497: What To Do When You Feel Like Giving Up

Hal Elrod: Hey, goal achievers and members of the Miracle Morning Community. Welcome to today’s podcast. What to do when you feel like giving up? And let’s start there. Do you ever feel like giving up, like giving up on a goal or giving up on a relationship? Anything that’s difficult, right? Giving up on yourself. A couple of weeks ago, I recorded a podcast on how to overcome feeling overwhelmed, and a lot of people expressed how much they needed that episode right now, how much it resonated, how overwhelmed they feel, and how helpful it was for them. If you missed that, by the way, you can go back and listen to it. It was episode I believe it was 495. Let me double-check that. Yes. Episode 495. So, you can always find an episode by going to MiracleMorning.com/495, whatever the episode number was or MiracleMorning.com/Podcast to see all the episodes. But if you’re feeling overwhelmed, that is a good podcast episode to listen to.

Today, it’s kind of a follow-up. And a few days ago, I posted something on social media where I talked openly about you could say my mental health issues, meaning I talked openly specifically about anxiety and depression and me struggling with both of those things and not that I was struggling in the past, although I was but I wasn’t talking about, hey, in the past, I struggled and I’ve overcome it all. But then it’s still something I struggle with every day and I’m going to read the post to you. And so, if you didn’t read that or if you did read it, you’re going to hear it again. But you’ll hear why I struggle with that and the effects of the traumatic brain injuries that I’ve suffered multiple and how that affects me. Now, that post similarly seemed to resonate with people. I received hundreds of responses from you all saying the same thing, that it was a message you really needed. So, I figured I’d read that post to you today and then we could talk about it and talk about you and how you might feel like giving up at times, again, whether it’s giving up on life or some specific aspect of your life that is difficult.

And before I read the post, I want to read one of over 200 comments that were left on Instagram, and it was also on Facebook and in the Miracle Morning Community Facebook Group. And I emailed the post out because I got such great feedback. I wanted to share it with as many people as I could. And this one comment from Carrie I just read this morning. She said, “You have no idea how much this means to me. I’ve been following you for some time now and dealing with anxiety myself. I always thought there was something wrong with me because I’m doing all the right things with my Miracle Morning but it’s still an issue here and there. And then to read that this is also a struggle for you made you much more real to me and has given me hope on a level I cannot even begin to express to you. Thank you for being raw and honest. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His faith shine upon you and give you peace.” Thank you, Carrie, if you’re listening to this. Thank you for your comments, your thoughtful response. I am so grateful that what I shared was so helpful for you, and I am hoping it’ll be helpful for everybody listening to this. And, Carrie, may the Lord also bless you and keep you, and may His faith shine upon you and give you peace as well.

Now, for those of you listening or watching, I’ll read you the post that she was responding to. So, this is a social media post I put up the other day. And by the way, I want to let you know how this came about. I literally woke up and I came into my office and I sat down and my phone, I put it on the table and then I just felt something coming through me. Like literally, I had no intellectual plan of, hey, I’m going to write something right now. I’m going to write about blank like none at all. I literally picked up my phone and with my thumbs, I just started typing on Instagram. And what I’m about to read to you is exactly what came through me without planning or preparation. And after I wrote it, I did very little editing. I just kind of went back and I always have grammatical errors or whatever, and I fixed those. But this is pretty close to the original post that came through me. Here we go.

“I speak and I write, and that’s what people see on the surface, but I also suffer from severe brain damage. It started when I was in a 70-mile-per-hour head-on collision with a drunk driver, but it became far worse after I endured over 700 hours of chemotherapy poisoning that ironically saved my life. So, why am I telling you this? Because every day I struggle with anxiety and depression. My brain doesn’t seem to work like it used to, and it really affects my mental health. I often feel incapable of doing what I’m supposed to do, what people expect of me. And I know I’m not alone. Life is hard. There are days, sometimes more often than not, that I don’t want to do it anymore. When I feel so overwhelmed, it’s like I’m drowning. But I don’t want to let people down so I keep going. And I believe God has gifted all of us with adversities to get through so we can help others get through theirs so I keep going. And I openly share my struggles and what I’m doing to manage or overcome them as much as possible in an attempt to help other people do the same. The question I start my day with that I encourage you to consider modeling. What can I do this morning to optimize my mental and emotional health? I meditate and pray to reset my nervous system and connect with God.

