With the chaotic news cycle and social media showing how hopeless everything seems, it can be difficult to remain positive. Constantly doomscrolling makes the world appear like it’s heading towards a cliff. When you feel like nothing will ever improve, it can be damaging to your mental health.
Why do you feel hopeless?
Sometimes, hopelessness can be driven by your brain. It can tell you that you won’t succeed, nothing will ever change, peace will never be achieved and everything will end horribly. Your thought process can be your worst enemy. Feeling hopeless can lead to hopeless thoughts which feeds a cycle. It’s a type of anxiety symptom and can lead to depressive symptoms. Whenever you find yourself spiralling with negative thoughts that become increasingly harmful, you may need to seek professional mental health treatment. 6 Ways To Make The Most Out Of Your Therapy Sessions
In addition, you may be experiencing cognitive distortion. This is when you have negative or irrational patterns of thinking that lower your motivation or self-esteem. For example, if you’ve been trying to train for a marathon but are struggling to meet your goals, your brain can say that you’ve tried everything but nothing is working. This is caused by polarised thinking where you see things in binaries. If you aren’t successful, you’re failing.
Doomscrolling can also contribute to hopelessness. When you’re already feeling like life is bleak, finding content that proves you’re right reinforces your negative beliefs. This is confirmation bias. However, hope is not all lost. There are ways to find and nurture it.
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Why you should seek hope
The cure for despair is hope, which shouldn’t be misconstrued as wishful thinking or blind optimism. Having strong positive convictions is no guarantee that things will get better. Hope doesn’t have a specific list of criteria to acquire it. Hope is the belief that the future can improve and you can play a role in making the world a better place. Hope is active while wishing is passive. When you’re not hopeful, it doesn’t mean you’re hopeless, it means you’re apathetic. The opposite of hope is cynicism. Feeling hopeless can’t be helped, depending on the state of your life or mental health, but it can be resolved. However, cynicism is a choice.
You should also seek hope because it helps your physical health. Having a greater sense of hope reduces the risk of chronic illness, better psychological well-being, and a healthier social life. Hope also helps you maintain motivation to improve your life or environment. Staying the course on accomplishing your goals is easier when you’re hopeful.
Hope also improves mental health. As mentioned earlier, hopelessness can manifest anxiety and depressive symptoms. Retaining focus that the future will improve even when facing difficulty helps manage anxiety, worry, and depression. Hope understands the obstacles that you face and the potential solutions that you can apply to ensure you can achieve a positive future. It’s easy to conflate this with optimism which expects you to think positively at all times, which can make you set yourself up for failure.
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How to remain hopeful
1. Let yourself hope
Everyone is cautioned against getting hopeful for any good tidings. A common saying is that hope breeds eternal misery. Disappointments are almost inevitable but that doesn’t mean they will always occur. Hope allows you to accept that someone’s outcomes are outside your control and a positive result is a probability. Never allowing yourself to feel hopeful doesn’t inoculate you from disappointment. However, if you remain hopeful, you’re more likely to remain motivated to pursue your goals. How To Use Affirmations To Rewire Your Brain And Change Your Life
2. Set an actionable goal
To remain hopeful, set one goal that you can accomplish and that has great meaning to you. It doesn’t have to be something visible. It can also be just clearing a to-do list. Try to find something that makes you feel useful and is a contribution. For example, you can decide to declutter your home and donate all clothes you don’t use. Vision: How To Stick To Your Goals In The Coming Year
3. Find solutions
The hope theory states that you need a goal, agency, and a pathway to remain hopeful. You can maintain hope when you have a pathway that shows you how to get from your current state to your goals. Having a goal but not knowing how to accomplish it can lead to hopelessness. When you’re hopeful, you’re always coming up with a game plan. If one plan doesn’t work out, you’re excited to get to the next plan to achieve your goals. Whenever you feel stuck or unable to come up with a new solution, meditate and brainstorm ways to find solutions.
4. Find support
To find the agency mentioned in the hope theory, you need a support system. The less privileges you have, the less likely it appears that you will accomplish your goals. There are all kinds of resources that help people find easier ways to find solutions. In addition, you can get agency through self-belief. Having cheerleaders and being your biggest motivator is one of the best ways to maintain hope. 6 Ways To Support Your Single Friends (And Family) Throughout The Years
5. See those who made it
One of the best ways to manifest hope is to see when other people have accomplished their goals. To maintain hope, you may need support from people around you. However, nothing cements it further than seeing other people who have succeeded. Hope manifests better when you can confirm that your goals are possible. This is especially common for people trying to make career or academic achievements. For example, if you’re someone in your 50s who wants to switch careers and go back to school, you can seek people with similar stories who have successfully pivoted. Read more about people with similar backgrounds who have succeeded in the same field you hope to. Why You Are Losing Your Motivation And What You Can Do To Regain It
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6. Envision it
Once you’ve determined the goal you want to accomplish, take a few moments each day to see yourself in that future. You can keep the hope fed by answering a few questions such as, how will accomplishing your goal change your life, or how will your goals benefit others? When you can see your future positively, that’s hope. 5 Exciting Apps To Create A Vision Board
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Check out:
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