I
personally know how depressing life can feel without a sense of
brightness up ahead. It’s something I struggle with occasionally as I
continue to reorganize my life after loss and seek the kind of
companionship with which I can ride happily into the proverbial sunset.
But in some ways I’m unlucky. Not knowing what’s ahead, or not
believing I deserve or can create a better future, leads to a sense of
fear and feelings of stress. It drains energy and motivation.
Since
small I have been taught that I’m powerless, that the future is just
going to happen on its own. That can give rise to enormous amounts of
anxiety, dread and anger, and frequently leads to the brand of
hopelessness widely known as depression.
In reality, people can
create the future they want. I sees my life work as restoring to people
an ongoing, passionate connection to their dreams for the future.
Having
a sustained vision of a successful future allows one to carve lots of
mental paths to it, to actually live one’s way into it, step by step.
I
can achieve what I want in life only if I have a clear vision of where
I headed. The reason most people aren’t moving forward is that they
don’t even know where they are going.
If they are going
anywhere, it’s towards whatever they got programmed for, which is
essentially whatever their parents envisioned for them; they are not
even living their own life.
Successful people dare to aim for
the moon, believing anything is possible, while most people are taught
to settle. But that is the antithesis of the human spirit.
Still,
whole schools of thought are dedicated to the idea that happiness comes
from lowering expectations and settling for what’s at hand. That is
more accurately the path to depression.
There are many people in
unsatisfying and even destructive relationships who are trying to
convince themselves or their partners are trying to convince them that
what they have is good enough.
Having
a complete vision of the future gives me a constant source of hope and
motivation. But, of course, the command to envision my future is far
too global to be of help. It’s likely to induce a brain freeze.
I
have to break the future into very specific component domains of
experience that, when totaled together, add up to my life, my physical
self, my social life, my career, my financial health, my emotional
life, and so on.
It is fine to want tomorrow to be good and to expect that it will be. When this is what I mean by hope, there is no problem.
All too often, however, people offer words of hope when I’m feeling bad to help me accept those feelings.
In
my view, I should not passively give up today. Such giving up follows
from the belief that events themselves are good or bad, rather than
that my views make them good or bad.
I’m waiting to live put off
today in exchange for tomorrow. Work and play are states of mind. I
won’t learn that as long as I think I should delay gratification.
Waiting is mindless. It suggests that there is no way to enjoy what is being done at the moment.
By
the way, fellows blogger, I will be on a holiday from being blogging
for some time. I hope in this period of time, everyone out there is
having a great time. Wish to see your back, when I blog gain…
