Hopelessness

As a shop owner, perhaps more frequently than you care to admit, you may find yourself sitting in hopelessness. When your accountant hands over that upsetting P&L report; when there’s an unexpected slump in sales; when you make an oops buying mistake – that little voice starts whispering: Why on earth did you ever open a shop?

No matter how much you rationalize, give yourself pep-talks, or find other retailers to commiserate with, hopelessness has reared its head and a downward spiral has begun.

Feelings of hopelessness arrive when we feel desperately stuck, not knowing what direction to take, feeling unable to handle a stressful situation or resolve something futile. It triggers strong notions that we don’t have the power to start, change or stop in life, bringing with it the “solution” to just give up.

Pain happens when we allow ourselves to believe we’re powerless. It rips away dreams and the will to keep going when things are difficult. Imagine a chart of emotions with hopelessness one level above rock bottom, below fear and above apathy. Hopelessness is where we go to flee from fear, an ineffective “solution” to escape from sadness, anger and frustration.

Hopelessness gets triggered from prior experiences of failure and loss. A bad year (month, week, day) of sales and we suddenly feel like a failure. Hopelessness slinks in shortly after. In a backwards way, hopelessness is trying to keep us safe from anticipated new failures and loss. It exposes a false core belief that life is meaningless, that you are meaningless, that your existence is a waste.

In other words, people are prone to hopelessness when they believe they aren’t fulfilling their Soul Purpose, withholding their authentic divinity. This hamster wheel of repeating patterns gets nowhere. Interestingly, hopelessness often arrives right before a positive life change. Why? To keep us “safely” stuck in muck, not having to risk anything, not feeling deservingly empowered.

The irony is, not allowing yourself to feel and admit hopelessness, it becomes the one in charge of your life.  Since it’s triggered but suppressed, you deaden to joy no matter how successful your shop is.

THE CORE OF HOPELESSNESS: AKA KARMA 101

On a karmic (cause and effect) level, we are prone to hopelessness because of what we’ve done in the past that we still feel (subconsciously) guilty about. How it works: 

• We do something we believe caused pain or loss.
• We decide we are bad and undeserving, especially of whatever we caused hurt to.
• Subconsciously, we feel we must push away or destroy whatever we’ve hurt to keep it “safe” from us.
• We then feel hopeless about what we did, believing we can never clean it up.
• Most importantly, we feel disappointed and hopeless about ourselves since we know we are Higher Consciousness, loving, powerful beings.
• Life becomes meaningless and a rollercoaster ride of hopelessness, trying all kinds of ways to not feel it.

In other words, hopelessness is triggered from the accumulated negative actions we’ve committed and haven’t cleaned up.  As more pile up, we feel hopeless about more aspects of life.

Since we can’t run from karma, we attract reminders of all the hopelessness we feel about ourselves that we’ve tucked away but subconsciously message out. We’re then surprised to manifest hopelessness, wondering why life isn’t working!  And the beat goes on.

FIVE SUGGESTIONS TO CLIMB OUT OF HOPELESSNESS

1. Taking an observer stance, recognize hopelessness when it arises, giving yourself permission to consciously feel it. If you’ve never allowed yourself to feel it, it might be scary, but know that the sooner you do, the sooner it runs its course. Suppressing, ignoring, judging or numbing it, keeps it (and you) stuck. Remember: What you resist persists. And grows. And seeps into everything.

2. Have the intention to discover the deeper fears being triggered that hopelessness covers up.

3. Look more deeply, asking to remember guilt-filled actions you’ve suppressed and forgotten about. Trust whatever memories come to mind. Mindful meditation can help with this.

4. Ask what you can do to resolve or clean up those actions, trusting what your Higher Consciousness directs you to do. This can be big or small, a symbolic gesture, an act of support, or paying it forward

5. Ask and answer honestly: Does the business you’ve chosen feel like your authentic, meaningful, Highest direction? The more you create meaningfulness in your life, the less prone you are to hopelessness!

The good news is that you are not powerless, and things are never hopeless. You can always get up and start again, make different choices and create a new future. There are endless ways to clean up old guilt and live from integrity and true hopefulness.