I recite my affirmations that elevate my consciousness by reminding me of my highest truths. I visualize myself enjoying the day, especially enjoying the task that I’ve been allowing myself to feel stressed about. I exercise to grow stronger and get my blood flowing. I read something that improves my mental health. I journal about anything I need to let go of and what I’m grateful for. And these activities take anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes total and help me to optimize my mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health so that I can be at my best despite my limitations. We live in a beautiful, yet messed-up world, and right now the world needs us to show up at our best for those we love and those we lead. So, let’s keep going and help as many people as we can during this one life that we’ve been blessed to live.” I got a lot of the comments around that post and similar to the one I read from Carrie, that by me sharing that, “Oh wow, I’m struggling too,” that in and of itself gave people a sense of peace or hope, realizing, “Oh, wow, it’s not just me. I’m not alone.” And I think it’s so important that when we are struggling with our mental health, we tend to feel alone like nobody else is in there, inside your head, in your consciousness, if you can be in consciousness. I don’t know about that. But nobody else is in there.

You’re just like, “Oh my God, I’m struggling. This is so difficult. I’m drowning, I’m overwhelmed, I can’t handle this. And it’s scary and it feels alone.” And when you realize that you’re not alone, that most everyone on the planet is dealing with their own struggles in some way. You’ve probably seen that quote something on I think it’s on a lot of T-shirts. It’s something along the lines of everyone is fighting their own internal battle so be kind, something to that effect. And so, for me, sharing that, number one, it felt good to share it, like get this off my chest because I’ve been doing this, you know, I’ve mentioned to you on the last few podcasts and I will mention for the next four months, but I’ve been doing this book launch and that’s what I’m in the middle of, and that’s a lot of what caused me to feel overwhelmed. And I have more people right now that are waiting on things for me than I’ve maybe literally ever had in my life because I partnered with somebody on the book series. I were on the Miracle Morning books. My agent is supporting me, my publisher is supporting me, my team is supporting me. We’re hiring people to help with the book launch and the launch team and the websites and everything points back to me, right? So, I feel so overwhelmed, which is why I did that episode for you and me, did it for myself as well on how to overcome feeling overwhelmed.

[ORGANIFI]

Hal Elrod: Hey, goal achievers. I want to take just a second to thank our first sponsor today, Organifi, and I want to mention their product, Collagen. If you’re watching the video on YouTube and see me holding this canister of collagen powder up and this is my wife’s, actually. So, I got this from Organifi and she has completely decided it’s hers. And so, she puts this in her coffee every day. And the benefits of it are healthy skin, hair, and nails. And she reports that that’s what it does for her and that she notices a significant difference. The unflavored collagen protein each serving delivers 9 grams of protein, 10.2 grams of the multi-collagen complex with zero grams of carbohydrates and zero grams of sugar. So, if you want to improve your skin, your hair, and your nails, head over to Organifi.com/Hal and use the discount code “HAL” at checkout for 20% off your entire order.

[EPISODE]

Hal Elrod: Here’s the point. What do you do when you feel like giving up? What do you do? Or what should you do? Or what can you do? What are your options, right? Of course, giving up is one option. You could just give up on a relationship or give up on yourself, or give up on your kids, or give up on your job, or give up on life, right? You can give up. That’s obviously one option. But I’m going to share with you what I’m doing and you got some of it in that post. I want to elaborate a little bit and really make it applicable to you but let’s answer this question. What do you do when you feel like giving up? Number one, keep going, keep going. And that might be the most important because here’s the thing. It won’t always be this way, right? Like, everything in life is temporary. The challenges we face are temporary. Our mental and emotional state is temporary because it can change tomorrow. I don’t know about you but I wake up on days and I don’t always feel anxious or depressed or out of control or overwhelmed. I wake up and I’m like, “I got this today.” In fact, and here’s the thing. No matter how I wake up, and we’re going to get to that in the third step or tip I’m going to share with you today but no matter how I wake up, I ask that question that I shared in the social media post.

