It’s not unusual, when life goes south, to want someone to tell us everything is going to be OK.

When my life hit a rough patch, that’s exactly what I wanted.

And the people I turned to were psychics.

Desperate for some kind of reassurance that things would get better, they were the only people I could think of who could give me a glimmer of hope that my life would get back on track again.

And each time they did.

I would come away after each session floating on air, filled with unbridled joy and an unshakeable belief that everything in my life would work out just fine — so much better than fine, in fact.

I became intoxicated with the drug of possibility.

And then I waited.

Impatient for life to get better, I kept expecting to see signs of its drastic improvement around every corner.

But I didn’t see any. 

The bind I found myself in far outlasted the period of time I would give myself these heady injections of baseless joy.

And so my moods would go up and down like a psychotic yo-yo: excited and relieved one minute; desperate and angry the next.

It would take seeing another behaving just like me to finally get a grip on my own missteps.

A friend— like me — would also get a massive high from going to psychics and being filled with narcotic-free “hope hits” of galactic proportions.

And, like any other “hit”, the comedown was just as spectacular.

Within a week of these types of pilgrimages, I would watch as she would be left confused, deflated and despairing.

And as an observer, it was very easy to see why.

This fleeting glimpse of paradise was the part that was actually causing her more harm, arguably, than the predicament she was in.

I felt the same way. And so I stopped turning to psychics.


When Things Don't Get Better

The truth is, some things don’t ever seem to improve (note: this is being written in Covid-lockdown Stage 2) — or, at least they can take a very, very long time to.

We can always find ourselves trapped in situations which we once thought would resolve themselves quickly, only to find ourselves months — or even years — later, still there, still hoping for change, still trying to escape.

It might be a bad marriage.

It might be a shitty job.

It might be that we had to move back in with our parents because we finally left that bad marriage or quit that shitty job and now we have found a brand new place to be stuck in.

And life can suck for a very long time.

The thing is, just knowing that something isn’t working isn’t enough to make that thing change.

And blind faith that it will somehow magically get better next week, next month, or next year, isn’t likely to help either.

To survive the spirit-crushing nature of our predicaments, then, we have to throw ourselves a rope — one that is, conversely, both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time.

The real lifeline comes from embracing the opposites and living both truths side by side, as James Stockdale will tell you.


The Stockdale Paradox

Relentless optimism in a situation where you don’t really have anything to be optimistic about is more than just deluded thinking.

When you are a prisoner of war, it can actually be life-threatening.

Stockdale, a naval officer at the time of the Vietnam War, had to learn this the hard way when he was held in a POW camp for seven long years.

This is an account of his time there by Jim Collins in his book, Good To Great:

Initially, when Collins asked Stockdale how he endured this, he replied that he “never lost faith in the end of the story”.

He “never doubted” that he would get out one day, that he “would prevail in the end” and ultimately be defined by the experience in the best way possible.

Yet, at the same time, Stockdale said that the ones who suffered the most in that camp — and even died prematurely — were in fact, the optimists.

How so?

Again from Collins' book, Good To Great:

A Marriage Of Opposites

The lesson, said Stockdale — and the thing that kept him going — was to hold two contrasting beliefs in his mind.

He wasn’t getting out by Christmas. But he absolutely was getting out.

The trick was not to allow his optimism to blind him to the “brutal facts” of his situation, which were just as vital to his survival during this time.

As he told Collins:

Facing facts might not be as sexy as “you will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger” but it is vital we do so, particularly when we feel trapped.

While optimism is an essential component of psychological health; blind optimism — the kind where we think life will magically sort itself out on its own — is a dangerous state to stay in.

Just like the blissful high that comes from a visit to a tarot card reader, these kinds of states aren’t meant to last.

Eventually reality will come crashing in, regardless of whether we want to face it or not.

So balancing faith with facts, is an advisable way to navigate these times; to stay grounded — not deluded.

Aside from anything, it might just save us from a broken heart.

