For Anyone Who Has Lost Hope in Life

We don't want to leave the house. It tends to just narrow our life more and more and more until we've cornered ourself into one room. I've found that there are some simple ideas that can be life-saving in a place like this.

I am worried that life remains a battle for me, and I will never figure out how to make it lighter. I'm tired of my health issues. I lack a positive outlook and on most days I also lack hope. You know, something that keeps me going, makes me want to keep going. I lack connection and I am deeply afraid all of this is my fault. I guess in a way I'm afraid I will never change and I will remain miserable.

I felt that. I've been exactly there before. I. I don't take that lightly, Karina, because I know exactly what you're talking about, and I know exactly the kind of Darkness that you're experiencing when you're in that place. It's all-consuming you lose hope because you. You wake up. You've woken up enough days in a row where nothing has. changed and it feels as though nothing ever does change. You don't feel capable of changing the things that would need to change in order for life to feel joyful and happy and even normal. You know, when you feel like that, you would give anything just to feel normal. not even great. You know, you don't even really relate to the tone of self-development that focuses on living an extraordinary life and being great and being your best self. You're not able to connect with the idea of being your best self when you can't even, you don't even know anymore what it would feel like just to feel normal. It's a bit like being sick all the time. And you said you've got some health issues, so you may really be here. But when you're sick all the time, you pray just to feel well, just to feel okay, not to feel happy, just to not be in pain would be a miracle. And when we live long enough not in that place, life seems untenable. and, and when life seems untenable, we, we become, we become somewhat nihilistic, and it can be hard to be around people. Not, you know, I know when I've been in that place, it was very, very isolating because I didn't, I felt almost like I couldn't trust myself to be around people and not be found out that I was so unhappy or bring them down or find their experience completely unrelatable. And if I were actually honest about my experience, I felt that they would find it completely unrelatable and they would kind of almost just not know how to handle it. You know, God, I didn't. I just met up with you for coffee, Matt. I didn't realize that. you were in this dark, dark abyss that you don't know how to crawl out of. You know, I thought, I don't know how to be around people anymore. And I just, I would want to just be by myself because it felt like that was in a way the only place I could really trust. I could be in pain on my own without company and not have to worry about anyone needing anything from me. or worry about entertaining anyone or pretending I was better than I was. I could just exist in the state I was in, and I. I would shrink my life. And that's one of the. That's one of the cycles that we can get into, is when we. When we feel like that, we start saying no to things and we start rejecting life, and we don't want to meet up with that friend. We don't want to go and. do that gym session. We don't want to leave the house. It tends to just narrow our life more and more and more until we've cornered ourselves into one room. I've found that there are some simple ideas that can be life-saving in a place like this. One of them is to understand that there are other people like you. who are really great, I mean, really great, terrific people who are going through the same thing and that you're not, it really does feel like you're alone. You really do feel like in your, because when you, when you feel like that, you sort of oscillate between a kind of resigned nihilism and sheer panic. the sheer panic being that I can't live like this. I don't know what to do. I don't. I'm so alone. No one can understand what I'm going through. It's all going through inside. It's all happening inside my mind in a way that other people can't relate to or don't know. And you feel trapped. You'd feel trapped inside yourself when you experience that, that panic when it takes over, it becomes. It then feeds on itself. And the panic or the anxiety or the depression that you feel about feeling bad starts to exacerbate it. And it can take feeling bad from a nine out of 10 to a 15. Because now all of a sudden, you're feeling anxious and scared about feeling awful in life and you develop a really bad relationship with feeling bad. And then you're into a cycle. So number one, recognize that other great people, great, great people, people we love and admire and think the world of, many of them are going through something like what you're going through. right now. And when I, when I, the more I talk to people, the more I realize that there are people who experienced what I experienced back then in that moment of my life. So you're not alone. And shared pain is, makes pain lighter without even the pain going away. It just makes it lighter, just makes you feel like you're in company to understand that you don't know what you'll feel about this in five years. You really don't. You know how you feel now, you know how you felt for a long time. Although I will say that pain is a very, it's very centralizing. So you do kind of, your experience of pain is that you don't remember, you don't, we don't have a good memory around pain. It's almost just this kind of atmosphere of it's been really bad for all this time. But there are moments in your day where you don't feel so much pain. There are moments where you do feel a little lighter or where you're distracted from it. And those moments are really, really important. They're kind of a key because if you feel okay for five minutes, that's a real, that's not just hope. That's a data point. you then know that you might be able to move the needle enough to feel good for 10 minutes. And if you understand that formula of what made me feel okay for five minutes, I might be able to replicate that many times a week or even a day. Eventually you might be able to get a pain-free hour. And that's really powerful. And it gives you a new reference point that you can actually have some impact on this. And over time, that impact can get bigger and bigger because you really learn your way around it and you start to learn your formula. One of the things I'll say to you, Karina, is on the virtual retreat, one of the key things that I teach people is that we all have a formula that if we follow it, it makes us feel good. It makes us feel better. It resets our pain. It connects us with what is good in our life. It connects us with what's important to us. It connects us with our why, with what's driving us. And if you learn that formula for yourself and if you join us on the virtual retreat, I'll teach you this myself because I used it. I use it every day. I've used it to get over the worst moments of my life. And not just the worst moments, the worst periods of my life. And I've had some bad periods that have lasted years. and I did start to lose hope, but I've been able to use that formula to genuinely change my life to a point where now I'm not actually as afraid of pain because I know my way out of it. I know that it's not forever when it happens. I know that my relationship with it can massively decrease my pain. So even if something is very painful, either physically or psychologically, I know that my relationship with that thing can massively increase or decrease that pain. And so I've learned how to manage my relationship with those things. Anyone close to me will tell you that I still have my moments. But, you know, I mean, Audrey will tell you this. My recovery time is pretty damn good. I think it's one of the, that's one of the things I'm most proud of.