What can I do this morning to optimize my mental and emotional health or my mental and emotional state? One of the two. And what you ask yourself your brain seeks answers to. If you ask, “Why do I feel this way again?” Or, as Carrie said, she felt like something was wrong with her. What’s wrong with me? That’s a terrible question to ask because you’re going to give yourself an answer. Your brain is going to find an answer and go, “Well, you’ve always been this way, or your parents had mental health issues and so maybe it’s hereditary.” Whatever it is, you’re going to simply go down a rabbit hole of feeling worse and worse and worse about yourself. You have to decide. Be very intentional about the questions that you ask yourself. And again, I can’t think of a much better question. I’m sure we could brainstorm better questions, but I can’t think of a much better question, “Then what can I do this morning or this moment or today to optimize my mental and emotional health?” Because it’s honestly or arguably it’s the most important decision that you make. It’s the most important question you ask. It’s the most important action that you take, optimizing your mental and emotional health. Because you can’t show up for yourself or for other people the way that you want to or are capable of if you allow yourself and I’m using that language very intentionally, if we allow ourselves to be in a negative, in a detrimental in an unhealthy mental and emotional state.

If we feed our anxiety and depression with questions that perpetuate our anxiety and depression, what’s wrong with me is a question that perpetuates our anxiety and depression. So, this is really about intentionality. In order to keep going, number one, keep going, is that you’ve got to decide that, first of all, like I said, it won’t always be this way but second of all, always remember that you have a 100% success rate of making it through every challenge that you’ve ever faced in the past. The things you thought you could make it through, you did make it through, all of them. You are still here, including those that you questioned, whether or not you were strong enough or whether or not you had the abilities to get through. So, keep on going. And I mentioned to my social media post twice, right? I said, “I don’t want to let other people down so I keep on going. Also, I believe that God has gifted all of us with adversity to get through so that we can help others get through theirs so I keep on going.” So, you’ve got to find a reason to keep going.

And that leads into the second point that I want to share, which is focus on being of service for others. Focus on being of service for others. Or you could use the language, focus on adding value for other people or helping other people, whatever language resonates with you. One of my mentors used to say that, he’d say, “Get off self and get on purpose,” meaning that when you’re feeling depressed or anxious, you’re almost always hyper-focused on yourself, right? You’re in your head just ruminating over and over and over. How do I feel? Why do I feel this way? Oh, my gosh, I have so much to do. I don’t have time to do it. I’m so stressed. What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel this way? You’re perpetuating your depression and anxiety. But when you shift your focus to helping someone else, imagine that you’re sitting on your couch and you’re feeling anxious and depressed and you’re in your head and you’re ruminating. And then imagine someone you love all of a sudden screams from the other room. First of all, how long does it take for your anxiety and depression to go away? Now, you might say, “Well, actually, the anxiety got amped up.” Okay, that’s fair. But I think you’ll get the point what I’m saying.

Let’s just say you’re feeling depressed. Somebody yells from the other room, “Help me.” In that instant, your focus shifts from yourself to your purpose of seeing what that person needs and showing up for them. And your depression is immediately gone. It’s gone. You have to really focus on depression, defeat it to keep feeling it. And that doesn’t mean you some days wake up and for no reason you feel depressed. I have that happen on a pretty regular basis. But here’s the thing. You can’t control that initial feeling. Maybe you wake up and you feel a certain way, but you can control what conversation you entertain in your head. You can control what questions you ask yourself. You can control what your inner dialog is and what you focus on. Back to the example, right? You’re feeling depressed. Somebody yells from the other room, your spouse, your child, right? Help. Immediately, you don’t feel depressed anymore because in that instant you shifted from self to purpose. Now, you’re on purpose. Now, you go help that person. Let’s say they need help. Let’s say now they’re not fatally wounded or anything, but they’re like, “Help. The shelf, I accidentally knocked over this shelf. It’s falling on me.” Let’s say your child, their bookshelf, they were climbing it. I did this when I was a kid. I climbed my bookshelf, knocked it over. Parents had to come rescue me. It was on top of me.

But anyway, so imagine they’re climbing the bookshelf, right? It fell over and they’re trying to hold it up so it doesn’t fall on them. And you go and you help them. The entire time that you are off self and on purpose, the whole time that you’re trying to save them from that falling bookshelf, you’re not feeling depressed. Think about this for a second, because it might seem like an overly simplified example, but this is a profound understanding in the power of what we focus on. So, the entire time you’re helping with the bookshelf, you don’t feel depressed. As soon as you save the day, bookshelves up, they’re okay. You’re like, “You okay? Okay, great.” Then you go back and you sit on the couch. Now, you go internal again. You go inward, and now you feel, you go, “Oh, there’s my depression. There it is. Yep.” And you go right back to your old patterns of thinking. So, when I say focus on being of service to others, there’s actually another lesson here, another tip, another strategy which we talked about on the overwhelm call but it’s basically just shifting your inner dialog, whatever you are focused on, whatever you’re saying to yourself, asking and thinking, etcetera. And so, focus on being of service for others. That’s one example of an infinite amount of things you can focus on, but to me, it’s the most meaningful.

