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billParticipantI am deeply afraid. Here’s why. I have no place to go if I cannot get a job and pay rent. I still have dreams and want a great career. But I’m scared that because if discrimination, I cannot even get a decent job. I have been an optimist who would not give up. But now I’m reading all the negative reports that suggest that my future is very limited. I can’t be starting a business right now unless it brings immediate cash.
Please tell me if it is time, because of age, to stop dreaming because older workers are truly forbidden to hold good jobs or advance in their areas of interest. What’s really true????tonight my life feels over.billParticipantThank you for thoughts.
billParticipantI am sorry you feel this way. Let me see if I can cheer you.
1. You are still fairly young and that is a great thing. I am 20 years older than you. You have a huge potential amount of time to create a better life. Do not worry about what your friends have. Statistically, half of them will end up divorced. The remainder may or may not be happy in the long run. We cannot know. Focus on you, you have definitely got time.
2. You are on the right track trying to involve yourself in meaningful activity. Learning, creating, volunteering, helping, working for causes, travelling, all these and more are stuff you could try to focus your brain on something fulfilling. You are the expert on this. The more you are getting “into” something of this kind the more sexy you are.
3. I refuse to believe that in a world of 7 billion souls there are not at least 7 million (one in every 1,000) who might be interested in dating you. The alternative is just – well – not likely. The problem is you may not know where they are. If anything, there are probably more than you can ever meet or date.
4. When you are depressed, and this sounds like part of the problem, it takes time to turn the mind around. It is similar to an object in motion (or at rest) in Newton’s physics. But with time and effort, it begins changing. Believe that your unhappiness is temporary.
5. Under the worst case scenario you – and this is not really bad – you can probably get a therapist who can help pull you out of this state.
Do any of these ideas help?
Sincerely,
BillbillParticipantThis sums it up.
The choices in modern life are overwhelming. Go on online dating and their will be hundreds of people in your email – apply to a job site and you get 100 new options sent to you. Most of them won’t work if you apply but so much effort.
Past generations did not have this – maybe they had no choice at all.Focus on the present and future and this is the reality. Well meaning we try to navigate our lives and get something closer to what we want. But it creates unease. Because we are choosing our lives. And there is an urge to avoid it which doesn’t work.
This is the alternative to brooding over the mistakes of the past.
billParticipantThank you. All these comments are true and wise but i am just finding it hard to implement these things or, rather, they don’t seem to be strong enough to break the thoughts and feelings. Also, the world won’t stand still while you go within and try to fix yourself. Bills keep coming in, opportunities appear and vanish. But i am so tired of these thought patterns. I seek joy, meaning, self esteem, loving relationships and creative engagement in life. But my dumb brain does these things.
billParticipantI feel strongly that these things matter:
1. Well being – we seek a modicum of well being with most days if possible. This is internal.
2. Meaning/purpose – we seek to be part of something bigger – to create and contribute.
3. We seek affiliation – friendship and love.I try to keep focused on these. I can control these. I cannot control the details of anything. I could affect nothing much or be spectacularly effective in the big world – but if it’s bad to make yourself miserable to do this (Jesus as possible exception). The point is I cannot control the outcomes of my choices and actions. I cannot undo my choices and actions. I cannot know the right things to do for certain. But I can strive for 1,2 & 3.
billParticipantYour best bet is your friends. Have people check in with you regularly. If you have to go to an ER. You probably won’t feel this bad for a long time since feelings this intense usually dissipate. Our feeling come and go. They are just feelings, thoughts -remember that even though they seem powerful. That said, you sure don’t want to go on feeling like this in the future do you? I hope you will find supportive people or professionals who can help you get rid of this form of pain.
I find that what gives me these kind of feelings is telling myself something like – what is happening now is the opposite of what I wanted to happen in my life and it’s not going to resolve or get better. Or maybe thinking that your main purpose in life has been blown away. It’s my expectations. Try letting go of your expectations for a day or a few days. You can always get them back if you really want them.billParticipantYou are lucky because you are about to discover that there are truly good people.
Seek out people who seek to make the world better in one way or another – humanitarians or others. Join a meetup group. You will find that we are able to choose our level of goodness to some extent.
Unfortunately, humans have a pretty bad track record of treatment of each other and we are now ruining the planet too. But don’t despair. Join together with the “good guys” (and gals). They may not be perfect. Alternatively, seek out a non-fanatical religious group. As a rule, some of these groups strive to overcome our fallen state. Join the good fight.
And if I am wrong, what have you lost that you don’t already feel you have lost. Or you could join the Bonobos. They are our closest relatives and they seem to have created an ideal society.
billParticipantI was saying I think people have more expectations than they like to admit. I agree that letting go a little is good. I am not sold on lack of goals as long as they serve your happiness.
billParticipantIt is almost impossible to correct typos with this software. I expected to finish this reply but I gave up. My qwerty pad is too small for my fingers.
billParticipantHi,
A lot of commentators tell us not to have expectations. I think thay isn’t realistic. You study a subject with the expectation of working in a field. You date with the expectation of findind love. If you had no expectations I can’t image steong motivation.Lincoln would not have been President without an unbelievable ability to keep coming back. Most of us would give up. Of course he then was murdered for his trouble but I’m glad he expected to win eventually.