No-one said we always have to be perky.

While there are obvious benefits to releasing negative emotions, like having a good cry, there are also quite a few advantages of being in a stinking bad mood.

Here are just a few:


1. Effectiveness

From Big Think:

In other words, it means people in a bad mood "get things done".

The story continues:

We don't faff around, in other words.

(N.B. The effect is more pronounced amongst people who are used to bad moods - i.e. it doesn't distract them when a black cloud hovers over them, unlike happy campers who are not as used to low spells and so are more likely to be derailed by them.

According to social psychologist, Joseph Forgas, bad moods make us likelier to stick at things.

From The Conversation:

As Forgas adds in the same article, we are also a lot better at remembering stuff:

And we are also a lot less biased, Forgas says:

From The New York Times (referring to a study led by Forgas):

"A 2006 study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology tested subjects on their ability to detect a lie. Subjects who were put in a negative mood by watching a short film about dying of cancer were far more likely to detect lies than subjects who were put in a good mood by watching a clip from a comedy show."

And finally, in undoubtedly the most important finding of all, the act of embracing our bad moods (rather than pretending we don't have them), can literally save our lives.

From the BBC (referring to a 2010 study of patients with coronary artery disease, which looked at their relationship with expressing anger):

Having a sense of purpose in life does a lot more than give us a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, according to a few key research studies.

Aside from putting the brakes on late stage cognitive decline such as Dementia and Alzheimer's, feeling our lives have meaning and purpose has been found to act as a buffer against heart attacks and strokes.

We could literally be extending our lives by finding what really makes us tick.

From Science Daily, referring to a Mount Sinai study in the US:

From NJ.com:

And from NPR, referring to the findings of the JAMA Current Open Study:

Summing up the importance of having a life purpose is cardiologist Alan Rozanski, who was involved in the Mount Sinai study, quoted in the NPR story:

It’s not always possible to feel fired up. When it comes to the magic of motivation, the only thing we can actually rely on is the fact that we can’t rely on it all.

Our enthusiasm levels fluctuate throughout the day, waxing and waning with our circadian rhythms. All being well, they run their natural course and we feel the fire in our bellies again.

Other times our “down” spells can go on for what feels like a lifetime.

We stare at blank screens, with blank minds and zero idea how to get back to that place of inspired action we had before.

And this, says author Mark Manson, is where we can make a vital mistake.

We wait for inspiration to come.

We wait for that magical feeling, that breakthrough idea, to be “in the right frame of mind” in order to begin.

The thing is, while it might very well come eventually, we potentially waste a lot of time waiting for it, he says.

Manson’s advice is simple: just do something. Anything — literally.

As he writes in his blog:

The "Do Something" Principle

Ideas don’t come just by looking at a screen. Taking action on something — even if it is unrelated — he suggests, is the missing ingredient.

It’s what gives us a kick-start.

The way we feel from taking action on something then motivates us to take action on other things, which then motivates us even further.

The three components of Action, Inspiration and Motivation then form an endless loop (ideally), each feeding off each other.

But the key to always remember, he writes, is that the action part is the catalyst. It’s always the first step.

Action is what is required in order to get inspiration or motivation.

Manson, a former life coach, calls this the “Do Something Principle”.

It’s a simple piece of advice which he has given to his clients — and to himself — and he swears by it.

So the next time you’re sitting in the proverbial waiting room and the flash of inspiration still hasn’t arrived, try taking action on something — either on the task at hand, or on literally anything else instead.

You might find the wheels of your creative train will start to grease themselves.

It feels extremely satisfying coming to the end of a task, completing something, getting stuff done, particularly if it has taken a lot of work to do.

The joy of facing the next day with a clean slate.

While this might sound like something worth aiming for (and in certain cases it can be), it can also, paradoxically be hazardous for our productivity levels.

In fact, being too proficient at getting stuff done can be the very thing that can stop us from being able to get started the next day.