What you always say, which I think is a really valid point for this, is when I get upset, which also happens, you know, it's all about the recovery time, right? It's about how quickly you can feel better. It's okay to feel sad, it's okay to feel despair, it's okay to feel depressed, it's okay to feel all of these things, but how quickly do you, are you able to kind of pull yourself out of it and move on and dust yourself off versus how much do you wallow and kind of ruminate, I suppose, on the negativity, which I definitely think I'm guilty of doing. And I suspect with, you know, what Karina is saying, the way that she has her outlook on life is as such as she feels all those things. She probably does the same thing where she's focusing on all of the ways in which she's not happy.

Right. But those, the things you're unhappy about can be legitimate. they may be very real, but if we connect with an idea or a. A driving force behind, you know, you. You can believe we're all screwed. Like, you. You can believe that something's going to happen in the world and we're all screwed. And. And if you really believe that. And by the way, who knows? You might be right. Like, maybe the apocalypse is around the corner. I don't know, but. if you're right, that's a real reason to be unhappy. It's like, that's not like, you know, I understand what you're saying about wallowing, but that's not like, in a sense, wallowing. It's just like you're just very connected to this really bad thing. But you can also be connected to even that. You can say, well, you know what my reason for living is going to be then? It's gonna be this. I am gonna show up for the people in my life right now because, my God, this time is precious. Or, I really believe in... You can believe... For a while, when I was at my lowest, I believed that my reason for being was just helping alleviate other people's suffering. I was like, you know what? If I suffer this bad, other people can suffer this bad. and if that's true, then I want to help. I want to be able to be of service in some way. Even if it's just me talking about this, then maybe I can serve somebody. If I can hurt this badly, other people can hurt this badly, and if they can hurt this badly, I might actually be able to be a gift in someone's life by showing up for them and giving them what they need because I know what I need and I can give that. So it's, and that doesn't have to be a reason, but I'm saying connect, even when your pain is real, you can connect to something that's equally real. that makes life so meaningful for you. And the more you connect to that purpose and that meaning, the more your life starts to gain a kind of momentum. And one day, Karina, the thing I'll just finish by saying is one day you may look back on this and be able to smile about how difficult you found it then and how much easier you find it today. And I really believe that not as positive talk. I really believe that there are there are things that you can learn and things that you can do that don't even involve taking away your health issues that can radically change how enjoyable your life is. So and by the way, if you want to come and do that with us in June, the virtual retreat is happening from the second to the fourth. I didn't plan on talking about this right now in this moment, but my God, if you're experiencing any of what I'm talking about here, I've got a wealth of things that have helped me that I will share with you over three days on the virtual retreat. The link for that is mhvirtualretreat.com.