Stop learning to feel helpless

The day I unlearned to feel helpless was one of the best days of my life. You read that right! I deliberately “unlearned” it like a skill that I apparently honed for a while without being aware of it. Although, feeling helpless seemed so real. I was convinced there was no escape from what was happening to me. But I found a door in the dark and turned the knob…

Being in this room was giving me creeps and as I tried to take a step forward, “something” would tell me to stop whenever I made an attempt. This voice would tell me that I was pathetic, incapable of doing things right, lacking discipline, overly emotional and that there was no way out. It was laughing while I was crying. It was making me smaller and smaller until I realized I was the light.

A beam of light emerged from nowhere and I was able to finally see my surroundings. I was indeed alone. Despite the fear that followed me like a shadow, my inner light, although very dim, had always been there. I had simply never known about it until I met the people who told me. Some of them showed it to me through love. Unconditional love. This opened my heart.

We decide to stay helpless

What I learned about myself in the last few months was an unbelievably strong attachment to my past and negative experiences that I always considered “misfortune” which now I know were a blessing instead. Had I not gone through what felt like a consistent slap on my face or an enormous amount of weight that my shoulders bore without pausing for even a minute to take a breath, I wouldn’t be here writing about this now; and I think it’s worth it. Why? Because there are people who may feel as low as I did, who think to themselves they aren’t worthy of having the best in their lives, but who need to see that they can find their light.

There are situations when we burn ourselves once, twice, three times and now we are convinced that it’s an infinite loop. Never-ending cycle. When we make decisions, a lot of the times we believe we’re making the right choice, the choice that will make our lives better. But it doesn’t. Why? We don’t really have a good plan. Oftentimes we don’t consider consequences and it burns even more. We get fed up with our jobs, our relationships and emotions take over — we feel helpless. We base our decisions on how we feel about the situation. It isn’t easy to pull yourself out of the bubble where all of your feelings, emotions are jumping up and down making themselves comfortable but not you. So, what can we do to fix it?

Here are some tips for you

1. Pause your head for a minute and tell yourself to stop. All your thoughts will go away. Now is the time.
2. I suggest writing down why you think you are feeling helpless in the first place.
3. Write down what your goal (intention) was/is.
4. Explain (only facts) what negatively affected the outcome.
5. Write down what is holding you back from trying again.
6. How difficult/uncomfortable is the task/project/situation that you believe you cannot deal with?
7. Ask yourself if you need more support.
8. Ask yourself what you will lose if you try again.
9. Ask yourself what you will gain from reaching your goal.
10. Read what you wrote (writing things down make it more clear if you only state facts). If it is easier for you to think it through in your head, do whatever is more comfortable for you because you are doing it for yourself.

Examples of feeling helpless

I felt helpless when I had financial debt. I needed to break the bad habit of spending money and not saving any. This habit made me pay off the same amount every month as I kept on collecting the debt by purchasing more things. Then I started wondering how and why I couldn’t get rid of the debt, but I never changed my habits. I was only doing a temporary fix by paying off what kept on coming back. I realized that I was helpless because the problem wasn’t going away even though I was trying to deal with it. My methods weren’t working and I had to make changes.

For example, I liked to order food instead of cooking it. I would rather pay someone to prepare it for me and deliver to not have to deal with the cooking process because I work 10-hour shifts and the last thing I want to do is to come home and cook (this was my excuse). Well, this kind of mentality lasted until I was done with it. This is what instigated my helplessness. The only thing that was holding me back was me, myself and I.

Cooking isn’t difficult to justify my inability to do it after work, so I told myself if I wanted to pay off the debt, I had to start cooking; and I did. There was nothing to lose here which made it even more difficult to resist. Obviously, I was gaining a lot by changing my habits and I’m happy I did even though it wasn’t easy. It took time and effort but it was worth it in the end. On top of that, I managed to stop buying other unnecessary things by building discipline with cooking. I felt more confident and less affected by the whims.

Make a plan to fix it

No matter what it is that makes you feel helpless, you need to have a plan to overcome the issue. Hoping that one day it will go away on its own is like hoping you’ll win a lottery. In some cases life changes and (you win the lottery) the feeling of helplessness dissipates whether it’s your friends who help you find a solution or your mind gets busy enough to forget about this helplessness and you manage to break the vicious cycle that you thought you’d never be able to get out of. So that you didn’t have to wait for magic to happen, create it yourself.

We tend to look at our goals as general ideas . It is much easier to break them down into smaller groups of goals if it’s something like becoming a software developer when you are musician, for instance. It will take many steps and a lot of time to become a software developer. Simply thinking of what it takes may overwhelm us and we give up, but too often it’s late when we realize all we needed was a good plan. The plan that makes sense, that is doable considering your budget, your lifestyle and your motivation.

Final thoughts

If you followed your dream but it didn’t work out, did you give up too early? Did you have a good plan but something went wrong? And you tried to adjust your plan to fit the situation? Did you consider your lifestyle, your motivation and the importance of the goal?

If you want something really bad, nothing can stop you, even if you feel helpless in the beginning. You are the only person to drive yourself in or drive yourself out of your reality.

Let me know in the comment section your struggles or how you’ve overcome your feeling of being helpless.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end. I hope you find it useful!

Stay tuned for more!