Finding Balance in the Cycles of Motivation and Hopelessness

Do you ever wake up and feel inspired? Like you have a clear vision that it’s actually going to all work out for once. Your heart lights up and start making your plans! Your dream life is falling into place.

And then the next day somehow that inspiration is gone. You feel hopeless. Stuck. Unmotivated.

But how? It was just here. It felt so tangible, how could you have lost it? But you did. You lost it. Perhaps you lost it the next day, or the next week, or the next month, but eventually we all lose it.

And then it eventually finds its way back.

This is what is known as samsara, the cyclicality of life.

samsara

Everything comes and goes in cycles. Nothing is permanent. Trying to cling and latch onto something will lead to suffering.

To escape this cycle is to free yourself.

To zoom out and take a meta perspective on your day to day samsara cycles, you can recognize the highs and lows of the experience and view them in a detached way, as a witness, not the experiencer of the suffering.

It takes practice, as there is a difference between the intellectual understanding of it and the direct experience of it.

Here’s what’s helped me on my journey:

Understand your true nature

This can be done through self-inquiry, meditation, yoga, and spiritual practice. Try to dig deep and penetrate your conditioned understanding of the self. Realize that the self is actually a construct of the mind. The truth is there is no self. We are all part of a whole that is much more expansive than the small box we frame ourselves in. Don’t take my word for it though, keep questioning things for yourself and come to your own conclusion.

Observe, do not react to the cycles

This takes a steady mind, but try to observe the cycles as they appear in your life without reacting. Notice how the joyful, peak moments of the cycle are often followed by periods of…