Some ways to help bring back the pleasure and excitement to your life

Do you sometimes feel that life is against you? People around you appear preoccupied and indifferent to you. There are constant hassles and upsets. Whatever enthusiasm you once had has disappeared and everything feels gray. You have little energy and feel like giving up. There’s no spark. No sense of excitement or joy in life.

If it happens to you, don’t ignore the situation and hope it will pass. Don’t tell yourself you’re maybe coming down with a cold, or you just need a few days vacation and you’ll be fine.

Try some practical ways to refuel your internal life.

Ignoring feelings like those described above is a mistake. Although not spectacular, they’re a symptom of your mind telling you that you’ve lost your way in life. Until you get back on your path, they’ll keep returning.

Take some time out to think about what is happening.

What brought you energy and pleasure? What happened to it? How can you bring it back? It’s easy to lose focus on what truly matters to you if you’re busy with what seems more pressing. It may be urgent, but it’s probably not that important. Let yourself refocus on what truly makes your life worth living.

Learn to let go and give up the desire to feel in control.

Having too much stability and predictability in your life encourages you to exhaust yourself trying to make things happen exactly as you want. It’s an illusion and you should give it up. However hard you try, you’ll never manage to do it.

Reconnect. When you feel miserable and frustrated don’t start to isolate yourself from other people.

You tend to think that others won’t want to be with you if you’re miserable and dull, and you don’t want to be with them if they’re happy and your not. But, being alone with your problems is a poor idea. You need to make sure you spend some time in company. That way you can let your attention be with someone other than yourself.

If you know others who feel like you, try helping them to deal with their problems.

Helping others is often the best way to help yourself. You can focus on someone else and let your personal issues take a back seat for a change. When you return to your own problems, they’ll likely seem less difficult.

Renew your sense of purpose.

Working on things you feel are meaningless isn’t very satisfying. Your sense of boredom and emptiness probably comes from feeling nothing you do has much purpose. Try taking some time out to work through questions like these:

• Why did I choose the lifestyle I have today?
• What did I expect to find? Did I find it?
• Are my expectations for my life still realistic? What do I need to change?
• What needs do I want to meet? What is the next most obvious step to move towards them?
• What can I do to make my life better? Why aren’t I doing it?

Take action.

Thinking about problems only makes them seem greater and more pressing. It does nothing to change your situation. Only action can do that. If you don’t act, everything remains the same. Almost any action is better than none, for every action produces some result, and you can use that to learn what to do next. There are no failures, except the failure to do something.

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