When we live a life of service and we don’t focus on how much we can get out of other people, get from them, how much we can get out of every situation but instead, we focus on how much we can give to other people and focus on how much we can give to every situation. When you focus your energy from get to give, you liberate yourself from all of the anxiety that the focus on getting causes. What if I don’t get enough? What if they get more than me? What if I don’t get to my goal? What if I don’t reach it? What if I…? Last week, we talked about the power of surrender, where you let go of that attachment to get everything that you think that you need and have a little more faith in life to deliver what you want. Not that you don’t need to work for it. And again, I’m not going to go into that topic. That was last week, Episode 496, on how to Harness the Power of Surrender but back to focus on being of service for others. I think that it’s the highest focus that we can have and it’s what allows us to take our focus off self and on purpose.

[CURED NUTRITION]

Hal Elrod: Hey, do you ever wake up in the morning and you want to improve your focus? Me too. You ever struggle to fall asleep at night? Me too. Or at least I should say I used to but there’s two products that I use from the company, CURED Nutrition. The first is Rise. It is a nootropic for focus and clarity. I take that literally first thing every morning, it’s got organic lion’s mane, Bacopa extract, CBD, cannabinoids, you name it. And then before bed, I take Night Caps. So, CURED Nutrition Night Caps contain both CBN and CBD oil all in one capsule. I take about an hour before bed, typically. And so, if you want to improve your waking up and cognitive focus in the morning, check out Rise, and if you want to improve your sleep, check out Night Caps. And both those are available at CUREDNutrition.com/Hal. Again, that’s CUREDNutrition.com/Hal and use the discount code “HAL” for 20% off your entire order as a listener of the Achieve Your Goals podcast.

[EPISODE]

Hal Elrod: And I don’t know about you, actually, I could say I do know about you. There aren’t too many activities or areas to focus on that are more fulfilling than serving other people when you serve other people, when you add value for them, when they say thank you. If they don’t say thank you, that’s a whole another call. But you shouldn’t be. That’s being attached to the outcome. You shouldn’t be attached to the thank you. You should do it because you genuinely want to see someone’s life easier. My friend, Joe Polish, he’s the author of What’s In It for Them? By the way, it’s a fantastic book. If you haven’t read it, What’s In It For Them? But he’s the co-author of The Miracle Morning for Addiction and Recovery. And Joe’s Purpose in Life. And I’m not going to probably get it word for word but it’s to ease people’s suffering. That’s his general purpose, to ease people’s suffering, to lessen the suffering of as many people as he can. He believes that we’re all suffering, which I think that that is true.

That’s why we’re having this conversation right now because we’re all suffering. And in some way, you might be suffering in your health or your relationships or your finances, of course, different areas of life or your mental health. He believes we’re all suffering in some way and his mission on the planet is just everything he does as he’s trying to lessen the suffering of other people. And so, again, focusing on a purpose of serving others, of lessening their suffering, of adding value in some way, it really is the key to a life of fulfillment, and it’s a key of taking the focus off of yourself and shifting it to one of purpose.

The third and final tip I will give you today and I know I’ve added a few in the midst of these three so I guess we’re probably like four or five, but it’s to focus on optimizing your mental and emotional state. And I won’t spend a lot of time on this. It was part of the social media post, but it’s so crucial because like I said or I’ve said this in the past that the quality of your life begins and ends with your mental and emotional state. So, meaning, if you start the day in a negative mental and emotional state, if you start the day feeling anxious and depressed, and then you feed the anxiety and depression by focusing on things that make you feel anxious and depressed versus focusing on solutions, focusing on moving forward, focusing on serving others, if you are focusing on things that are perpetuating the anxiety and depression, if that’s how you start your day, then you’re not going to be effective, you’re not going be effective at serving other people. You’re not going to be effective at achieving your goals. So, the quality of your life begins with your mental and emotional state but then the quality of your life also ends with your mental and emotional state. Meaning, if we use the day as a microcosm for your life so it begins as we just talked about with your mental and emotional state but at the end of the day, let’s say you accomplish seven things on your to-do list or three things out of five or whatever. Let’s say three out of ten. What do you focus on?

