What to do when you feel hopeless

Humans need hope. One of the phrases I hear most often from my clients is “I don’t want to get my hopes up,” and I know the goal behind this statement is to try and save themselves from being disappointed. It never works. Here’s why.

Humans are wired for hope.

Humans evolved to imagine a better future, to find a better way, to be little problem solving machines. If humans never hoped for anything, we would have never advanced the way we have advanced. We are wired to want better.

Why we need hope. 

When you have a history of disappointment - of not getting what you want, of being overlooked, of being rejected, of being abused or neglected, of not having the ability to get what you want - it is natural to stop hoping in order to save yourself from being disappointed. That makes logical sense, and most people learn to shut off their hope in their childhood, because it protected them from being more disappointed.

You convinced yourself that if you never dare to hope, you were never disappointed. But you and I both know the truth, you were disappointed anyway.

I see this all the time with my clients, they become adults who never learn to hope and never learn to imagine a better future. The issue is that when you become an adult, if you don’t relearn how to hope for better, you become stuck and accepting of a life you know isn't what you want. You have a pattern of staying in situations that don't serve you and that feel like a boa constrictor is slowly crushing the life out of you. Over time, that hopelessness becomes all you can see and feel.

The good news is, as an adult, you have options and power that you didn't have as a child.

More power. More agency. More creativity. More resources. 

You are so much more resourced now.

Learning how to lean into hope - the hope that things can get better - is one of the first steps to walking out of the darkness and into the light. When you start believing that you have the power to change things (you do), then your brain will look for evidence of that truth and you will start taking action towards making the life you want a reality.

All of it starts with hope. 

When you feel hopeless I want you to take action.

Do anything that will help you and your situation, that could be things like:

Writing a list of things that feel soul sucking and then figuring out how to change them.

Crying.

Admitting that you aren't happy and then figuring out what will make you happy.

Intentionally looking for evidence of where you're already winning.

There are a million other actions you can take that may help, and what I teach my clients is this - do something, anything and then keep going. Movement begets movement, and taking your power back means actually taking action.