Morning Vibes With Dr. Jerry - the First - Episode 291/How To Overcome A State Of Hopelessness

    

Monday                         2nd July 2018

Morning Vibes With Dr. Jerry - the First

Hello and welcome to #MorningVibesWithDrJerryTheFirst-Episode 291

Title:          When A State Of Hopelessness Stares You In The Face - Do This

In our self-centred world of today, a lot of people are helpless and even hopeless.

A lot of the readers who email me are struggling with depression or feel a lack of hope.

They don’t have any clear vision of a future for themselves.

So, why do you think we’re so hopeless?

The answer lies somewhere in between the things we do and the way and manner we spend our time

A lot of those who are employed, struggle to go to work in the morning, go back home in the evening and then just slump on the sofa and start watching TV and all those make believe reality shows. It's sad because it is escapism - they want to lose themselves in the television program, they don't want to face the reality of their lives and situations

It’s also the root of information overload and attention obesity.

We’re choking on the stories we hear from the news and our circles. It’s hard to turn it off.

But there’s a way to combat this. (Not just the information overload, but the general feeling of hopelessness and meaningless that comes with it, too.)

So, What’s a good way to increase hope?

Here’s my take on Hope vs. Hopelessness and the root causes of loneliness, suffering, meaninglessness, etc.:

PROBLEM NUMBER 1: Life gets mundane

You are running around in a circle, making so much motion but no movement; nothing is working for you, whatever you lay your hands on to do collapse like a pack of cards

SOLUTION: Get a skill

If you are a jack of all trades and master of none, then get a skill, be a specialist at something no matter what it is so long as it is legitimate and legal.

If you are working and your loop is the triage of work, home, TV, you need to get a life by getting a skill. Develop a skill

This ties into positive psychology. The feeling of progress and improvement play a role in our daily sense of joy.

I always tell people to do two things to find “purpose” or love or a place to start over:

Go to a bookstore and find a section where you’d want to read every book in the genre.

Look at what you loved at 10 years old and see how it’s grown for you. Are there ways you can pick this love back up in your adult life?

PROBLEM NUMBER 2: Awareness

Are you craving attention, are you taking in every single news item and message emanating from your environment?

SOLUTION: Experiment with an “attention diet”

The world has always been incredibly complex—way more complex than any single person can understand. But I think our awareness of the complexity is harming us psychologically,

Read my posts on The Things That People Should Care Less About. They are great posts. Because they get you into the mindset of wondering ‘What should I care about less?’

That’s why I started my attention diet years ago.

Here’s an exercise.

Practice not paying attention to a certain thing and replacing it with something you value more.

For example: Trump or push-ups? Trump or a new book?

Another solution is for you to just look locally. “People consistently underestimate the importance of their local politics and how much influence they have,”

I practice hyper-localism. I want to know who can I help right now who’s right in front of me. Maybe it’s you

PROBLEM NUMBER 3: We’re afraid of missing out, or we’re afraid we’re not doing enough

SOLUTION: Find out what you want to say “yes” to and what you want to say “no” to

You don’t have to start changing your behavior yet.

You just have to start by knowing what you like and don’t like. You have to come up with a formula for how much time something will take and what it's worth.

“It's hard because part of that skill is having an accurate perception of the value of your own time,”

“Some people have trouble saying ‘yes,’ some people have trouble saying ‘no.’”

So I came up with a chart.

It looks like an upside down smile

On the left hand side is “yes.” On the right hand side is “no.”

In this chart, “yes” is equal to zero. Because nobody’s asking you do things. But then you start getting offers. And opportunities.

Let’s say you started a blog or a YouTube channel and now people want to talk to you. At first, you start to say “yes.”

When I first started writing, I’d write for any site that asked. I went on every podcast. I would speak at any conference.

But then I got to a point where the “yes’s” start to turn into “no’s”.

And that might sound crazy. But it’s the principle of scarcity.

When time is scarce, you have to say “no” more times than “yes.”

But if you’re depressed and you want to live and you want to feel connection, then “yes” has to win. Until you can start to say “no” again

Hope and hopelessness fluctuate.

Your mind is a machine. What you feed it, it becomes.

These steps are all important.

But I think the most important one I learned is to have a vision of the future.

That’s what hope is.

And progress is perfect.

Until I come your way again, this is #MorningVibesWithDrJerryTheFirst

Keep it coming!!!

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