The Perils Of A Blank Slate

Any of us who have ever suffered from creative block knows how excruciating it is to stare endlessly at a blank page (figuratively or otherwise), praying for inspiration to come flooding in.

We all know that the magic never came that way.

That's why some of the best advice out there for creatives who find themselves in this position is just to write/create something, anything - even if it's complete drivel.

It gets the wheels turning and gives us something to work with (see Mark Manson's tip, the "Do Something Principle", and Tim Ferriss, with his "Two Crappy Pages").


The Zeigarnik Effect

But there's another, arguably easier, way.

It requires walking away from a creative task before it is done and, specifically, to resist the urge to complete it before we hit the hay.

That incomplete task will linger in our minds and compel us to go back to it. Our brains can't help it. We need closure.

This phenomenon is called The Zeigarnik Effect.

Named after psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, the concept was inspired by an observation that waiters in a restaurant had an uncanny ability to remember details about orders only up until the point that the food had been served.

Once service was complete, so was any memory they had of the details of it.

It led Zeigarnik to later conclude that we had a significantly higher likelihood to recall unfinished tasks (and forget completed ones), as author and psychologist Adam Grant, notes in his book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World:

"Open Loops"

These things left undone, which play on our minds, are called "Open Loops".

These "loops" or incomplete tasks, cause an internal tension in our minds, where we can't stop thinking about them, as Video essayist, Will Schoder explains in the video below:

But that's not all it does. It also boosts our motivation to do them.

Says Schoder:

So having a task left undone is, by default, a kind of way round creative block and procrastination.

Always make sure we have something to do and we won't ever have to face the dreaded blank slate.


Strategic Procrastination

There is another term for this, according Grant. He calls it "Strategic Procrastination".

Strategic Procrastination is the deliberate act of putting something off to ensure it stays in our minds and that we pick it up again.

It also means giving ourselves the time and space we need to potentially come up with better ideas. And it has been unwittingly applied by the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King throughout history, according to Grant.

So the next you want something to get up for and you are hellbent on increasing your chances of getting in "the zone", then put it down - whatever it is you're working on.

It will still be there tomorrow and you'll be thankful it is.

In any endeavour, we can hit a point where we ask, "Is this really worth it?".  We are not getting anywhere, it feels like a thankless task and we wonder if all that enthusiasm and excitement we had in the early days was ultimately misplaced.

It can be really hard to know what the right step is for us to take. Our minds might say one thing, our hearts another. Are we in denial? Are we refusing to face facts? Are we just committed to this because we have been doing it for so long?

There is actually a psychological term that's related to this latter question: it's called the "sunk cost fallacy".

It basically refers to those times when we find it really hard to walk away from something simply because we have invested so much time and effort in it. 

We can't face the possibility that our precious time has been wasted, so we plough on, despite all signs to the contrary telling us to stop.


How Can We Tell When It's Time To Quit?

But the truth is, as Marie Forleo points out in the video below, some things are worth walking away from.

And when we do, we will feel better for it, possibly relieved in fact.

​But there are other times where the choice is not so clear.

Say it is a passion and it means a lot to you and you are not getting anywhere. What then? How can we tell if we are deluding ourselves or if we have just hit a bump in the road?


"The 10-Year Rule"

Forleo  says "The 10-Year Rule" is worth remembering here. 

She explains that if you really want to know how committed you are  - to anything - it is to ask yourself a simple question:

If you feel a gut wrench right now even considering this question, you have your answer.

You might have just found yourself in a "dip", i.e., a rough patch. You might be suffering from burnout and just need to take a break, step back and recap.

If, however, you feel neutral - or a sense of relief - then you also have your answer. 

Like anything in life, if you are happy and willing to walk away from it - for good -  it might not have been right for you in the first place.

Passion projects can be tricky, not always in finding out what they are (although that is hard enough), but more in the actual execution of them. They require a lot of effort and all too frequently they attract little (if any) reward.

