How to stay motivated in a world full of suffering

[quantumspiral]

How do you stay motivated and excited about life when the world contains so much suffering?

1000s of murders per day globally, countless animals in awful factory farms, more than 100 ongoing armed conflicts, human slavery etc

 

[caspex]

There's no motivation to survival. It's its own motivation. Make your goals your bare minimum and don't compromise. As you start progressing excitement will come on its own.

[gettoefl]

Why do I watch the news instead of the nows

How many murders did I see today?

I have to ask myself, why is it that when I am a nice guy, kind and generous, I without fail meet a world that is also nice and kind and generous

I have concluded that the world doesn't suffer; it is me who suffers by interpreting gnarly images that I allow to assault my retina

This doesn't mean I will abandon the attempt to relieve apparent suffering

If I have reduced my suffering I can help you to reduce yours

[Evelyna]

@quantumspiral I think it is less about motivation and more about being realistic on to what you can actually do about it. I think you may be feeling helpless towards all the things you find unjust , unfair and so on, and that is a fair feeling since you can't help absolutely everyone. You could focus more on the present moment in your own life, perhaps read, watch less of the worlds news as this can influence/ trigger  your emotions. Within your mind you can always send love in to the world, the most calming images , peace , and that is something you CAN do, whatever we imagine already exists , using symbols to send positive emotions , feelings and so on works great for both sides, we are all always connected in some way which we can't explain. |Yes this world needs a lot of healing , but If we can not heal our immediate environment how can we heal the world? Well, your closest environment is a good place to start, staying exactly there , in the present, while sending out symbols to the rest of the world can balance out nicely, and if you want to help with physical action, help those who need help around you first, do what you can do and you are able to offer help to those who are close by  , in your town , city , at your work place , in you local store. etc... Kindness spreads just like lies do, your kindness can influence others to do the same and that is a huge help for this world!! I am reminded of directions to use oxygen mask on a plane in case of emergency , they always say that mother should put on a mask first before the child to be able to help the child, take care of the child,  I guess its kind of like that  

[NoSelfSelf]

Without suffering in reality there wont be seeking for better life,improving,satisfying your love for things.

Whole point of having exciting life is to minimize suffering.But suffering is needed to have excitment and life worth living.

If you notice most exciting things have inherit danger and possibility of suffering otherwise it wont be as exciting.

You need more nuanced thinking.

Edited Tuesday at 04:23 PM by NoSelfSelf

[Leo Gura]

By realizing that if you don't stay sharp you will join those suffering.

If you screw around in life you will soon enter a world of pain.

Edited Tuesday at 04:26 PM by Leo Gura

[Sugarcoat]

You could make it your purpose to improve the world in some way. Your reaction to the state of the world is totally reasonable, but instead of feeling helpless you could use it to fuel you to make a change if you feel it’s for you to do. Maybe for now feeling excited for life is too high of a standard for you, maybe you could start with feeling peaceful. How can you feel peaceful while all of this is going on? Care about your own mental health too at the end of the day. So if reading about things that are happening upset you maybe stop reading about it (if you’re not gonna do anything about it not much point in reading about it anyways). Do things that make you feel good.

[Princess Arabia]

Life doesn't see you. Life isn't personal. The reason why we believe we are suffering is because when there's a you then everything revolves around that. You think you're the center of the Universe and things are happening to you. Life is just happening and is taking care of itself. We're the one's that see it and suffer for it. 

You will deny this and rebut this and say let's see your toe gets chopped off and blah blah blah. Yes, I see it personally too and that things are happening to me because that me energy is what's running the show. I just can sense otherwise and understand what's really going on. Not with the details and complications but in simple terms - life is just happening on it's own and we have the capacity to extract, (brain) or whatever else we are capable of on abstract level that has nothing to do with the physicalities of life's flow. It's a misunderstanding on the human's part. Take your thoughts, languages, knowledge, ideas, concepts etcetc away and life will just be life and you won't know a damn thing about whats going on other than seeing sights, sounds, colors and movement. You won't suffer then. Just like a baby. You just know too much. Knowledge breeds suffering.

Any other response to this is just fantasy and well-wishing.

Edited Tuesday at 05:00 PM by Princess Arabia

[Hojo]

You are taking in 1000s of people's experiences and lumping them into one hell. No one person goes through 1000s of peoples of suffering except God and you gave that up.

Each person suffer alone. News is there to make you feel sad. If you cannot handle it stop watching and learn something.

I spend my 10 - 20s watching gore videos and have come to the conclusion that there is 0 purpose to watch these videos. The videos won't stop coming and it will only bring you down.

Like it will make reality shift in perception you will become tainted. If you become extremely disturbed reality will take the look of being disturbing and you can feel evil in your perception. You want your reality to look like heaven.

