Emptiness Is A Curse

“There’s just something obvious about emptiness, even when you try to convince yourself otherwise. ”

― Sarah Dessen

How are you feeling today? Did you say you feel a little blue or maybe feeling a little lonely? Or maybe completely overcome by ennui, boredom and basically the feeling of emptiness?

Do you feel that life has fallen into a rut and you are trying to search for meaning in what you do and are wondering what you want to do with your life?

I know that the tone so far doesn’t sound the most exciting but that is something we have all felt at a certain stage of our life and wondered how we can overcome it and sometimes we have overcome it in the past without our knowledge.

In other words, we have made magic happen without even knowing that we have.

How to find this magic back in life? How to find meaning to what you do? Or maybe do something you find meaning in? How to get over this feeling of emptiness?

Well! Here are a few steps which will get you back on track

1) What are you thankful for in your life right now? 

What is the one thing you can be thankful about? Is it your health, your physical fitness, family, love, finance, career, friends, the spiritual connection with yourself? What is it that you feel truly blessed about? What is that something which makes you smile.

If you look at your life, you can easily make a pie chart of it with atleast 5-6 segments as below: Physical, Emotional, Relationship, Business, Finance, Spiritual. What are the segments you feel really good about? What percentage of that segment is filled?

Remember, I am not asking about what is bad in life, we have all talked about it enough, right now, let us just look at this. What is that one thing you are thankful for?

Related: Why Should I Be Thankful?

2) What do you want in life? 

When this question is asked, as Anthony Robbins says – Most of us know what we do not want in life and yet have it. Infact we all have a huge list of things we don’t want – we don’t want the traffic jam, the constant buzzing of horns, we do not want to face the bullying boss, we do not want to argue with a biker who scratched your car, we do not want to meet annoying people, we do not want to shout at someone…Gosh this is a huge list indeed.

But that is not answering the question. The question is pretty simple, what is it that you want in your life – make a note of it, identify it. We have focused enough on what we don’t want in life and perhaps that is why we keep getting it. Just like somewhere in The Alchemist of Paulo Coelho it says –

If you want something really bad, the entire universe conspires to make it happen.

Then why are we letting what we don’t want conspire for us? Shouldn’t it be for what we want instead? Focus on what you need and you will start finding ways to connect events in your day to that. Remember, clarity is the key!

3) What are the emotions you face on a regular basis? 

Emptiness, loneliness, depression, melancholy – gosh we have such big words for these negative feelings in life.

We even have those clinical terms – clinical depression, chronic depression, anxiety, stress. I even wonder how the simple words like stress and anxiety have gone on to change into nervous breakdown and so forth.

I sometimes feel that we give these negative feelings so much of importance that there is no space for the positive emotions to flow.

What about happiness, excitement, energetic, enthusiastic, excited, elated, encouraged, delighted, passionate, thrilled, animated, awakened, stimulated, inflamed, juiced up…… and so much more. There are so many beautiful feelings we neglect on a daily basis. Why not note them down, why not make a list of these as well?

And I am pretty sure that no matter how bad you are feeling, these feelings outnumber the negative ones easily!

Related: Emoticons: The Simple 10 Step Emoting Rule

4) Stop using fillers! 

Do you do any of these to avoid feeling stressed? – Smoke a cigar/eat even if you are not hungry/eat when bored/drink 8-10 cups of coffee a day/bite your nails feverishly/play too many online games… Any of these at all?

If so, then you probably might be trying to find an escape route. Although it does start in an easier fashion, it gets to you eventually, it always does.

Why not replace them with better fillers instead? Why not call up a friend, why not try and talk to people and offer to help them solve their problems instead, why not smile at strangers, why not write to someone and tell them how much they mean to you, why not try and fix a cupboard your parents are always asking you to? – There are so many things you could do and use a positive filler instead.

Related:Junk Food: 10 Ways To Avoid Them

5) Work Out! 

Seriously! Join a gym! One of the best ways to beat stress/anxiety or emptiness in life is to fill your life with a little adrenaline. Join a gym, better yet join a sport where you can see your emotions and the adrenaline rush take a high, indulge yourself in the excitement of a game, make some exciting friends who are living a life completely different life from yours, get to know more about them, try and understand their challenges in life and how they are working on them.

And above all, the beauty of a game is the beauty of a game, it takes care of itself and gives you so much more in return.

Related: Gym: 10 Simple Tips To Motivate You Everyday

6) Make new friends

Don’t you think your same old friends would be bored of listening to your same old boring problems?

Don’t you think you are bored listening to the same solutions over and over again and see that it reaches a dead end? Why not find someone else to talk to?

I kid of course – but why not go out and meet people of a different background and a lifestyle, why not understand the challenges they are going through?

Sometimes knowing about the challenges of others makes us look at our own in a very fresh perspective and in a simplistic manner. It gives us a beautiful opportunity of being able to look at our own challenges without being too attached to them or taking them too personally, it can greatly help in simplifying your life.

7) Come on! It is not that bad! 

No matter what you are thinking about your life, no matter how bad you feel, trust me – it is not that bad, there is always a way out.

Like we talked a little while ago, sometimes we are so fixated on the problem that the solution seems to be completely out of the way and completely far from us. Sometimes we don’t even know how close we stand to the solution.

Sometimes all we need is to make a smaller deal out of the problem and tell yourself that you can find a way and start working towards it.

8) Are you doing anything better? 

What would you do if this was not the problem or challenge in your life? Sometimes identifying what you really want to do out of your life is a herculean task and there is never an easy answer to it.

But this one question has always served and proved to work very well – whenever an opportunity passes you, ask yourself this one question –

Are you doing anything better?

If the answer is no, then take it up, do it! There is great fun in doing things you are not very familiar with! There is a whole world which will embrace you with open arms when you look outside!

9) No one ever really knows

If you are trying to compare yourself to a friend or a role model who seems to know all the answers to the questions of life, trust me, even they are equally lost, may not be in the same segment, sometimes they might not even know how lost they are, but it all comes back in the end.

This is the beauty of the circle we talked about, the pie chart we mentioned. There are so many interesting segments in life that it keeps taking a new level as soon as we reach one, there is always a continuous path of growth.

There never is a destination and the beauty is that this destination keeps changing as soon as we reach one. Isn’t that wonderful? We all have a beautiful destiny to reach and identifying that is an amazing task which can be realized with a whiff enthusiasm.

Don’t worry and don’t ever compare, we all have a different destiny for us and each one more beautiful than the other :)

10) Talk is cheap!  

Nothing ever happened just because of someone talking to you and giving you a speech, everything that has ever happened in your life is because of the action you have taken and you know that to be absolutely true.

Granted that there have been some people who have helped you out, offered a much-needed advice, but note that there was much more than advice which got the job done. It was the action you took and the difference you made to life. And that is the real truth.

So, stop believing that someone would magically appear out of nowhere and solve your problems for you – that happens only in a fairy tale. This is your real life, something far more precious than any tale you have ever watched and you are the only one who can make the difference.

Start working on the smaller problems, start working on the minor fixes, build your own confidence through this and without your knowledge you will realize that the bigger problems are not that big a deal!

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