How To Find Hope & What To Do When You’re Feeling Utterly Hopeless
“Hope”, isn’t that what drives us all? Pretty much all of the activities that you undertake on a day to day basis are premised on the hope that you will get a positive outcome out of it. You continue to study for hours for the upcoming exams. Why? Because you hope that you will be able to top the class and get your name on the merit list of your priority institute. You continue to work out at the gym for months. Why? Because you hope that you will eventually be able to get the body that you always desired. Once this single factor of hope is taken out, you are left as lifeless as a corpse.
This is exactly what happens at times when things consistently start to go wrong and hopeless starts to make its way into our minds. For instance, you could have been in search of your soul mate for months but your failure to find your ideal date may be pushing you into believing that true love is perhaps not meant for you. You could have been looking for a better job where you could apply your skills and experience in a better fashion and be rewarded accordingly but the failure is tricking you into believing that being content with your current dead-end job is the only option for you.
Whatever the reason, the feeling of hopelessness is an archetype of living a nightmare for anyone. But like all nightmares, this one is also destined to end as soon as you open your eyes. Regardless of how bad things seem to be, there are always ways that can help you wake up from this bad dream and let the rays of hope enter your life again. If you have been lost in the desert of hopelessness where utter despair has completely engulfed you, it is time for you to find your way back to life. We are here to guide the way and once again sow the seed of hope to bring back the charisma of your life.
Maybe It’s Time To Embrace Hopelessness
For sure, it’s a very risky statement, to begin with, our guide that is aimed at helping you overcome hopelessness. But hear us out. Regardless of how firmly you believe in something and hope for it to happen, it is also imperative to have the reality-checks from time to time. There is no argument over the fact that some things are just not meant to be. It is quite possible that you are sunken in the ditch of hopelessness and depression because you refuse to let go of something that isn’t working for you anymore. You might have been telling yourself that keeping the hope alive is the right thing to do, but under such circumstances, embracing hopelessness can help you better in dealing with the situation more conveniently and effectively.
For instance, you may have been putting all of your efforts into winning your crush who just doesn’t seem to buzz, regardless of how hard you try. If only you could embrace the hopelessness and accept that it is never going to happen, you would immediately open yourself to the rest of the world and the amazing dates and relationships which will add value and meaning to your life. By embracing hopelessness, you will make yourself more available to what the universe wishes to offer you instead, and that can potentially instill a new ray of hope in your life.
Bawl Like A Baby
One of the most psychological incorrect statements that you will ever get to hear in life is[restrict], “men don’t cry”, or a more generalized variation of this statement, “adults don’t cry”. If only you could see how badly does it affect your mental health and the long term damage that it casts, you may as well make it a part of your routine to cry for a few minutes.
The important thing to realize here is that crying is a natural response for human beings when they are confronted with a negative experience, be it excessive stress, grief, or even hopelessness. The therapeutic value of crying is unquestionable as per psychological research. Keeping it all in only accumulates all of the negativity that builds up lava inside of you; one that is destined to erupt sooner or later. When it does, it leads straight to more dire consequences such as that of hopelessness and utter despair that disables you from finding interest in any domain of your life.
Giving yourself some room to cry enables you to have a fine opportunity of expressing yourself. Once it’s out of the system, you feel better, stronger, and more prepared for the imminent challenges. You can think of it as a restart button that puts you on your way to chasing your life goals with a whole new enthusiasm that is no longer impeded by the likes of hopelessness.
Look For Answers In Ancient Wisdom
What if we told you that your brain likes to have adventures of its own? It is possible for it to be bored with working for you at all times and sometimes, it may as well choose to work against you just for the sake of change. A simple example of the latter is the feeling of utter despair that sucks the life out of you and make you believe that nothing is ever going to work for you. A feeling of hopelessness that you are born a loser and are likely to die one as well.
A simple solution to hopelessness, therefore, lies in ancient wisdom. The Buddhist practices of meditation and mindfulness are known to be highly effective in opening the gates for hope to enter your life again. This is perhaps the reason why such practices are widely used as part of a routine by people from all over the world without any discrimination in terms of caste, creed, or religion.
