How to recover the illusion in a bad moment: 5 recommendations
Tips on how to regain enthusiasm and get out of stagnation and lack of motivation.
Feeling enthusiasm for any matter is the engine that keeps us motivated, alert, happy and hopeful for the future. However, when this illusion is lost, our reality is perceived as gloomy and pessimistic and we do not find the energy to do our daily activities and much less to think about future plans.
How can we recover the illusion? All the people have passed or will pass through a similar stage and there are resources to be able to leave this somber state and to recover the illusion.
5 Tips to recover the illusion
Like many feelings and stages of the human being, the loss of illusion has its own process, and it is necessary to understand that what we are feeling is normal, has an explanation and has a solution. Here we will review the most effective tips to recover the illusion.
1. Express what you feel
A complicated step for some, but very necessary in the recovery of any grief process, is to express our emotions openly. express our emotions openly.
There are people around you, friends or family who will be willing to listen to you. However, if you think that you would prefer not to talk freely with someone close to you, you can go to a therapist or self-help group, where there will always be people willing to listen to you.
We should not be afraid to express our emotions. We think that anger, resentment, sadness or even envy, are feelings that we should hide and repress so that no one knows that we feel them, but the opposite is true. If we want to recover the illusion, we must begin by unburdening and learning to express, dominate and channel our emotions so that they do not dominate us.We must learn to express, control and channel our emotions so that they do not control us.
2. Reflect on the cause of our loss of illusion.
In addition to emotions, there is a rational part that we must find in the middle of all this tangle of sensations that we experience when we have a loss of illusion. that we experience when we have a loss of illusion. This rational part is to look for the root of the problem.
In some situations it can be very obvious: having suffered the death of a loved one, a divorce or breakup, facing an illness or losing a job. But there are other circumstances that do not jump out so easily and that keep us in a state of despondency and disillusionment without even knowing what it is that has us like this.
It is time to sit down and think. Make an analysis of our life. If we have practiced the step of talking to someone about what we are feeling, the picture of the cause will surely become clearer.
These causes can be diverseWe may feel dissatisfied in our work or have unresolved problems with our family or partner. The daily routine leads us to get up every day and carry out our activities without time to stop and think if this is what we want and if we can change it. Reflecting on this will help us to find what we need to change to get out of the emotional stagnation.
3. Look for support
These types of processes are not stages that we must overcome alone. Extreme self-sufficiency makes us think that we should solve it without the help of others and without them noticing what is happening to us. There are those who find it difficult to show their vulnerability But when we have lost the illusion and motivation, we must consider that the support of friends and family will be a powerful tool to feel illusion again.
Talking to a friend or family about how we feel, asking for their understanding and support, going to therapy or finding a self-help group where people who have gone through the same thing as us can meet, will eliminate the feeling of loneliness that often overwhelms us when we feel in a bleak, unmotivated state.
Asking for support among the people around us is not just for them to listen to us. We can ask them to accompany us to carry out procedures when someone has passed away, to find solutions to a job loss, to make a move in the case of a divorce, and to carry out these activities with the help of someone dear to us. It is a good way to lessen our sense of desolation. and disillusionment that is afflicting us.
In this sense, we must think that if we would be willing to give support to someone we love and who needs it, surely someone else will do it for us as well.
4. Find the positive aspects of your life
When we are in a state of sadness, this exercise is more complicated than it seems, but it is necessary to do it.
With pen and paper in hand, make a list of the good things you have today and the accomplishments that have made you proud at one time or another.. Here there are no more explanations or "buts" after noting a positive aspect.
We must focus on the concrete facts. No more "I have my children, but what's the use if I no longer have my partner". No, we must focus on what we do have and what is positive and has brought us joy, stability and illusion.
The objective of this exercise is to "return" our mind to the reality that is full of good things and not so good things and that is full of nuances, so if at this moment we feel that everything is bad, reviewing the good things will bring us back to reality. will bring us back to reality.
5. Plan for the future!
When we lose the illusion, the last thing we want is to think about the future. We lose our sense of purpose and motivation..
Precisely because of this is that an important point to recover the illusion is to resume plans and tastes that excited us and to raise them again as goals.
While it is true that we must live in the here and now, future plans are often a powerful engine to get up and work today to get things tomorrow, so to put back on the table activities that had excited us before, is a key step to regain the illusion.
Bibliographical references:
- Cuijpers, P.; Muñoz, R. F.; Clarke, G. N.; Lewinsohn, P. M. (2009). "Psychoeducational treatment and prevention of depression: The 'coping with depression' course thirty years later". Clinical Psychology Review. 29 (5): 449–58.
(Updated at Apr 12 / 2024)