Hopelessness to Hopefulness

What to do when you feel like there's nothing you can do

Photo credit to Author

I listen to a lot of podcasts when I walk, and the other day I heard something that really resonated with me. The interviewee, Alex Hormozi, and the host were discussing how people make their way through life, and Alex said: "Sadness comes from a perceived lack of options - which makes it feel like hopelessness, and anxiety comes from many options but no priorities."

I had heard that statement before, but I let it roll around in my head a bit, and I realized that I had underestimated how powerful this statement actually is.

So if you have ever felt hopelessness, confusion and anxiety like I have, read on. Maybe we can find some hopefulness after all.

Have you ever been sick, or trapped in your job or relationship?

I have.

I have been all three actually, with the sick part being the most recent.

Having been diagnosed with something I did not anticipate or want, I found myself thrown into the medical system. Now don't get me wrong, the care we have in North America is pretty good, but for this particular illness, I was swept up in systems and standard protocols and I felt like I no longer had options or control over my life. In the heat of the diagnosis, my mind shifted to the likelihood of my death, and I felt sad. Not for myself, but for the people I would leave behind, and also because a diagnosis like that immediately takes away your options.

In the face of a diagnosis which could mean your death, your ability to make choices for your future also dies.

Photo credit to B and W road on Unsplash

And then something happened. I realized that I may be limited in my choices, but that if there were any choices I could make, I would take ownership of those decisions. I could decide if I wanted to participate in the 'standard' medical protocols. I could research alternate treatments and see of they would improve the time I had left. I could take ownership of my part in becoming sick in the first place and figure out how to reduce or eliminate the causes.

And with that, I started to feel less hopeless and more hopeful.

Why?

Nothing had changed, but my mindset about my 'perceived' lack of options changed.

See that's the difference.

The hopelessness we feel is based on the fact that we think we have no options, whether or not that is actually true. Often, we have several options, but they can include scary options like leaving a marriage or a secure job, and we hesitate. We don't want to be uncomfortable. The turning point though will always be when your discomfort of staying the same outweighs the discomfort of changing.

Photo credit to Nick Fewings on Unsplash

To me, that's where our real hopelessness come in. For example, many people hate their jobs, but perceive that they can never leave because they have created a life which traps them there. Lots of people are trapped because of:

• Status

• Income

• Pension and benefits

• Perks

• Habit

• A lack of energy to change

• A feeling of it being too late

But what happens if you do finally make a break for it?

Well, here was my experience.

So once upon a time, I left a job....my career, which I had been doing for 18 years. I had been promoted a couple of years earlier and was moved into a job with more prestige and responsibility.

But I had come to hate the work itself.

And I felt that sense of despair of knowing that this was going to be what my life 'was' until I got that juicy defined benefit pension plan. In the job I was in, it was fun for a few years, and then everyone slowly became jaded and exhausted, and became ROD: Retired on duty. So then you waited the decade or two until you retired and hope that you lived long enough to recoop some of the investment of paying into that gold plated pension..

The thing of it is though, I started looking at my other options. In my off time, I started doing a job shadow with a financial planner to see if I could go down that route, I got my insurance licence, and I already had my finger in renovations, remodels and a little bit of rentals. I started making an exit strategy.

My hopelessness turned into hopefulness once I started creating other options to explore.

Photo credit to Author - Don't you want to be this free?

And a couple of years after I started feeling the desperate need to get out of my career, I did. People thought I was nuts. I was mid to late career and at the height of my earning potential. Who does that?

But there were many things I did not know about leaving my career which you need to know before you consider leaving yours. It's the stuff they don't tell you on youtube. (That's a whole separate blog and pod on it's own.)

I also blew up my marriage.

Not just a little......a lot.

That one I don't regret a bit. I do regret some of my behaviour and the way I left, but the act itself was one of the best things I ever did. Why? Because it would have been way to easy to live a kinda good life in the burbs while feeling a deep sense of desperation and sadness.

I see too many people making excuses about why they stay together:

• Kids

• Can't afford to move out

• Waiting for older kids to go to University until they split up

• The relationship isn't abusive or unmanageable so why go to the trouble

• It's not worth untangling a relationship that has been together for so long

• The shame of calling it quits

Are any of these excuses worth giving up even a day of the life you could have? A life where you finally connect in the way that fulfills your needs and desires.

Nope.

I lost almost everything when I left. I also had to do a ton of work on myself and date several horrendous people before I found my nearly perfect match. It was hard, soul crushing work. But the results speak for themselves. I love the life I now have, and I could not have found this relationship without going through hell.

The pain of staying the same was worse than the prospect of going through hard times and rebuilding.

In the end, staying is hard, and leaving is hard.

Choose your hard.

Doing nothing is hard, doing something is hard.

Choose your hard.

Changing is hard, and staying the same is hard.

Choose your hard.

And whether you stay or go, take the time to make a conscious decision after you have weighed all of your options. That way no matter what you choose, it will be your choice and not just because that's where you stopped trying.

© Intentionally Unfocused 2025