They are invariably thankless tasks. We can find ourselves grafting for weeks, months, years, even, with no external validation or financial gain of any kind.

Before long, what once made us invigorated will make us feel drained; what was previously a passion will become a pain; what fulfilled us will leave us feeling resentful.

What can be done, then, about this inevitable side-effect of sticking with our dreams, when there appears to be no external evidence to convince us it is worth sticking at in the first place?


Passion At Any Cost?

There are three parts to look at here:

1. What Drives Us Vs What Pays The Bills
2. If Passion Projects Have To Make Money
3. What We Are Willing To Do (In The Name Of Our Passion)

Let’s look at the first:


1. What Drives Us Vs What Pays The Bills

There is a key difference between being intrinsically and extrinsically motivated, as much as there is a difference in being intrinsically and extrinsically rewarded.

The first kind — being intrinsically driven — is creating-for-creating-sake, i.e. doing something for the love of it. We do this, regardless of reward.

The second kind — being extrinsically driven — is doing something for what we will get because of it i.e, money, career progression and so on. We do this, because of the reward.


How Passions Can Falter

By definition, passion projects are intrinsically-driven to begin with. There was a point in time when we did this for the joy of it.

But akin to the law of diminishing returns, what once thrilled us about our passion project will inevitably cease to at some point.

Sometimes we can get back to that basic starting point. We can emerge from our dejected state and rediscover what it was that gripped us so much in the first place — and rekindle it.

However, often the reason we can’t do this, is that we fail to notice that a new need has replaced the one that fired us up originally.

And that is invariably about making money.


The Downside Of Thinking Extrinsically

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with desiring money for our efforts, being too driven by financial gain can paradoxically have a demotivating effect.

In a 1971 study, psychologist Edward Deci found that the act of offering an external reward, (i.e. money), to an individual who was already motivated to undertake a task, had the effect of making him less motivated to do it.

When the carrot of money is dangled in front of the eyes of someone who is lost in their passion, blissfully unaware of the world around them, their focus quickly shifts to the money and not the act itself.

In other words, their creative libidos can tank.

Which brings us to point number 2:


2. Do Passion Projects Have To Make Money?

Is it a fallacy to believe we will always be financially compensated for doing what we love? And is it perfectly OK to have passion projects which don’t actually make any money at all?

The answer to the 2nd question is a resounding “yes”. It’s called having a hobby.

The 1st question is a bit trickier to answer.

There are more self-help gurus out there than we care to count who will tell us we can make our dreams come true - and get rich doing it.

Even Joseph Campbell told us to “follow our bliss”. 

But did he mean in order to make money? Or did he just mean ‘therein lies the path to happiness’?

Ideally you want to get both but what Campbell wanted to stress was that we should not sacrifice one for the other.

We shouldn’t turn our back on our passion for money. But equally if we don’t get that money, the passion is still worth having:

Are We Being Delusional By Wanting It All?

In Barbara Sher’s opinion, our dreams don’t need to make us money — and in fact few dreams actually do (contrary to what YouTube gurus tell us).

She argues (here) that it is a false narrative we present ourselves when we align passion with money and use the inability to earn an income from a passion project as the reason for not doing it in the first place.

Earning an income and doing something we love are invariably two separate things, no matter how much we want them to be the same, Sher says.

And we are effectively shooting ourselves in the foot if we use the former to deny ourselves the latter. 

Because realistically, she says, we are not going to be able to easily support ourselves writing poetry all day long.

Having a day-job and a side-hustle or hobby, then, is the first thing to consider at this juncture.

And if that idea makes us recoil in horror, then we need to look at what we are prepared to do in the name of our passion.

And this leads us to point number 3:


3. What We Are Willing To Do 

Mark Manson posted an interesting video recently regarding the issue of what we think we want out of our lives and the reality of actually doing it.

He cites the example of him craving the ideal lifestyle of a surfer (along with the sex appeal that comes with it) but admits that the actual act of learning to surf bores him stupid.

