No B.S Friday: When I’m feeling like I’m out of options, I do this…
What is despair?
Despair is the feeling that comes when you don’t have any more choices.
It’s what happens when you’re not happy with the hand life dealt you, but there is nothing you can do about it.
Despair is the throwing up of hands and surrendering to fate.
But you always have a choice. Always.
We often just don’t see where choice actually begins.
Like, a friend of mine was having trouble in the marriage. She said she couldn’t possibly leave because the kids needed a stable family unit.
I said, that’s a choice. You could choose to break up the family unit. You could choose to sell your husbands whiskey library and go to India. There’s lots of possible choice.
The first choice you made is to keep the family together. That does narrow the options considerably, but there’s a choice that you’re making there.
Or take someone who doesn’t feel like they can quit there job because there’s bills to pay and debt to pay off. They don’t feel like they have a choice.
But they do. The could declare bankruptcy. They could turn to a life of elaborate museum heists. They could sell organs on the black market.
There all difficult choices with difficult consequences, but the point is there is a choice that has been made to pay off debts.
Or maybe you relationship with the inlaws is toxic, and they make your kids sad. You want them to change, but you can’t see how that’s ever going to happen, and so you don’t feel like there’s anything you can do.
But there’s a choice in the background there too. You’re choosing to stay in the same city and keep the relationship with your kids alive. You could move to a boat of Bangladesh and home-school your kids. There’s lot of options.
Now, none of this is helpful. It’s not meant to be helpful. Pointing out that there are an infinite number of very difficult choices you could make in any given moment is not going to help you out of a jam.
But it does do one thing.
It disarms despair.
Once you realise that there are choices – once you realise that you are actually making choices already – you realise you have agency. You realise that you still have moves to make.
Despair is the deflating energy that comes with thinking that you have zero options and zero choices.
But once you remember that you do have options – once you name a few, no matter how ridiculous they might be (I could join the Kalahari Bushmen in Africa) – once you name a few you realise that you still have agency and you still have power.
Despair is banished.
So if you’re in that energetic whirlpool of despair, just name the choices that you are already making. Name some outlandish choices you could make.
Just this alone will return you to a position of power.
And from there, you’ll be better able to assess your options with clear-eyes.
JG.
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