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.

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

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 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.

 

• 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hypocrisy, is a loaded - and very well understood - term.  And it's powerful. There are, arguably, fewer powerful insults we can throw at someone than this one - particularly the more moral and ethical the target considers themselves to be.

It is a gift, in a sense, when we bump into it, as it is perhaps the ideal introduction into the world of Shadow Psychology.


Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Hypocrisy means saying (or preaching) one thing but doing the opposite (often in secret).

It's the priest proselytizing on purity and abstinence while battling a drink problem or abusing the vulnerable; it is the avidly homophobic politician-in-public who is engaging in a homosexual relationship in private.

It's when we criticize and condemn people for acting in a way that we in fact are also acting ourselves but it can also be us hating on people for things we are not doing but wish we were.

As Jung once famously said:

Psychology and philosophy vlogger Einzelgänger gives a layman's introduction, here, and as he explains, it is not the fact that we are hypocrites in the first place that is the problem. It is that we fail to recognize it.

And that means we miss the opportunity to "integrate" these hidden aspects into our conscious selves so we are no longer dominated by misunderstood, unrecognized unconscious forces.


What We Resist...

Our darker urges exist because we resist looking at them.

And our hatred of other people's behaviour stems from the failure - or refusal - to recognize that the things we are villainising lie inside of us too.

Only when we bring these traits to the surface, then, facing them in the cold light of day and admitting that we are, also, like that too, can they ever cease to hold power over us.

So how do we do this?


"The Work"

There are many different ways to do it (you can find various techniques here).

One way is via "The Work", by Byron Katie. 

Katie has a simple "Judge Your Neighbor" exercise (with an explanatory video here).

The basic idea behind it is that whatever it is that is driving us nuts about our "neighbour" is generally the very thing we need to own up to ourselves.

And it goes without saying that it's easier to do in some cases than it is in others.

But it is always worth doing.

Why?

At the very least, as Jung says, if we learn to recognize the hypocrisy in ourselves, it might not only make us whole but it might just make us connect with people a little bit better (and isn't that what we all ultimately want?):

There's nothing as uninspiring as a blank page (metaphorically and literally speaking). Trying to figure out what to do next, whether that means writing, designing or making a life change, without actually doing anything (i.e. by just thinking about it) often does little more than keep us in a vicious cycle.

The more we try and think our way out, the blanker the "page" becomes; we try and think a bit harder - but the page never magically starts filling itself.

Aside from the odd lightening bolts, the only way out in any of these situations is through.

And therein lies the paradox.

The only way to combat our blocks or resolve whatever is keeping us stuck in a situation is to start to do whatever it is we feel we can’t do.

In this vein, Seth Godin argues there is no such thing as creative block.

Until you've dedicated thousands of hours to creating utter dross, he tells The Futur in the video (below), you can't even begin to make such a claim.


What "The Block" Actually Is

The point being, just staring at a blank piece of paper / screen does not count as having a creative block. And the reality is, the "block" is typically good old-fashioned performance anxiety, anyway. It’s our need to be perfect that can keep us "blocked".

As Godin says:

Show me 50,000 hours of writing terribly, he says, and then, he might concede we don't have what it takes. But until that day, the block is a figment of our imagination.

And this is pretty much the case for any other roadblocks we perceive in our lives that leave us feeling stuck, he argues here.


Stuck? Or Just Comfortable?

The key issue when we feel stuck, he warns, is that we can get a bit too snug and warm in the holy sanctums of our comfort zones – we get accustomed to the idea of being stuck and actually take active decisions to stay there:

How We Get Unstuck

If we want to push forward in whatever endeavour we are faced with, it’s essential we face the fact that it will always feel uncomfortable at first.

We will most likely come up with a fair amount of not-particularly-earth-shattering stuff initially.

We might make mistakes.

But, it's only by braving the period of being a rank amateur - and sticking with it anyway - by edging forward, bit by bit, that we will actually and evidentially get unstuck, he says.

And ultimately, Godin says, we only ever have three options to choose from, anyway, when we are in these situations - do something, don't do something - or obsess. 

You feel the pressure building. You know it's something you need to do and you keep putting it to one side, finding other things more interesting / exciting / easy to do instead.

But this niggling concern that had been safely tucked away at the back of your mind is now beginning to morph into a rising feeling of panic.

It's the thing you know you should do - but aren't doing.

Mel Robbins has a really useful piece of advice on this age-old problem of procrastination which is well worth considering.

While we might thinking shooting for the stars is the best way to go when it comes to our Big Ideas, actually thinking too big, being overly ambitious, can be the very thing that paralyses us in the first place, she says.


Step Back, Chill Out & Prepare To Walk Away

We get overwhelmed, as there is far too much riding on this and way too much to think about - so it's not surprising that that is all we end up doing.

Instead, she says, we need to scale it down - radically.

Recognize Rome was not built in a day.

Be realistic.

Second, we need to adopt a mentality of "I'm just going to try this out for size" and be willing to leave it there. Accept this thing might not go anywhere and make your peace with that.

But crucially, the key thing to remember about this Grand Plan is we might not even like it when we actually do it.

So before we waste any more time avoiding beginning this life-long goal we've given ourselves, we need to see if we have actually chosen the right one.

And all that might take is a week - not a life-time - which is a lot easier to get our heads around.

Ah, how nice it feels to achieve something -  anything, in fact. And how frustrating are the days when it feels beyond our reach.

We are just not getting anywhere, what previously enchanted us now irritates us - worse, it bores us stupid. And the panic sets in. Is it time to call it a day?

Well, yes, in a word. But quitting doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, as Veritasium explains in the video, below.

It turns out that when we hit a wall and enter that period of abject misery called apathy or boredom, it is actually a gift in disguise - as long as we resist the urge to distract ourselves from it.

The trick is to let it be, to soak it up to its fullest - and the payoffs are somewhat unexpected:


1. A Boost Of Creativity You Might Not Otherwise Get

According to scientific studies, there could be a direct correlation between the level of boredom you feel (slight, intense, mind-numbing etc) to the corresponding bursts of creativity you can benefit from as a result. The more bored you are, it seems, the better your ideas can get, is the theory.


2. Higher Levels Of Motivation

A key factor that motivates us into changing situations is finding ourselves in ones we don't like, so in this sense boredom tells us when it is time to shake things up. As Veritasium explains:

3. Increased Feelings Of Altruism & Purpose

If boredom hits existential crisis-level and you're questioning what you're doing with your life, this, also, has its upside. Studies have found that boredom has utimately lead people towards altruism, which, as Veritisium adds, can put the fire back in your belly:

4. Increased Clarity Regarding Goal-Setting

Lastly, one of the most unexpected, and needless to say, ironic, by-products of aimlessness is a a higher level of clarity when it comes to setting goals.

When you start asking yourself what you want to do with your life, you might find yourself in a scenario called Autobiographical Planning, he says, which is "to consider your life as a story and where you want it to go in future."

So the idea here is, don't worry the next time apathy hits and you start questioning everything. It could actually be a very good thing that you are...