This is the reality vs the fantasy.

As Manson explains in his video, we frequently look to the lives of others and think that’s what we want but we don’t actually want to do what it takes to be like them.

This isn’t a flaw in us, it’s a sign that something isn’t for us.

The Lives Of Others

I like the idea of the lifestyle of an Instagram influencer who floats around the world looking glamorous and living in Bali off the back of multiple 6-figure sponsorship deals.

The problem is, I don’t want my life documented in photographs for all to see. It’s that simple.

The same goes for what we are willing to do in the name of our passion projects.

If we are frustrated at the lack of success we are experiencing but are unwilling to do what it takes to make it successful, we will hit a brick wall.

If we detest basic functions like marketing, promotion or networking, for example — or we don’t like the idea of actually running a business — then we need to ask ourselves a few basic questions.


Basic Questions

So, here is the idiot's guide to some basic — and brutal — questions we need to ask ourselves when we are feeling resentful and frustrated over our lack of success.

• Why are we doing this?
• Is this actually a hobby or something bigger?
• Will anyone else get value out of this?
• Is it something people are willing to pay for (or ever will be)?
• Is it linked to a viable business model?
• Are we willing to undertake business-like activities? If not now, will this change in the future?
• Do we actually want to run a business?
• Is it better to look elsewhere to bolster our incomes? OR are we prepared to radically re-evaluate what we are willing to do with our passions?

The answers we get at this point might tell us if our frustrations are anchored in delusion, denial or procrastination.

While passion projects can begin as things that ecstatically allow us to escape reality, at some point, particularly if our needs change, we will need to face reality.

If we don’t do this, we risk sabotaging an area of our lives which can bring us unbridled joy, simply by viewing it through a distorted lens.

I would argue that the number one killer of creativity (and happiness, in general, for that matter) is the need for brilliance.

It‘s paralyzing. It‘s also depressing, as it is steeped in — and is rocket fuel for — feelings of gross inadequacy.

If we didn’t feel inadequate already, then piling ridiculous expectations on ourselves for something we haven’t even done yet (or have/own/become) is a guaranteed way to get there.

When we aim disproportionately too high, the Ugly Sister of Inadequacy — the Critical Inner Voice — is then, by default, given free reign to well and truly put the boot in.

It relishes this as an opportunity to remind us in a myriad of ways just how much of a ridiculous failure we really are. “We’re never going to get there”, it whispers, “So, why bother?”

This is not to say we shouldn’t aim high in life, by the way. But there are times when it helps to scale it back a bit.


The Joy Of Zero Expectations

Having zero expectations is a joy in itself — regardless of what comes of it (which is literally the point).

There is so much pressure in life to be “this”, look like “that” and live an Instagram-worthy life. It’s flat-out miraculous to find a place in this world where we can be completely free of any expectations.

And that is why creating-without-expectation is so incredibly healthy. It is creativity for creativity’s sake, giving us that one sacred place, free of obligation, where we can just be.


Finding Our True Voices

Dropping our expectations, or our ambition, every now and again can also free us from hive-like thinking, which is vital if we are to act in a way that is unique to each and every one of us.

Often our goals (and ultimately our identities) our influenced largely by people we see in the world who have already “made it”.

We want to be like them, we think they have found the perfect formula, which, if followed to the letter will make us as “happy” and “successful” as they are.

Before we realise it, we have modeled our ideas and lives on them.

So, if we want to be a successful blogger, for example, we might obediently look at what other successful bloggers have done and think — “there’s the formula — they’ve got it right”.

So, we just do what they do. We operate on the assumption that if we follow their rules, implement their procedures, reach out to the same kinds of people, then bingo — we’ll be like them and we’ll have the kinds of lives they have.

And while that might actually work in some cases, we need to ask ourselves if this is it what we actually want for ourselves?

Is there a certain degree of emptiness in this approach? Are we denying ourselves the ability to chart our own paths?

