the atmosphere of a space. The same room with the right music playing feels different from the same room in silence. Use that. You have the tool put it to work.

Write It Down Get It Out Of Your Head And Onto Paper

You do not have to be a writer. You do not need a beautiful journal or neat handwriting or coherent sentences. You just need a pen and a page and permission to say whatever is actually there.

When you are feeling low and you do not write it down, the thoughts circulate. They go around and around the same loop in your head, getting louder and more distorted with each pass, because there is nowhere for them to go. Writing gives them somewhere to go. It takes them from inside you where they feel enormous and puts them on a page where they are suddenly containable.

Write whatever is true. What you are feeling. What triggered it if you know. What you wish were different. What you are afraid of. What you are tired of. Do not edit yourself. Do not write what you think you should be feeling. Write what is actually there.

When you finish, you will feel lighter. Not because the things are gone they are not but because they are outside of you now instead of inside, and outside is always easier to deal with than inside.

Do One Tiny Thing You Have Been Putting Off

Not the big thing. Not the overwhelming thing. One tiny thing that has been sitting on your mental list quietly adding weight to your days.

Reply to the message you have been avoiding. Put away the pile of clothes that has been on the chair for a week. Delete the apps you never use. Organise one drawer. Pay the small bill. Do the five-minute task you have been treating like a mountain.

Here is why this works when you are low: low days thrive in stagnation. The feeling feeds on the sense that nothing is moving, nothing is changing, nothing is getting done. Completing even one tiny thing even something completely inconsequential creates a small but real sense of forward motion. Your brain registers: I did a thing. Things are being done. I am capable of doing things.

That is enough to shift the mood slightly. And slightly is all you need to start moving in the right direction.

Go Outside And Walk Without Your Phone In Your Hand

Not a workout. Not a structured activity. Just a walk. Outside. With your phone in your pocket or your bag  not in your hand, not being scrolled, just there in case you need it.

Walking does something to a low mood that is almost chemical. It moves your body, which moves your blood, which moves your thoughts. The rhythm of it  left right left right is genuinely calming to the nervous system in a way that sitting still never is. And being outside, even briefly, gives your senses something real to process instead of the same four walls and the same thoughts recycling.

Notice things while you walk. Not on purpose, not as an exercise just notice what is actually there. The texture of the pavement. The sound of something. The colour of the light at this particular hour. Let your senses do their job without a screen competing for their attention.

You will come back feeling different. Not fixed, not suddenly happy but aired out. Like something heavy got a little lighter in the moving.

Call Or Text Someone Not To Explain Everything, Just To Connect

When we feel low, the instinct is usually to go quiet. To retreat. To not reach out because you do not want to be a burden or you do not have the energy to explain or you are not sure you can articulate what is wrong because you are not entirely sure yourself.

You do not have to explain anything. You do not have to say "I am feeling low and here is why." You can just text someone you love and say you have been thinking about them. You can call and talk about nothing their day, a show you both watched, something funny that happened. Connection does not require disclosure.

Isolation makes low days longer. Human contact even brief, even light reminds you that you are part of something beyond your own head. That there are people who would want to know you are having a hard day even if you cannot quite say why. That you are not as alone in this as the quiet of your room is making you feel.

Reach out to one person today. Just one. You do not have to make it heavy. Just reach.

Do Something With Your Hands That Has Nothing To Do With A Screen

Cook something. Rearrange a shelf. Water your plants. Draw something, even badly. Fold laundry. Reorganise a corner of your room. Make a cup of something and actually pay attention to the making of it.

We spend so much of our mental energy on abstract things thoughts, feelings, plans, worries, the endless scroll that there is something genuinely grounding about doing something physical and tangible. Something where you can see what your hands are doing and watch it take shape in real time.

Low moods often live in the abstract. In the thoughts and the what-ifs and the everything feels wrong. Physical, hands-on activity pulls you back into the concrete. Into the sensory, the immediate, the right in front of you. It is very difficult to spiral in your thoughts when your hands are actively doing something that requires their attention.

Find your version of this. The thing that gets you out of your head and into your hands. And when the next low day comes reach for that first.

Give Yourself One Thing To Look Forward To

Low days have a way of making the future feel flat. Like there is nothing ahead worth getting to, nothing to move toward, nothing that sounds genuinely good.

The antidote is not a big plan or an exciting trip or anything dramatic. It is just one small thing something real and actually possible that you can put in front of you as something to move toward.

A meal you are going to make tomorrow that sounds good. A show you are going to start this evening. A friend you are going to see this weekend. A walk to a place you like. A small purchase you have been thinking about. Anything that when you think about it, something in you says yes, okay, that.

Anticipation is one of the quietest and most effective mood lifters that exists. You do not need the thing to happen yet you just need to know it is coming. Give yourself something to look forward to and let your brain hold onto it like a small, warm light ahead of you in a dim tunnel.

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Be Embarrassingly Gentle With Yourself Today

This is the last one and it is the one that ties everything else together.

On low days, we are often our own harshest critics. The internal voice gets louder and meaner why are you like this, why can you not just be okay, look at everything you are not doing, other people manage fine, what is wrong with you. And we listen to it because we are already low and the voice sounds convincing when we have nothing strong enough to argue back with.

Here is what I want you to do instead: treat yourself today the way you would treat a friend who told you they were having a really hard day for no obvious reason. You would not tell her to snap out of it. You would not list everything she should be grateful for. You would not make her feel guilty for struggling. You would be kind. Patient. You would tell her it is okay, that these days happen, that she does not have to have a reason to feel what she feels, that tomorrow might be different.

Say that to yourself. Out loud if you can manage it. Write it down if that feels easier. Let it be true.

You are allowed to have bad days. You are allowed to feel low without a reason that satisfies everyone. You are allowed to need more grace on some days than others. Being gentle with yourself is not giving up it is giving yourself exactly what you need to get back up.

Low days are part of being alive. They are not a sign that something is permanently wrong with you or that you are falling behind or that everyone else has something figured out that you are missing. They are just hard days. And hard days end.

💬 Tell me in the comments what is the one thing that helps you most when you are feeling low? I read every single comment and I would love to know.

You do not have to do everything on this list. Pick one thing the one that felt most possible when you read it  and start there. Just one. That is enough. That is more than enough.

And when you are ready to start building the kind of days that make the low ones feel less frequent when you want to slowly, gently, without pressure build a life that feels more like yours I write about all of that here too. The That Girl Summer Reset Routine is a good place to start when you are ready. Not today if today is hard. But soon, when it feels right.

For now  be gentle. Drink some water. Put on something warm. And know that you are going to be okay. Not today perfectly. But okay. 🌧️