Losing Motivation and Hope in Life

I am an independent female, 36 years old and single. I always feel depressed and lonely in my life, although I have some friends around. However, since I did not have the chance yet to get married, I feel like a stranger in my society, which is an oriental eastern one.

I have no worries in life, and my work is going well. However, I feel that I have nothing to live for, and there is no meaning for my life. The worst thing is that nothing excites me anymore, and nothing is interesting anymore in my life. I feel alienated from others because I think that Iam too mature and my perspective for life is completely different.

All what I need is to make my life meangingful, interesting and exciting. Also, to find something that I could aim for.

Please help! I am really frustrated and depressed that I don't find pleasure in anything!

Thanks

Pleasure in life wells up naturally, when negative emotions, like despair and dissatisfaction have been stilled. For you, those emotions have become habitual, justifying themselves with powerful intellectual arguments. EFT is a quick and effective way of getting rid of a negative emotion. The second method is to still the emotional attack through self awareness.

The emotion will attack you with several lines of justifying thought patterns. Awareness of the triggering point of each despairing thought will still it in its tracks. An awareness of the physical symptom preceding the line of thought is even more powerful. There won't be many such streams of thought. It will take some practice to still the dozen, or so habitual thought patterns, which trouble you.

In the meantime, you will find pleasure in learning to control your mind this way. When negative emotions have become stilled, you will discover joy in so many things around you. You don't need to work on finding pleasure in life. It will happen naturally, when negative emotions have been stilled.
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Thank you
by: Anonymous

Many thanks for your comments. I feel that you have captured and idenitifeid the roots of my problem, and seriously speaking, I have never been aware of such habitual thoughts that became a part of my life. Please can you advise what readings/techniques you recommend that I do.

You are on the right track. Self awareness can put you on the path to peace. EFT is quite effective in stilling emotions. Have a look at the technique.
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Once, Decades Ago, I Tripped Over The Divine

For me, the flash of insight into the sublime happened way back in 1989. The vision stunned me with the grandeur of its simplicity. The startling prospect emerged from, of all things, an algorithm! Its potential flickered into my view by accident, while transferring a Prolog AI disease recognition procedure to a Lotus spreadsheet.  I had inadvertently reversed the logic of the Expert System, instructing it to eliminate improbabilities, instead of selecting probabilities. Such algorithms are just repetitive procedures. Cold and logical lines of code. But, they yield dependable results. Algorithms are just mechanical tools. But, this algorithmic code was unique.

The capability of the algorithm was that it could sift a Google sized database of connected facts to instantly recognize patterns. This was 10 years before Google started building its vast data warehouses. But, I knew the mind identified complex patterns when you just opened your eyes!  For the next few months, glimpses of probable neural accomplishments through instant pattern recognition kept waking me up at 3 a.m. I kept adding to the list on paper. The dots just kept connecting. Decades later, more possible links keep opening up new horizons - say, the seat of consciousness or the persistence of working memory. This algorithm could distinguish between good and evil. It could make us weep in anguish or gasp in wonder.  Could it be the fabled divine gift to life?

It worked in the mind. Gray's Anatomy was an exhaustive source and a starting point for me. Its 1500 pages listed the functions of virtually every mental organ. The algorithm could link them all into a single mind that could suture an artery, while recalling a tennis match. Starting at the input level, it focused your senses. The light from the heavens. The songs of the birds. The touch of a loved one. The fragrance of a rose. The taste of chocolate. We were blessed with millions of receptors, which flashed this magnificent perception of the world to the sensory regions of our cortex. There were association regions there, which could use the algorithm on this data to identify a pencil, or a word. We could separate the idea of a gun from the idea of a war in the abundance of incoming sensory patterns.

Object and event recognition. Algorithmic pattern recognition could act at every stage of mental processing. Things were happening all around us. There was a limbic system, where the algorithm could identify between good and bad happenings. It generated emotions. This mammalian region could drive us to attack in anger, or flee in terror. It was the limbic system, which held us in thrall. It filled us with despair, or tortured us in grief. It made us question the very meaning of life. Life was so unfair. Why did we have to suffer so?

Sadly, we lacked the capacity to naturally see our emotions and feelings. The limbic system was invisible to us. It was the algorithm, which caused the motor system to transform those emotions and feelings into actions. Hunger made us raid the frig. We went to work every day to avoid the pain of guilt. Love reminded us to pick up children from school. Hatred built the death camps. In the end, urges from the limbic system drove us out of Eden.

As a precious compensation, algorithmic pattern recognition ascended to higher levels. Our prefrontal regions gifted us with science and logic. Those skills enabled us to understand the vast structures of the cosmos. We built leviathans, which could sail the oceans and fly the skies. We explored the heavens. Our powerful civilizations conquered the continents and explored the cosmos. Even more, the algorithm also pointed us to the divine, which defied logic and definition. We sensed the order and beauty, which, like the laws of nature, existed from the beginning of time.

Pattern recognition dealt with subtleties. Reason and logic could not create great symphonies, or works of art. Why do we stand in awe of the sunset? Or find joy in a lilting song, or in the laugh of a baby?  Nerve cells recognized such patterns without our awareness and fired to initiate the skin tingling thrill. Who, but the Designer, could possibly want to hard wire us to thrill to the astonishing splendor of the design?

Over three decades have passed since my first glimpse of the truth. Like an ancient city hidden by forest cover, the vast and invisible city of the mind has many avenues linking its great palaces and temples. I also realized that those divine pattern recognition paths led to still spaces, untrammelled by the ravages of emotions and feelings.... Life was worth living! Even the great sages of the past advised us to still passions to empower the sublime within us. The divine stillness lives at the core. You too can find your home there.

The information provided in this website is useful for the modification of normal behavioral patterns. Please do get professional help, before applying the advice for the treatment of any abnormal behaviors. Copyright ©2008 by Ebbi Thomas. All rights reserved. This material may be freely published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.