As Joseph Campbell once said:

Charting Our Own Paths

Paradoxically, embracing a lack of ambition and significantly lowering our expectations are what allows us to find out what our path actually looks like.

Here are some ways it helps:

1. Procrastination
We can sideline procrastination and actually get started on something new (rather than just fantasize about it), because it doesn’t really matter. The pressure is off.

(As Mel Robbins argues here, excessively ambitious plans can be the very thing that prevents us from actually starting a new project, because of the inordinate pressure it puts on us.)

2. Risk-Taking
We can take risks when we are in this state as we are not trying to prove anything to anyone. As a result, we are far more likely to try something new, or take a new approach — and do something that’s more like us.

3. Creative Block
Being a bit crap allows us to avoid creative blocks. We can actually leverage it as a technique when we need to.

(Tim Ferriss testifies to this approach with his “Two Crappy Pages” tip.)

4. Purpose
Following our natural inclination to do something, regardless of the outcome, can be a gateway to discovering what really matters to us. This is what will bring us greater meaning and a sense of purpose in the long run.

5. Intrinsic Motivation
By creating something for the simple joy of doing it, we get a taste for what it feels like to be intrinsically motivated. There are no expectations on us, no-one is asking us (or paying us, even) to do this — we are acting autonomously, which in turns gives us:

6. Agency
We gain a sense of agency from doing something we are not obligated to do. We gain a feeling of control over part of our lives, that we might not otherwise have in other areas, which is vital to our health and well-being.

7. Flow/The Zone
Being intrinsically driven and autonomously led are vital ingredients for entering that elusive — and highly sought-after — flow state. Doing what we genuinely like to do — without expectation — is far more likely to get us in the zone than killing ourselves with unreasonable expectations and following cookie-cutter methods to get what we think we should have.

8. Eureka Moments
Ideas come when we are not trying — when we have switched off. Dropping the expectations, easing up on ourselves and literally going with the flow is then far more likely to lead to those breakthrough moments. And this, ironically, will likely take us to that magical place we had, at last, stopped chasing after.

It's not unusual to run on auto-pilot, particularly when life is hectic: the diary is packed, the to-do list is brimming, the days are full.

What is unusual (and beats being busy every time) is to take a step back - as frequently as we can - and reassess; to look at what we are doing and ask ourselves: "Am I being true to myself?"

This kind of question is a catch-all for an infinite number of variations:

"Is this who I am?"
"Is this what I want?".
"Am I heading in the right direction?"
"Did I mean what I just said?"
"Do I really think that?"
"Is this person right for me?"
"Is this job/career really what I am about?"

And so on. And, as with all of them, we will, at times dislike the answers we get.

And that's a key reason why we don't ask ourselves these types of questions in the first place.

Or, we simply don't think to.


Wake-Up Calls

The thing is, if we keep dodging them, they will eventually present themselves to us in a way that we cannot escape.

This is what a mid-life crisis is all about. 

It's about having these very questions thrust starkly in front of us at a time when we feel they must be answered.

It's when we begin to accept a truth about something (or many things) that we have, perhaps, always known deep inside but ignored.

And that dereliction of duty has given us a life that isn't the one we actually want.

It becomes a crisis because by the time life forces us to confront this, it comes with a sense of urgency inevitably due to the age at which we are made to face it.

Changes, then, have to be made - and fast.


Paying The Price

This is when marriages fail, when careers implode and when nervous breakdowns come knocking. 

It is anything but pleasant.

And it is anything but the hedonistic red sports-car-driving caricature of mid-life that is so often painted for us.

What's worse is that while it will take just minutes to undo a life that has been built over decades, it might very well take years to get to the New Life - and to get there in one piece.

Inevitably, by the time we do get there, a big part of us will have wished that we had listened to that voice inside our heads so many years earlier when it was whispering, "this person isn't right for you", or "your career is killing you".