The best part is that such practices are highly time-effective. A few minutes of sitting with yourself in a peaceful environment, focusing on your breathing, a soothing symphony, or any harmless event happening in the present for that matter can help a great deal in removing the clouds of hopelessness and reactivating your mental clarity to view things from a greater perspective. It relaxes your mind and body, restores your mood, and recharges your batteries with hope and confidence.
Change Your Perspective
How many times have you whined in front of your best friend and listened to his advice and opinion about the situation that you are stuck in, only to realize that things aren’t actually as bad as you thought them to be? Welcome to another lesson on how human psychology works. As long as the only perspective that you have about the scenario is your own, you are likely to end up feeling hopeless as soon as your mind decides to push the reserves of your hope into the background.
In order to remedy such an inconvenience, all you have to do is change your perspective. And there is hardly a better way to change your perspective, by getting some from people who are close to you, know you personally, and can truly understand what you are experiencing and the associated behavior and attitude. Once you share it with the people you love and ask for their advice, help, opinions, and ideas, you will open yourself for the realization to hit you that you are perhaps caught up in a difficult time, but the things in any way, aren’t hopeless as you once thought.
More often than not, such discussions end up highlighting a potential solution as well that is fairly simple to follow. Under such circumstances, it gets even easier to pull the reserve of your hope back to the foreground and kiss the despair a goodbye.
The Positivity Injection
If you think about, in the simplest of terms, being hopeless is nothing but a negative state of mind that isolates you from all the good in the world that you are surrounded with. It is an excess of negativity that doesn’t leave any room for a positive thought to as much as only pop into your mind. This has an implication that the episodes of positivity which are usually natural for a human being, are now to be summoned with patience and effort.
In order to remind yourself that you are indeed surrounded by positivity with just a pinch of negativity every now and then, the best strategy to deploy is focusing on your own self. Find a peaceful corner to sit with yourself with paper and a pencil. Start enlisting everything that is working out for you in your life. Everything little thing that you can appreciate, everything that turned out to be exactly as per your expectation, anything at all that you find yourself being thankful for.
For example, if you hate your job and are unable to find a new one, you can remind yourself how you are at least financially stable at the moment. If you had a bad breakup, you can make yourself excited about going on your first date with a whole new person and relive the adventures all over again. This is an effective exercise to see beyond the ocean of hopelessness and be hopeful that greater things are destined to happen for you in the future.
Live In The Here And Now
Do you realize that more often than not, your despair is stemmed from your catastrophic habit of overthinking about the future? The more you dwell on the thoughts of the future, the better are your chances of letting hopelessness find you. Truth is, what is it that’s exactly going to happen in the years to come, it is not known to any of us. On the other hand, humans are hardwired to be intimidated by something that they don’t know. As you fail to make an accurate guess about your future, you tend to end up being hopeless about it.
In order to get rid of your hopelessness once and for all, therefore, it is imperative that you focus on seizing the day. Live in the here and now, focus on what’s happening at the moment and leave the future for the future. If there’s a particular part of your future that scares you into hopelessness, put an effort into being a problem solver and ask yourself what is it that you can do in the present that can change the outcome to what you desire for your future? If the lack of knowledge about your future is the root of your hopelessness, devise a plan that predetermines a few elements of your future.
For example, if you are working on a contract and are not sure if you’ll have a job in a few months, you can make an action plan to start saving and investing your money to create an additional source of income for yourself; a source that’ll be able to support you for a while as you look for a new and better job.
Final Words
It is obligatory for us to be realistic with you. And it is the truth that your battle against hopelessness is not going to be over in a matter of hours. You have to understand that pushing you into the deepest corners of hopelessness was not a phenomenon that occurred overnight. It was happening chunk by chunk at the back of your mind without you even realizing it. It probably took months or even years before the lava was ready to erupt and obliterate all of your hope reserves. The process of reversal, therefore, is going to take a bit of time as well. But once you finally kiss hopelessness a goodbye for good after all of your effort and time investment, you will certainly find it worth your while, that’s a promise.
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