What to Do When You Feel Hopeless and Your Life Feels Like an Endless Roundabout

Is your life an endless roundabout?  You run around all day, fall into bed, get up, and repeat.  Again and again and again.

You feel hopeless and trapped.  Your relationships are dull and boring.

Life is just the same old same old and you’re tired of it.

How do you get off the treadmill?

How do you overcome the hopelessness?

How do you get some life back into your life?

No one wants to live like this. No one plans for life to get lifeless.

It’s time to stop the bus and get off.  Take some time to think about how you got to this point.

Do a life audit.

Here’s what to do if you want to change your roundabout life and regain your enthusiasm:

• Revisit your priorities. Is work more important than your relationships?  Do you have time to connect with the most important people in your life? How can you make time?

Are there some things that need to be cut out of your life so you can have time for God, yourself, and then others?

• Do a self audit. Are you doing too much for other people? If so, why? Are you seeking to please people? Make a good impression? Looking for recognition? Do you need to learn to say no?

Are you trying to erase a bad past? Stuff down emotional pain from a broken or dysfunctional marriage? Escape reality?

• Make time for God. This fills the emptiness that we often try to fill with busyness.  When I make time for God my inner pace slows for the rest of the day, but I still get as much or more done. I don’t know how that works, but it does.

• To break the monotony, switch the order of your daily routine – or a small part of your routine – just for a day. You’ll be amazed at how this freshens things up.

Eat lunch or dinner outside.  Make something different for breakfast than your usual ……………  Switch some of your chores around.  Walk a different route. Instead of doing your routine stuff first, do that thing you’ve been wanting to do for days (only do this occasionally – it’s better to get routine stuff out of the way before doing extra things on your list.)

• Take a few minutes to do something that rejuvenates you. It doesn’t have to be big or take long but be mindful while you do it.  It was Jim Elliot who said,

“Wherever you are, be all there.”

Walk barefoot on the grass for 10 minutes in the morning – consciously enjoy the tingling and prickling. Take a longer-than-usual hot shower and savour the warm water on your skin.  Read for 10 minutes – and be thankful that you can.

• Make sure you’re getting enough sleep. Feelings of hopelessness and overwhelmedness (is that a word?!) can be a direct result of just being too plain tired.

• Find one thing you can change. Then change it.  Hopelessness thrives on the idea that nothing will ever change.  So challenge it.  Start exercising for 15 minutes a day (or every other day). Go to bed ½ hour earlier.  Wash the dishes before you leave for work. Read one book a month.

• Don’t isolate yourself. Talk to someone. Bottling up feelings of hopelessness or being overwhelmed won’t get you anywhere.

• Choose to change your outlook. Find things to be thankful for. Instead of thinking only about negative things, make a list of things you are thankful for.  Before you go to sleep each night, find 5 things you are thankful for and say them out loud.

Sometimes hopelessness overtakes us because we don’t have time to think and process life.

Give yourself some time to catch up on yourself, to process your life, to evaluate and adjust your priorities, and to change direction if necessary.

Choose to be intentional.

You may find hopelessness dissipating like leaves before a strong gust of wind.

What is one thing you can do today to bring life back into your life?