Being "Congruent"

While this form of radical self-honesty might seem a bit extreme, it doesn't always have to reach existential levels. And we don't have to wait for a crisis to make changes.

There are subtle ways we can tap into this "knowing" right at this very minute, before it reaches such a dramatic point that it is forced to become a wake-up call.

It is called congruence.

Congruence (and its opposite, incongruence) is a concept that was coined by a psychologist by the name of Carl Rogers, which Jordan Peterson delves into in each of the videos below.

Being congruent basically means aligning body, mind and spirit. It's when our beliefs, values and desires line up with our actions.

By its nature, it requires being in touch with what we really think, what we really stand for, what we really want, who we really want to be etc.

It means recognizing the little voice in our head and actually listening to it.

The Body's Messages

And as Peterson explains, if we can't hear the voice, our body will also tell us when we are out of step.  In his words, acting incongruently will make us feel "weak".

This is not weak, as in the machismo sense - it is in the sense that acting "out of alignment" dis-empowers us, destabilises us internally, puts us on the back foot.

We all know, for example, what it feels like when something feels "off", or not quite right.

We have all had a "bad feeling" about something at some point in our lives or done something and wish we hadn't as it didn't feel like us. 

We might agree to an arrangement and a big part of us wishes we hadn't. We might make a decision and feel conflicted about it. We might say something and immediately regret it.  We might push forward with a plan but it feels empty. There's no life in it. We aren't all in.

And that's what this is really about - being all in.

Because there is only so long that we can coast along, living a half-life: being in relationships that aren't right for us, working jobs we hate, being friends with people who don't have our backs, failing to connect meaningfully with people who do.

It is a form of self-betrayal which eats away at us each time we say or do something that contradicts our true nature - frequently in such subtle ways we fail to notice it at the time, if we are not paying attention.

Until at some point, much later in life, we are made to.

And when that happens, there won't be a red sports car waiting for us. 

It will be something very different, indeed.

Feeling powerless and helpless is a key factor behind anxiety and depression. There's a cure for that.

We can frequently find ourselves in incredibly demoralizing situations.

Take the average office. For many of us, it provides little more than a delightful daily cocktail of insufficient pay, mindbogglingly repetitive tasks and stifling levels of box-ticking.

Feeling like a cog in a wheel is hard enough when this is a job to pay the bills (rather than a step up the ladder to something greater).

It can become intolerable, however, when we are perpetually undermined, given insufficient freedom to make decisions and are left feeling overworked, undervalued and underpaid.

For many of us, quitting isn’t an option, which just compounds the misery we feel. We can’t take action to rectify the situation and the feeling of helplessness takes root, with no visible remedy in sight.

It‘s’ the perfect recipe for apathy, at best. Really, why bother?


Why Agency Matters

The reason why we get dragged down so much, says Johann Hari in this Big Think video, is that we have a strong psychological need for “agency” — the sense of being in control of the direction of our lives.

Having a lack of agency is a key factor behind work-related depression and anxiety, he says, quoting the work of Australian scientist, Michael Marmot:

"If you go to work and you feel controlled - you feel you have few or limited choices - you are significantly more likely to become depressed."

So what’s the answer when we feel beaten down and we lack this sense of control over our lives?

And the answer? Not surprisingly, it is to take back control.


The Need To Take Back Control

There are many ways we can do this.

The example Hari cites in the Big Think video might seem to be a bit too much of a jump for some right now but is instructive all the same.

In the case he highlights, a husband and wife quit their jobs to run a bike shop together. The act of being responsible for it had the inadvertent effect of combating their prior feelings of depression and anxiety.

This is great, but...

While we might aspire to do that (run our own show), we can’t always change our external environment at the click of our fingers.

The key, then, is to understand how we get that feeling of being in control in our everyday life.

A 1970's psychology study in a U.S. care home might give us some clues about how to achieve that.


Arden House

In the late 1970's, esteemed Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer and her colleague Judith Rodin, conducted what was to become a landmark experiment in Arden House, a care home in New England.

