Have you ever felt hopeless about a situation, person, or anything else in your life? How does it feel? It is as if something has pulled out an energy plug from the body. You feel no power, no energy, no current running through your veins. Everything seems like a massive effort, including getting off the bed. You can’t see the way, you feel blank and lost. You feel covered in dark grey smog, suffocating you. This and so much more happens when we choose to feel hopeless. Yes, I mean, we choose to be hopeless. It is one of the strongest coping mechanisms we create in order not to be responsible for ourselves. Can we change that by changing our thoughts? Yes.

Let us look at the energy of hopelessness and the reasons we indulge in it. Being hopeless is a distraction we create in order to not take a supposedly tough or wrong decision. We always have choices but the moment we get into judging the choices based on right and wrong, it creates confusion and density. We try not to make wrong choices out of the fear of losing something or getting judged by others. We also do not want to be held accountable for making the wrong choices. So we create a cocoon of helplessness to hide under.

A lady was struggling to take care of her ailing mother. While managing her job, marriage, in-laws, children, she also had to attend to her mother. She felt exhausted and drained fighting on all fronts. Was there a solution in her mind? Not really. She couldn’t imagine leaving her job which was to pay for her loans; she couldn’t imagine leaving her marriage and children for the fear of losing support and social status; she couldn’t imagine leaving her mother behind in the care of others. None of these options worked for her and she sold herself the story that she doesn’t have a choice. She felt more and more hopeless by the passing day, which began to reflect on her body in the form of pains and aches. Did she truly not have a choice? No. She did have choices. However, none of the choices were ‘right’ according to her. If she took any of those choices, she would be labelled as a bad daughter, bad mother, or bad worker. The fear of being judged this way had her creating the fog of hopelessness so no one can see her and judge her. This is how she was coping with her situation. It worked for her temporarily till one day she collapsed from exertion.

There are always more choices available for us than we can see at the moment. We convince ourselves to think that we only have limited choices. Remember, our mind is limited to what it experiences, studies, and absorbs from the environment. However, the subconscious mind is 6000 times stronger than our conscious mind. It can present information and knowledge that the conscious mind cannot comprehend at the time. All we have to do is ask questions around the situation: what more choices are available for me here that I am unable to perceive at the moment? The body starts to pick the awareness and guides to the solution in the most surprising manner. In her case, it could have been a medical worker she could have employed to take care of her mother or that her mother shifted with her to her house or the family and job shifted to where her mother was. Once she asked questions with an open mind, numerous possibilities would have shown up. But in this case, she concluded that there were only three choices and that those choices were wrong. She stopped there instead of exploring more options. While being responsible towards everyone and everything, she became irresponsible towards herself. Ultimately, it didn’t work. It took her to take a downfall to get this.

Being responsible for self creates the opportunity for more choices to show up. If the choices are not right for you, you haven’t looked enough. Ask a question and let the awareness guide you to what contributes to your life the most. Keep going.

So where in life are you stopping yourself to look for more choices and more possibilities by selling yourself the story that you are hopeless? This coping mechanism might have worked in the past temporarily. Does it work now? If not, then what can you choose now to change your situation where you feel stuck?