I was just scrolling through reddit and came across this gem of an answer to the question of finding purpose. All credit goes to author of this comment. Just pasting it here so that I can get back to this whenever I need it in my life.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t really matter what sort of advice you happen to come across from this thread.
You’re suffering from complacency. Which means you’re at a point in your life where you’re just comfortable enough to not want or need to do anything outside of your comfort zone. Like many people, that comfort zone isn’t exactly fulfilling to the deeper desires you may have, like connection, relationship, purpose, and general meaning. But your basic needs are met, for the most part, and in order to achieve any of the “higher” levels of fulfillment you have, it’ll require a large amount of effort.
While you’ve been able to make the self realization that you aren’t happy with where you’re currently at, you may also realize that you aren’t willing to do the work necessary to get to where you ultimately want to be. Whether it be because you’re scared to fail, scared to realize the things you think you want aren’t what you really want, or some other fear and uncertainty driven hesitation, in the end, the reason you’re stuck, is because you don’t have any internal driven reason to try.
Think about any aspect of your life that you’re currently unhappy with.
What would you have to do in order to develop that particular aspect, and get yourself to a point where you’re “happy” with yourself? If you’re honest with yourself, then whatever aspect you chose, would require a decent amount of internal reflection, development, and practice, either in social settings, academic settings, career settings, romantic settings, or personal lifestyle and habit. You’d have to make yourself uncomfortable, and possibly come to terms with some uncomfortable and painful truths about yourself and your behaviors/actions up till this point. You may have to put yourself on the spot, and embarrass yourself. You may have to let go of long held habits and routines that you’ve derived a strong sense of pleasure and shallow meaning in your life. And in the end, you may just fail at achieving what you wanted, or again, find out it’s something you didn’t really want at all.
So what’s the point? Why go through all that, just to possibly fail, or not like the end result? Why not just stay where you’re at right now? Where you know, while you aren’t happy, you aren’t painfully unhappy either. Just..unhappy. A bearable unhappy.
The complacency you’re finding yourself in right now isn’t something you can just change. It’s a culmination of all the habits, behaviors, and experiences you’ve had all throughout your life. Whatever reason you have for lacking motivation and drive to start moving, that lack in itself is a response to something painful you’ve experienced that you’re (consciously or unconsciously) afraid of facing again.
There are only two ways to outright break the mold you’re currently in, and start moving outside of your complacency barrier that’s blocking you off from doing, or even trying to change:
Option 1. Have some overwhelmingly painful experience occur that jolts you “awake”, out of your complacent mindset, and drives you to change your lifestyle and habits, for the better. Now the downside to this option, is that it isn’t really something you can directly control. You’ll almost certainly never purposefully cause yourself near unbearable physical/mental/emotional pain just to change a few bad habits. These sorts of painful experiences tend to occur due to our own bad habits digging us deeper and deeper in a hole, until we just naturally hit rock bottom, and either lose a spouse we care for, get evicted out of our only home/apartment, get fired from our only job, get diagnosed with a health crisis, or lose our support system (friends/family).
Chances are, in your current complacency, there are areas of your life you’re neglecting. Financial, Personal, Health, Mental, Emotional, Physical, Social, Romantic, Career, Academic - something. And day by day, you make a mental note that you still aren’t addressing that area, or those areas, and know the floor is going to come from under you eventually, if you continue to do nothing.
What most people do, is just continue to make those mental notes, assuming “I have a few more days/weeks/months/years before I really need to address that issue. I’ll worry about it later.” And then, when they aren’t ready, seemingly at the worst possible moment, that issue in their life explodes, and causes above overwhelmingly painful experience.
From there, they either vow to change, or fall into their pain, and succumb even deeper to their circumstances, continuing go fall lower and lower until, there just isn’t anything left to do but suffer and wait to die.
This is the path you’re currently on, by default. And the path everyone is naturally on when it comes to their life and circumstances. Just waiting for experiences and outcomes to direct the direction of their fate.
Option 2. The next time you become conscious of your current circumstances, and have a moment to ponder over your unhappiness in any particular aspect of your life, instead of thinking about doing what you know you need to do, and letting the thought die, and resorting back to your usual habits, get up, and make progress.
You’ve been presented with this option numerous times throughout your life. And 99% of the time, you choose option 1. The remaining 1%, you actually choose option 2, but quickly become impatient of your slow or nonexistent immediate progress, and decide in the end, just to go back to option 1.
The unfortunate reality is, option 1 will always be “easier”, because it requires the least amount of effort, and sometimes, things can work out for you. So why exert yourself when you can just roll the dice and see what happens? At least you’ll be entertained by the outcomes and occurrences of the events that unravel in your life.
Meanwhile, option 2 is boring. It’s predictable. You know exactly what you need to do. You know exactly how much effort you’ll need to put forth. You know exactly how long it’ll take to before you start to notice any meaningful changes. And until those changes start to take place, you still have to deal with your general unhappiness day to day, while hoping things will change for the better once your new habit(s) stick.
But, it’s the only way to have any real control over your life. It’s the only way to avoid the overwhelmingly painful experiences full brunt. You’re going to have shit happen to you throughout life. Good, and bad. The real difference is, are those experience going to be met with a prepared and ready mind on your part, or absolutely destroy you?
You don’t need help getting out of this. You just have to choose to start moving. Bear with the minor discomfort, the minor embarrassment, the minor inconvenience, to avoid the much worse levels of them. And in the end, though it’s likely you’ll be in a much happier place, even if you somehow aren’t, you’ll still be much better off than you currently are now.
“I can’t keep living like this.”
So stop choosing to.