If otherwise you ignore it then you avoid it, alot of beautiful things happen everyday too.

Edited Tuesday at 10:01 PM by Hojo

[Shane Hanlon]

12 hours ago, quantumspiral said:

How do you stay motivated and excited about life when the world contains so much suffering?

1000s of murders per day globally, countless animals in awful factory farms, more than 100 ongoing armed conflicts, human slavery etc

 

Love. Working to alleviate their suffering and transform the world so that there are not animals in factory farms and less people are getting murdered.

[Letho]

@quantumspiral totally feel you man. I'm glad you posted this as well so I could share my answer as I've definitely thought about it and I can totally empathise with people whom don't even want to be a part of this world because there's so much suffering. Because I've already answered this for myself, I can give you an accurate perspective from my viewpoint. You've literally just gotta be real. If you are real, then you're never going to have parts of yourself that are unreal in which case you'll never have a mind that's clouded with the depressive illusions that can easily infect us and that we sometimes need to receive from reality to remember where to plant our feet on the ground.

We especially in the west live in a fake world and there is so much suffering compounded even further because the west creates non-real value metrics that reward centres feedback loop on. By purely simplifying life and getting to the raw constituents of being without any nonsense outside of learning to creatively find your way to mastery, you become the antidote the world needs, without even grandiosely thinking of yourself as the antidote nor "what the world needs".

Peace. Sincerely, find what comfort you can over this break. To whatever level you can I hope you find love, solace, strength and connection during Christmas. Best wishes 🌲 (and the same to everyone else).

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 01:09 PM by Letho

[RightHand]

How to stay unmotivated in a world full of joy? 

[Ramanujan]

Use affirmations

[UnbornTao]

Does it?

Might largely be a function of how one sees the world.

Aren't there things being born and flowering all the time, too? Negative bias seems to have an evolutionary root--what needs to be managed takes precedence over what is present, as the latter quickly gets taken for granted. But we don't have to be stuck with it.

Edited Thursday at 12:29 PM by UnbornTao

[Sugarcoat]

58 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Does it?

Might largely be a function of how one sees the world.

Aren't there things being born and flowering all the time, too? Negative bias seems to have an evolutionary root--what is lacking takes precedence over what is present, as the latter quickly gets taken for granted. However, we don't have to be stuck with it.

I think this kind of mindset is good if you wanna feel good for your own mental healths sake, and sure there is positive things going on too, but we can’t deny the tremendous amount of suffering in the world now. We have a bunch of diseases linked to the lifestyle in the modern world, poverty in third world countries, natural disasters etc etc the list goes on. I would say it’s reasonable to see the current state of the world in a negative light. But sure if it makes you feel bad, and you don’t plan on using that to fuel you to make a change,  then changing your mindset up is good, because simply feeling bad in itself doesn’t help anything nor yourself

Edited Wednesday at 03:38 PM by Sugarcoat

[shree]

You can’t help anyone if you’re overwhelmed. Find your purpose, grow, then give back.

[UnbornTao]

3 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

I think this kind of mindset is good if you wanna feel good for your own mental healths sake, and sure there is positive things going on too, but we can’t deny the tremendous amount of suffering in the world now. We have a bunch of diseases linked to the lifestyle in the modern world, poverty in third world countries, natural disasters etc etc the list goes on. I would say it’s reasonable to see the current state of the world in a negative light. But sure if it makes you feel bad, and you don’t plan on using that to fuel you to make a change,  then changing your mindset up is good, because simply feeling bad in itself doesn’t help anything nor yourself

A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored,

“Why is there so much suffering?”

The Zen Roshi replied, “No reason.”

—Shunryu Suzuki

[Sugarcoat]

29 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored,

“Why is there so much suffering?”

The Zen Roshi replied, “No reason.”

—Shunryu Suzuki

He means in the absolute sense or? Like reality can appear as suffering and it's for no reason. Or he means that there's no reason for anyone to suffer so its self created kinda?

[UnbornTao]

14 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

He means in the absolute sense or? Like reality can appear as suffering and it's for no reason. Or he means that there's no reason for anyone to suffer so its self created kinda?

My take is that he's saying that suffering itself is an activity you generate--it's like a mirage--and so it can be not done. He may be pointing to the central role we play in our experience of suffering. Currently we think we just encounter suffering somewhere out there, and that our only option is to endure it, manage it, ignore it.

Edited Thursday at 12:24 PM by UnbornTao

[Sugarcoat]

Just now, UnbornTao said:

My take is that he's saying that suffering itself is an activity you generate, and so it can be not done. He may be pointing to the central role we play in our experience of suffering. Currently we think we simply encounter suffering somewhere out there, and that our only option is to endure it, manage it, ignore it, etc. It's like a mirage.

Ok I see. Is that your own experience of suffering though?