Maybe I have got it all wrong. It’s
good to be patient and flexibke and enjoy the ride. Someho
w, to have no expectations is to be rudderless.
Am I wrong? Maybe it’s bad to invest to much energy in overly defined goals – to expect things to always work our or even half the time. Most people expect to be alive next week – maybe they should sort of expect it but keep the alternative in mind.
I expected a meaningful career, wife and kids. I learned that expectation. I am disappointed that none of it has worked oyt yet.
I just doubt that many people who preach against expectationsAugust 19, 2014 at 5:10 pm in reply to: Always haunted by the past, the present and the future #63664billParticipantWhat can I know about you without any investigating – that you are highly accomplished and have healthy ambition. You are probably bright as well. Unfortunately, these positive traits will not insulate you from regret and other negative feelings especially if you are hard on yourself for not achieving the ideal life you may have planned.
I have the same issues myself. I cannot help but obsess over things that I did or did not do – sometimes very long ago. It’s as if I have a record of everything in my head and don’t want to own certain parts as being a part of myself. In other instances I just wish I had done differently – maybe studied science, married somebody and had kids, and feel like it’s a little late now.
But is sounds as if you do not even have that. Why do you let it haunt you? Are you humiliated by something in the past? Is there anything irretrievable or unfixable? Does it help to know that 50% of marriages end in divorce? If you regret losing a relationship you would be in very good company. Many people who have lost relationships don’t even give a damn because they blame the other person (wrongly!).
My impression of you is someone leading a full, creative life that is much better than billions of poor smucks out here. You may still dislike yourself. Tell me, do you wake up in the morning and start reviewing your life’s failings or something like that?
If it helps, you are not a arms merchant or corporate lobbiest are you? Did you murder anyone? Did you poach any endangered animals? I doubt it. And you have your whole life to create things of value and enjoy the beauties of our world and its people (the decent ones).Don’t regret the past because it sounds like you have done a passing good job. Don’t regret the present because (how do you do that???), Don’t fear the future because it is not yet written and none of us knows it. As for Europe, I regret having been so broke since Grad School that I have not gone there once. Maybe you should go there if it gives you joy. I certainly prefer their social policies which are a reflection of their philosophy of life.
I hope this helps. You sound like a promising person and I hope you hang in there.
August 7, 2014 at 3:15 pm in reply to: Feeling aimless , depressed and alone need help please. #62844billParticipantHi,
I want to make you aware of some really wonderful facts.
The first of these facts is that you have a lot of time to solve this problem (don’t waste it).
You could easily have a decade or more to find a mate and start a family if that is what you desire. You could easily have 3 decades or more to get established in a career (or two careers). You could easily still be alive in 5 decades given modern health technology. If you are comparing yourself to others in their early 30’s remember that some of them may be in jobs or marriages they are not crazy about.The very best thing you can do is to try to grab hold of something that you are inspired about and see if you can make some creative plans around it. Getting into action will help whereas stressing over your “failure” will not help you.
It may be that you have to deal with your depression first. Even so, bear in mind that you have the rest of you life and it is too early to pronounce yourself a failure. I am a generation older than you and I worry about the things I did not do and running out of time to do others. I love telling people in their 30s that time is on their side if they grab hold of it.
The big thing you need to feel good about is that you are thinking about not wanting to waste your life at an early age. I would guess that a huge number of people do not do this. You may find that you need to go through some of the “boring” job experiences and other scaring stuff to get to something better. But if you care this much about being successful and not wasting your life, you won’t. Just make sure to keep taking thoughtful actions. Sitting still won’t get you anywhere. If you make a mistake you can correct it. That is how the greatest achievers do it.
billParticipantI go back and forth. I have a hard time not dreaming up a cool career or other things I wanted in life and feeling like pursuing them really added something to my life. I don’t want to piss my life away. I wrote this because the whole job search thing has always been a real pain that goes on for huge periods. The very best reward I ever had for this long, drawn out process was to get something really motivating for me at the end of the process – of course it is not permanent like anything else.
It just seems the effort we have to put out for getting any job these days is hard to believe. That is why I would rather end up with something I like – I have to go through the same process. But it is true that our attitude is more the generator of our happiness.
billParticipantThat is a well-written response Matt.
I put this post here because I do, personally, think we are designed to be creative and contributing. I just don’t think I would be happy without a purpose of purposes to get me going and contributing to the greater good is part of our nature (at least I think so). But people do get caught up in feeling like they failed their ambitions and then they suffer. Others pursue ambitions only to find them empty. The correct answer, as you point out, is that people’s ambitions are heartfelt. That unites the wisdom of “being” in the moment with “doing” in the moment. I recall reading how people in Japan use mindfulness in their work – the opposite of alienation.
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