What do you do if you wake up one day and realize that you hate your life?  Or if you just don’t find joy in living?  What if you’re so depressed, repressed, unfulfilled or apathetic that you just don’t see the point in living anymore?

If you don’t see the point in living, it’s because you’re missing it entirely.  I firmly believe the point of life is to enjoy it.  If you’re not enjoying it,  then you’re doing something wrong.   And that means you have the ability to stop doing the things that make you miserable and do the things that bring your life joy and meaning.

Your life is your creation.  It’s not something that happens to you, but something you construct.  You’re in charge of you life and the experience is under your control.  The fact is, if you feel your life is out of control, it’s because you’re refusing to take control.  It’s like being in the driver’s seat of the car, but refusing to take the wheel.   Abandoning responsibility for your own life is one of the greatest failures I can conceive.

Unfortunately, a lot of people in the world don’t agree with me on this.  This comes back in a variety of angles, all of them deeply flawed.

  • Religions are often guilty of convincing you that you need to surrender control to a deity or his mouthpieces here on earth.  “Just give all your problems to Jesus” or “let God make the choices for you”.  Or from the more dogmatic end of things, “you’re messing up your life because you won’t surrender it to God”.   I don’t know what your perspective will be on religion; but I do know that the idea of “surrender” pushed by religions today isn’t the picture of their heritage.   Frankly, Jesus told his followers not to worry about tomorrow – not to fail to give it consideration.  And the heroes of the Christian faith were not noted for their faithfulness in sitting around waiting for God to change their world for them, but for getting out and making it happen.   The goal of religious surrender is aligning your will with a higher power, not by abandoning your responsibilities.  It’s merely a decision to cooperate with what you believe is the greater good – and you can do that as a Christian, Buddhist or even as an atheist.
  • Our current social structure will often work to convince people that they’re persecuted, subjugated or hindered because of their sex, race, creed, color, religion, economic status, etc.   And in many cases, it’s true.  We don’t have an equal opportunity in the world.  It’s well proven that the best way to be a millionaire is to have parents who are. The social strata in America separates wider each passing year.   But frankly, achievement has little to do with happiness.  Plenty of people make fortunes and fame with little joy to show for it.  Satisfaction with life is something you choose to develop.
  • America’s fascination with perfection often creates a fantasy lifestyle that everyone seeks, but few achieve.  Some people become convinced that if they don’t have a perfect body, or the right level of income, or the appropriate degree of popularity that life isn’t worth living. There’s nothing wrong with making your life all it can be, but convincing yourself that it’s worthless if you’re not at the top of the hill is a guaranteed ticket to depression.  Even those who make it to the top rarely stay there.  And meanwhile, plenty of people are living lives of joy and fulfillment with potbellies, 10 year old cars and permanent anonymity.

When you’re not enjoying life, that’s emotional feedback you need to listen to.  You don’t need to dull it with drugs or therapy or escapism – the feedback is not the problem!  That’s like blaming your car for running out of gas.  Emotional feedback is there to tell you there’s an impropriety to address somewhere. You need to fix the problem, not the feedback.

You are not powerless to change. It may be tough.  You may have greater obstacles than others.  You may be running so hard fulfilling your responsibilities that you don’t think you have time to make the change.  But you always have the power to change the things that are negative in your life:

  •  If you feel negatively about your job, change it.  Talk to your superiors and get the situation where it becomes rewarding to you again.  Or quit and take a new job.  Or quit and work for yourself.
  • If you feel negatively about your financial status, change it. Budget and save.  Get a better income.  Go back to school or train for a new career.
  • If you feel negatively about your relationships, change them.  Work out the problems.  Or drop them and build others.

I know it doesn’t seem easy.  More than likely, if you’re in a bad place you’re thinking “I can’t change this because it would affect that”.  That you can’t quit your job because you depend on the income.  You can’t change your relationship because the other person’s not willing and you’re afraid of being alone.  You have so many responsibilities that you just can’t take on something new.

That’s kind of like the analogy of the man sawing fruitlessly with a dull blade – he can’t take time to sharpen the saw because he’s so busy sawing!  The fact is, you’ll make time for what’s important to you.  And when you reach the point that you realize you need to address the situation, you’ll find the means to do so.

Both of you are smart kids.  You’ll figure it out.

Just remember that you can do it.  You are not powerless to change.  In your mind, you’re probably making it more complicated than it actually will be.

Take control