I talked to this in the Miracle Morning book, right? We often focus on the gap and go, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t get everything done I wanted to get done.” I do this all the time, y’all. That’s why I have been feeling, right, I have such a long to-do list right now that I end every day feeling behind the eight ball like, man, I needed to get these six things done and I only got two of them done or three of them done or whatever. But the point is, at the end of the day, and that’s why, by the way, I do what I call the Miracle Evening, which is a chapter in the new book in the Miracle Morning Update, an Expanded Edition. Chapter 11 is a 20-plus-page chapter called The Miracle Evening. It is your strategy for blissful bedtime and better sleep. But that’s what I do. At the end of the day, I focus on what I am grateful for. I just sit there and I pray. I thank God for the day, for my wife, for my kids, for my team, for the opportunity, for whatever it was like that day that I wrote that social media post, I went to bed feeling so grateful that that message came through me that day that resonated with, I mean, hundreds of people left comments, but maybe thousands of people might have been benefited by that message. And I was so grateful for that.

And so, now at the end of that day, I could have ended the day by focusing on the things that I was worried about, the things that I didn’t get done, the things that caused me stress. I could have focused on all those things and I could have ended the day in a poor mental and emotional state, struggled to fall asleep, gotten poor sleep, felt anxious and stressed out. It could have been all those things. You have to take control of your mental and emotional state. You can’t blame it on your circumstances. You can’t blame it on other people. You can’t blame it. And I want to be clear. I often forget to be sensitive or to insert a disclaimer, if you will, which is I am not an expert in clinical depression and chemical imbalances in the brain, although I actually can. In some ways, I would take that back. I’m an expert experientially because I have chemical imbalances in my brain from 700 hours of chemotherapy but I’m not an expert in that area and I would never claim to be. And so, I want to be sensitive to nothing that I don’t think anything anyone ever says is universally true. And I’m not talking about like spiritual truths, but I’m talking about if someone gives advice, rarely does it apply to 100% of the people. Maybe occasionally.

But even like Dr. Michael Breus, the sleep doctor, coming up on the podcast in a month or so, both he and I’ve had debates because he’s like, “Yeah, Hal, in the morning people’s corona rhythms are different. And so, some people in the morning, that’s actually not their best time for productivity or whatever.” And he and I have like we’ve gone back and forth on this. So, the point being rarely is the statement or a piece of advice going to be universal for every single human being on the planet because we’re all different. We have different mental, emotional, physical makeups, different beliefs, different so on and so forth. So, I just want to say that to be sensitive. If anything, I’ve said in this episode, you’re like, “That doesn’t apply to me.” But I’d also encourage you to question that if you did say that, is that because you have a belief, maybe a limiting belief that says, “I am the way I am and there’s no changing it,” because if that’s a limiting belief, I’d encourage you to reconsider. It’s very disempowering to tell yourself I am the way I am and nothing’s going to change. That’s very disempowering versus I am the way that I am, and maybe I can learn something that I don’t know that I haven’t tried before. I could try something I haven’t tried that could actually shift how I feel and shift, right?

And I think that if you take the practical advice today, which is you realize that if you perpetuate your mental and emotional challenges by asking those negative questions or focusing on things that cause you stress, you’re perpetuating it, and you do have the choice, right? You do have the choice of what you focus on, which questions you ask yourself, getting off of focusing incessantly on yourself and focusing on helping other people, and you can optimize your mental and emotional health to do the best with what you can. And if you remember, the end of my post was we live in a beautiful, messed-up world and right now the world needs us to show up at our best for those we love and those we lead. And then here’s the part I really want you to get. I said, “These activities, which are essentially the SAVERS, take anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes total and help me to optimize my mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health so that I can be at my best despite my limitations.” That’s the part I want you to get, is that you might have limitations. We all have certain limitations, certain physical limitations, mental and emotional limitations but it’s our responsibility to do everything in our power to be at our best, despite our limitations, so that we can help as many people as we possibly can during this one life we’ve been blessed to live.

I appreciate you so much. Thanks for tuning in today. I hope this was helpful and valuable for you. And I will talk to you all next week.