What they did was deceptively simple but startlingly effective.

Langer and Rodin divided the residents into two groups, both of which were given plants to care for and films to watch, with a subtle variation in the parameters set around the control group.

While one group had everything done for them, the other was given the power to make decisions for themselves.

Nothing grand, they were simply given the ability to decide where and when they would receive visitors, if and when they would watch the films being shown and in what way they would care for their houseplants (how often they would water them, where they would place them in their rooms and so on).

The idea being, writes Langer in her book Counterclockwise, was to make this group feel actively engaged with the world around them — and less of a passive bystander.

The results were remarkable.

The Results

Eighteen months later, they revisited Arden House, compared the two groups and found that the control group were not only healthier, happier and more alert but twice as many of them were alive.

It raised the idea that not only is the feeling of control directly linked to happiness - it's linked to longevity, too.

What is so reassuring about this study, is that sometimes the desire to be in control of our lives can take on what feel like unreachable goals - we want to own a house, run our own business, be in a position of status. And, of course, these things might come.

But for the time in between, it is a relief to know that the things that markedly improve our happiness levels right now are the little decisions we are able to take every day - and knowing that there are always some aspects of our lives (if not all) that we are in control of.


What We Can Do Now

Even if it is just choosing what we focus on, there are always some aspects of our lives (if not all) that we are in control of — and they might be more vital to our long-term health and happiness than we realise.

Here are a few suggestions to get started:

• If f you are in a job you hate and you can leave, leave. If you are that unhappy where you are, you need to do it.

 

• If you are in a situation, where you are surrounded by people that make you feel powerless and you can leave it, again, leave — or at least restrict the amount of time you spend around them.

 

• If you can, find something in your life that gives you meaning. This can be volunteering, it can be adopting a pet pooch, it doesn’t matter. We can never underestimate the power that a meaningful existence has on us as individuals. It literally gives us a reason-to-be.
  

 

• If you feel inclined, think about starting a project that is yours and yours alone (it could be growing vegetables, it could be starting a blog). This is something that belongs to you, that you can take ownership of and that you can always come back to, regardless of what else is going on in your life. It is your safe haven.
  

 

• Apply The “Do Something Principle”, coined by Mark Manson. Take action on something — literally anything . It will change your state of mind.

 

• Take advantage of The Zeigarnik Effect. Give yourself a task and then put it down before you have finished it. You will be compelled to return to it later and that feeling of having something to do might give you a well-needed boost.

 

• Move if you can. It sounds like obvious advice but physical movement helps. A short, brisk walk will blow away the cobwebs and ideas might start to flow a bit more freely that sitting and ruminating (but sometimes just sitting helps too — see last point).

 

• Control what you watch on the TV, particularly the news when it’s always bad news (this is being written peak Covid 19). Our negativity bias draws us towards catastrophes and disasters which can leave us feeling demoralized and demotivated. It’s a perfect recipe for feeling hopeless. Restrict your exposure to that.

 

• Learn how to take control of your emotional state. If you can, start seeing a therapist. If you can’t, learn a D.I.Y. technique like tapping (EFT). You won’t be able to maintain a feeling of control if you aren’t fully engaged with how you feel.

 

• Otherwise, simply take a break every now and again. Reset yourself: turn off the laptop, switch off the TV, put down your phone. Stare out the window, meditate, take a nap, deliberately relax. Give yourself a chance to gain a new perspective. If you are waiting for a “break-through moment”, a flash of insight, a way to get out of this situation you’re in, they tend to come knocking at times like these.

When  we talk to the uninitiated about Shadow Psychology: our repressed states, the idea about "integrating" our darker, unacknowledged traits in order to be fully realised "whole" human beings - we can forgive people if they look back at us blankly,  unashamedly uninterested.

But mutter the word "hypocrite" in anyone's direction and we will get a decidedly different response.

We are ultimatel