Nobody is coming to save you

pics credit: https://www.instagram.com/illuminatingems/

There is something I notice often when people talk about unhappiness.

Not all sadness comes from the way we live, life can be complicated and sometimes pain arrives for reasons that have nothing to do with our choices.

But I believe that a large part of the dissatisfaction people carry comes from somewhere else: from living a life that is not aligned with who they are, what they value and what they truly want.

When something is out of alignment, the whole system feels it.

You wake up tired, even when you have slept enough, small problems feel bigger than they are, you become more negative, more irritated, less hopeful. You start feeling like a stranger in your own life.

The difficult part is that nothing improves while you remain in that place of disconnection.

The people around you try to help, they listen, support, encourage, suggest solutions but after a while many of them slowly step away. Not because they do not care, but because they realise their words change nothing.

If every suggestion is met with "I can't", "It's impossible", "I don't know how", eventually the conversation goes nowhere.

I see this all the time in Facebook groups: someone asks how to lose weight, people offer advice.

Someone asks how to improve a relationship, people offer advice.

Someone asks how to solve a problem with their children, their skin, their health, their confidence and again, people offer advice.

Very often the person who asked the question responds with a list of reasons why every possible solution cannot work which always makes me wonder: why ask for advice if you have already decided not to try?

I think the answer is simple.

People want change, but they do not want the discomfort that comes with change.

They want the result immediately.

Changing habits is difficult. changing routines is difficult, changing environments is difficult, changing the way we think about ourselves is difficult.

Many years ago I realised I did not like the life I was living in Italy. I write about it extensively in my book.

Moving to the Czech Republic was not easy: happiness did not arrive the moment we crossed the border. Building a different life took years, it required effort, uncertainty, sacrifices and many moments where I had no idea whether things would work out.

But had I stayed exactly where I was, doing exactly what I was doing, I would probably still be complaining about the same things today.

Of course, life is not always that simple, sometimes we have responsibilities that prevent us from making radical changes.

A very current example for me is Prague. For a couple of years now, we have been thinking about leaving but today our son is not the small child who simply follows our decisions. He has friends, routines, relationships and a life of his own. We do not want our desires to become his suffering.

So for now, we stay but staying does not mean surrendering or spending years complaining about a situation that is not perfect.

Instead, I try to make this phase of life as meaningful as possible. I learn to draw, I run, I create projects aligned with my values. I fill my days with things that make me feel alive and curious.

Because there is almost always a middle ground between changing everything and changing nothing.

Maybe you cannot take a giant step today, take a small one, move in the direction you want to go, even if the movement is barely visible.

Because staying still is rarely neutral, ,ore often, it slowly pulls us deeper into a life we already know we do not want.

And the longer we stay there, the harder it becomes to leave.