Daniel Roach.Org

You may have thought you would never find yourself in this position, but here you stand. A little befuddled, a little depressed, wondering if you’re wasting your life. You might be working sixty hours a week at a job that pays too little and asks for too much. You may be staying in a relationship that looks like it’s going nowhere fast. You may be chasing after your dreams while they get further and further away. How do you know when to call it quits? How do you know when it’s finally time to throw in the towel and call the whole thing off?

If you’ve ever wondered whether or life is passing you by, it probably is. If you had to ask, it’s flying by as we speak. Happy people, content people, passionate people, they don’t ask that question. It’s like being in love. How do you know when you’re in love? You just know. How do you know you’re unsatisfied? You just know . . . if you’re honest with yourself. And most people are honest with themselves, except when it comes to their failures, then they turn to self delusion.

I’m not talking about little delusions like “this dress still fits,” or “the comb-over works.” Self delusion on the scale I’m describing is when you say that your ten year relationship still works, though you can’t stand the sight of each other anymore. You tell yourself you like your job when you couldn’t hate your boss more if you tried. That is serious self delusion and it is always a sign that you are wasting your life on a daily basis.

Here is the test for telling whether or not you fit this category. Do you go to bed every night excited for the coming morning, dreading it, or utterly indifferent? If your answer was indifference, dread, or ?I don’t know,? your life is leaving without you.

Now what are you going to do about it?

Like any addiction, you first have to admit that you have a problem and, yes, it is an addiction. If you qualify for the above categories, you are addicted to something that it wasting your life. Now you must find out what that is and put a stop to it now and forever.

It may seem as if these things are happening to you instead of being brought on by you, but you are always the cause of these addictions. It’s easy to argue that you don’t cause random accidents, but every day that you wake up and walk into a job you hate you are giving life permission to be miserable. Every day that you stay in that stale or unhealthy relationship is a day that you create your own misery. These moments are you choosing to be unhappy.

And you are addicted to this unhappiness. I know it may not seem that way, but when you go to work, you are getting your fix. When you stay with that un-significant other, you are reaffirming your unhappiness. Why? Because you feel unhappy and need a reason to stay that way. It’s a vicious cycle if ever there was one. Our unhappiness leads to blame and complaining and self pity which feel good. We like these things and we want to continue doing them so we must continue to be unhappy.

Admit this to yourself and internalize this knowledge now because it will speed your recovery greatly if you do. Deny it now and you’ll postpone a change you may desperately need. Admit your addiction, but by all means DON’T fight against it. The addiction is a creation of the mind and fighting the mind never works. It can be like quicksand dragging you down, the more you fight the harder it gets. You cannot fight against yourself, you must work with yourself.

The more you struggle and moan about your problems the more power you give them. If you catch yourself in this mindset, STOP. Stop everything you’re doing and take a deep breath. Break the thought process and the flow of energy that is building up to an unhappy crescendo and your mind will have to start over. If you can be vigilant enough to catch yourself every time it happens, you will break the habit of sinking in the quicksand. This is the same method used to break animals of bad habits. Your cat starts scratching the drapes, you squirt it with water. It isn’t so much a punishment as it is a redirection of the animal’s focus away from their habitual behavior. This is what you want to do with yourself.

Depression

There is something you need to get straight if you find yourself unhappy or dissatisfied: it is occurring for a reason. Your mind, your body and the Universe never do anything without a reason. If you are suffering from depression, there’s a reason: your life sucks.

Science has never been able to pin down the true cause of depression, despite many successful treatments, and I believe it is because they have overlooked the most obvious reasons. They looked at serotonin levels in the brain, but that is only a symptom. They examined chemical imbalances, but they found nothing conclusive. They neglected, however, to test whether or not people who suffer from depression do so for a good reason. They didn’t examine their living conditions.

Do you ever see people who are in their dream jobs, are financially abundant and have many friends suffering from depression? No. The simple reason is that they have no reason to. If you are unhappy, there is a reason. Now you must discover that reason and put a stop to it.

Honesty

If you want to change your life, now or in the future, you must start being honest with yourself. Dishonesty with one’s self is how these addictions begin. It’s when you lie to yourself and say that complaining feels good, or the situation warrants it, that you continue a self destructive pattern. That pattern is the reason you are wasting your life. It is the reason you are unhappy and the reason you are going to remain that way.

Break the habit. Break the pattern. Have a happy life.

All it takes is a little bit of honesty and a lot of courage. You have to be willing to stand up and tell yourself and anyone who asks that you no longer like your job. That what you have been working toward has been a waste. That your spouse is not the one for you. It takes untold amounts of courage. People all around the world want to do just this but they don’t and it isn’t for a lack of desire. They want to change their lives and they have the courage to do so, but they cannot bring themselves to admit they’ve wasted time.

If you have ever wondered why people stay in unhealthy relationships for too long, this is one of the reasons.

We don’t want to admit our mistakes because they may be mistakes that have lasted for years and we can’t admit throwing away that much time. You don’t want to say that your job is a dead end because ten years is a long time to spend on a dead end. You don’t want to admit that your marriage is a failure because it would mean all those years together were failures as well. You want to feel as if all that time meant something; that you might get a return on your investment.

The truth is that you won’t and if you don’t realize it now, you will only end up wasting more time. More years will pass and then you will realize that you have wasted twenty instead of ten. Many people put off making these kinds of decisions because they feel they might make them in haste. They say things like, “well I’ve only worked here for a year, maybe if I stay another year it will get better.” It hardly ever gets better.

You are a smart person. You know when the situation you are in is not the right one for you. Now you must admit it.