What To Do If You Feel Helpless
We all feel helpless at times.
No one is immune to life’s ocean of events. Sometime we feel like we’re recklessly spinning around in a massive wave that keeps violently collapsing on itself.
But the truth is that though the feeling of helplessness is devastating, often there are more options than we realize.
There is hope.
When I got out of high school, I learned the harsh reality that my grades weren’t good enough to get into any college. Yes, they were really bad. While all my friends were going off to experience their amazing freshman year, I was stuck at home. I felt trapped in a tiny city that I was outgrowing by the minute.
I felt utterly helpless and, so I became depressed. I applied for any job out there just to get my mind off things, and a local car repair place took me in. Daily, I would go to work as a shop custodian. I was trying to work my way up to become a mechanic and then maybe a manager. That seemed like my life trajectory. There is nothing wrong with being a mechanic, it’s just not what I wanted to do in life.
One day I took a little walk on my lunch break. There were a lot of indescript buildings around and I was curious what they were all about. To my surprise, one of them was an education center that helped people get into college. That’s all I got from the tiny sign on their door. Later I went to the library to find more information on this place. Apparently they had a program that combined college prep work and remedial skills. It was a program that helped people make up classes required for college admission and tools to help you survive in college. If you completed this program successfully, you were automatically accepted into the local university. Though no one ever said it, really it was program for at-risk pre-college students motivated to go to college. That was me.
All of a sudden I felt like I won the lottery by stumbling upon this place. This opportunity was a second chance for me, so I immediately enrolled. To make a long story short, in just a few years, I graduated college with a bachelor’s degree and went on to obtain two more graduate degrees. One master’s degree was in education and guess what I taught for three years? I taught at a high school for at-risk kids and set it up so they could simultaneously earn college credit. This wasn’t the best job I ever had, but it was one of the most meaningful and personal.
In life we often think the story is over when the book is closed. But really, we can open up that book and pick up wherever we left off or start an entirely new book. I chose the latter. I decided that the story I was living before college was a tragedy, but I wanted my future to be a comedy. I wanted to be happy and fulfilled being in academia. Your options are limited when you embrace helplessness. However, they start to open up when you explore your options and ask for help. Maybe it won’t happen as soon as you like, but it will happen.
Life doesn’t always happen as you plan it. No one can predict the future. We have to live and take action now, but carefully plan for the future. In fact, taking any sort of action is better than nothing. If I never took a walk on my lunch break, maybe I would have never stumbled upon that education program. Walking wasn’t a big, bold action.
What you’ll often find is that tiny actions mean a lot over time. This is common sense, but when you’re down in the dumps it really matters. I think we have this notion that things need to happen overnight or not at all. The reality is that we get what we earn and it usually happens over time. If we don’t do anything, we don’t deserve anything. But no one said that we have to deliver everything at once. We can work on ourself and put up a few points every day until they begin to be a mountain of effort and productivity.
When we try things out and explore our options, we get feedback and data. When we can see the metrics of our life clearly laid out, we can begin to devise optimal plans of action no matter how emotionally distraught we are.
Our actions can become more strategic and impactful. For example, writing every day won’t turn you into a novelist. But with every paragraph you write, you’re fine-tuning your craft. You get to see your muddy writing and clear writing. You get to share your work with others and they help you improve your writing. When you go back to writing, these insights and strategies are in mind as you write. Already, your writing will become better because of this process and effort. This is the same for whatever you do. Just like throwing a pebble into a pond, the entire pond is affected and creates ripples from your action. In life we take little steps toward being happier too.
If you were to analyze every successful and happy person, you’ll discover that they all felt helpless in some point of their lives too. They made it through and so can you. And in some cases, like mine, you can turn that helplessness into a legacy of hopefulness for others who previously struggled just like you. You get to become the mentor to other heroes on their journey. All you have to do is take action now.
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