While struggling with addiction, you may feel lost in your life. Perhaps you do not know why you are here on this planet or what you are supposed to do with the time you are given. Not having a sense of purpose in life can make you feel lost, hopeless, and pessimistic about your future. This is why it is important to reconnect with your purpose and find the motivation to keep going while in addiction recovery treatment.
When You Feel Hopeless About Your Future
It is very common when struggling with addiction to feel hopeless about the future. This is a common reason to begin substance abuse in the first place. Your life experiences might have caused you to lose sight of your place in the world.
Therefore, self-medicating through substance use becomes a way to deal with burnout or manage symptoms of undiagnosed mental health disorders. Unfortunately this usually ends up making you feel more hopeless while doing nothing to alleviate these symptoms.
Looking at the Bigger Picture
Finding your purpose involves not just looking past yourself and the tiny details, but rather beyond all of that. Perhaps you are hesitant to identify your spiritual beliefs because you do not have a great relationship with religion. It is important to keep in mind that spirituality and religion are separate.
Spirituality asks you to connect internally to the larger aspects of the external. You are looking outside of yourself and your ego to see the bigger world. Looking at things from this perspective can be humbling, allowing you to recognize what is actually in your control and then making peace with it. Connecting with spirituality can also be empowering, allowing you to know how you can impact the world around you.
Connect With Your Values and Beliefs
When you are lacking the motivation to keep going, it is because you have lost sight of what matters the most to you. These values can give you direction, and work as a compass for your daily life. Having values can help you make an important decision and connect better with your true self.
Values are things that matter most to you in life. A value could be family, honesty, faith, gratitude, or compassion. When figuring out your values, think about personal things. Consider who inspires you the most. What qualities do they possess that you admire? Where do you find yourself taking the most action? Things that cause you to react the most could be a sign of what you care most about.
Once you have assessed your values, think about how you can implement those values in your daily life, or what parts of your life are neglecting these values. When you ignore your values, you might accept relationships that do not support your moral compass or careers that feel unfulfilling. This can lead you to feel detached from your daily life.
Ask Yourself the Big Questions
Ask yourself why you care about what you do, why you value those things, why these goals are important to you, and why you should stay motivated. The questions can challenge you to look deeply into “why” you do the things you do.
It can be easy to act without really thinking about why you are so committed in the first place. If you do not know why you are doing something and why it matters, you can lose motivation. Going deep into your “why” can help you find that key reason to keep going. Asking “why” allows you to find your purpose, if there is a purpose, or if you need to look elsewhere for your purpose.
Reassess Your Goals in Life
You might have set goals but have not taken a hard look at them. Goal setting is a great way to stay motivated, but if you do not have a focused purpose, your goals might have less meaning. Although, you do not need to necessarily have a sense of purpose to set goals. You can set goals that matter to you and evaluate why those goals are so important. There might be a deeper meaning hiding underneath, after all.
Other Ways to Connect to Your Purpose
If none of these ideas are connecting to you, then there might be other ways to reconnect with your purpose. These options can include:
Journaling
This can go back to asking yourself the bigger questions, but can also extend to asking deeper questions about yourself and who you are as a person. If you are not used to looking deep within yourself, you might be surprised what you find.
Take a Break
It is possible that you feel disconnected from your purpose because you are experiencing burnout. Taking a break from work, a project, or school can give you the time and rest needed to feel revitalized. After resting, you might find yourself reconnecting to your original purpose, or you might find something new.
Serve the Community
Helping your community through volunteer work can help you see the bigger picture and recognize what is important. Helping others can often inspire you and help you understand what your place is in society and what you can do for your community through your actions. You can recognize your role and how you want to serve the community through your purpose.
Change Your Routine
Trying to do something different might rekindle motivation again. While this might seem a bit too simple of a fix for a deeper problem, it is good to make sure that disconnection from purpose is not from the boredom of your everyday routine.
Not feeling connected to your purpose can make it hard to maintain recovery. It is vital to know why we do what we do. It can make the difference between motivation and losing sight of what is important.
Finding your purpose is not an easy task, and it is possible what you believe is that your purpose will sometimes change. This is completely normal. What is important is feeling secure in the reasons why you walk this earth. If you are unsure about what you are doing here on this planet, you might find yourself feeling discouraged to keep going. Finding your purpose can be a fantastic feeling. Once you know what your purpose is, it can drive you to accomplish just about anything you set out to do.
You can feel inspired because everything finally feels right. If you would like to learn more about finding your purpose, call us today at (435) 222-5225 to learn more.
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