The Luxury Of Hopelessness

If you're feeling hopeless, that's understandable. But this article can help you to feel better, without making any of the changes that might seem too difficult.

As a general rule, it's often easier to change your habits when you don't give yourself the option of failing at them. Chances are good that if they make it too hard for you to fall short of your goals, you won't give them a chance. But I'm just as certain that if we make a promise to ourselves that's too easy to keep, it will be just as useless.

Right now, you might need a little help from the outside. Here are some suggestions for how to feel better today — and maybe even tomorrow.

1. Stop worrying about feeling better today.

The biggest obstacle we face when we're trying to find hope is the worry that this feeling might go away in the morning. It's normal to be afraid of loss — but if you use your fear to say "no" to things right now, those same rules will hold tomorrow and every day thereafter.

If you want real hope, the one that's here for the long haul, then you need to put your life in motion before we worry about its results. We can't change how we feel about something that hasn't happened yet — but if we act as though nothing could go wrong, we'll have a better chance of having things go right.

Just take that first step — even if it's the smallest one you've ever taken. If you stumble forward and catch yourself with your next step, don't give up. Get back up and keep going until it feels like you've got a little momentum going.

2. Believe in the impossible.

It's only human to want something to work out the way that you want it to. But how many times have you said something like, "If only I could do that, then everything would be perfect" or "I'll never get anywhere until I fix things" or even "If only I had more money right now, I'd be happy"? When those expectations turn into excuses, they leave us less likely to take action on the things we might actually achieve.

Let go of your knowledge of what will happen — and instead let go of your desire for success. Just let yourself believe that it will happen — and then trust in a secret power that plans everything for you anyway.

3. Make someone else happy, and you'll feel better.

This is probably the hardest thing to do, but it's also the most important choice you'll ever make. Nobody else can give you hope except yourself, but that same nobody else can be everything else — all in one complete package.

There's nothing more valuable than a second chance at life, and there's only one way to get it: by giving someone else that second chance first.

Give people something they want — and they'll help you get what you need. If you can make someone else feel good, you can make yourself feel better. And if you give something to someone else, then what's left over will most likely be enough to make you happy, too.

4. Laugh more often.

When we laugh more often, life starts to seem better in every way. It doesn't matter who's making us laugh — it could be a friend, a joke or even just a silly game of ping pong — but when we let go with our laughter, we're able to accept and appreciate everything that's happening around us.

Laughter is a powerful thing, and it's worth investing the time to learn how to use it properly. But best of all, it's natural for almost anybody to laugh at almost anything. It's only when we try too hard to make something funny that we usually end up just making ourselves miserable instead.

5. Start small, and build on that foundation.

If you've been doing the same things over and over, these might have become your default habits — and they won't actually force you to change at all. That's why changing them is so difficult — but if you can create new habits that involve just a few tiny changes, then those small changes can lead you right where you want to be.

If it's too hard to change something, then you might give up on it — and that means that you'll probably never get anywhere. But if you start with a tiny habit (like starting a blog), then you can slowly build on that foundation until you have the habit of writing several times a day. Then the habit of thinking about writing more often. And so on and so forth, until your whole life is full of habits that are leading in exactly the direction you want them to go.

6. Hold fast to what makes your heart feel good.

It's easy to think about big goals, but it's hard for us to live our lives in such a way as to make their achievement possible. But if we simply start with the little things that feel good and make us happy, we can eventually move on to the big things.

No one can take those little feelings away from you, so let's learn to cherish these smaller victories before they get too big to hold onto.

7. Think of a problem in your life, any problem at all.

The goal of this exercise is not to solve that problem. It's only for you to think about it for a little while — and afterwards, it will be gone from your mind forever without a trace left behind.

Don't think about it too long, though. You only have until the time you finish reading this article, and then that thought will vanish forever — just like an unpleasant dream at the end of a night's sleep.

We should always give our problems the consideration they deserve, but we don't need to hold onto them any longer than we need to.

8. Act like today is your last day on earth — no matter how scared you are.

This activity is a little different than what you'll find in other places, because I want you to act like today is your last day on earth regardless of how scared you are about whether it really is or not.

We don't really know for sure what we're afraid of, and there are often different things that scare us in an hour than scare us in a year. But when we act as if today is our last day, we learn to leave all of those fears behind — and that's the most important step we can take towards living a life without fear.

9. Find something to be thankful for, right now.

It can be something small or something big — but the only rule is that you must find it yourself. It can't be found by someone else or found on the internet; it must be an original discovery made by your own mind and heart.

Conclusion

There's not much to life. It's just a big empty movie where we're the main characters. But that movie is filled with so many opportunities for us to do things we've never done before — and they can all be found right in this moment, if we only look closely enough.

I hope you'll take each of these challenges and see what they mean to your own life. You might find that you're not prepared for them, and that's okay — but at least now you know what's coming, and you can get prepared in time.