Given up, resigned, caught up in hopelessness – that’s how people feel when they find themselves in a situation where they simply don’t see how to get out of it…

“What am I supposed to do, every path is a compromise – I can’t see where it’s going…”
“I no longer believe that things will change, I’ve tried so much and haven’t achieved the desired goal!”
“I actually know what it would take, but I no longer trust myself to be able to do it, I keep being weak.”

Resignation is a blatant space. The loops of the mind are so accustomed to always ending up where they can go no further. The trace of light, the trace of hope, the trace of joy – all far away, no longer tangible, no longer real. Too often hopes have not been fulfilled, too often it has been experienced that things just don’t work out as they should.

I know these places well myself – and I feel them in clients who are sitting right under my nose. A deep feeling of being trapped, standing on the edge, with your back against the wall. No way out in sight, no rescue at hand, no hope.

*

And yet I believe that these people will find their way. Not only because I have found it and am living proof that you can get out of such corners. But above all,

because they are sitting right under my nose.

A person who has really ended up in complete resignation will no longer book a session. They will no longer make this effort – in terms of time, money and also internally – because they have given up. So I sit opposite these people and KNOW that there is a way out.

I also know that I can’t give it to them. I don’t have a magic formula. I know that they have to walk this path themselves, no one else can do it for them, just as no one else could climb out of my abyss for me. And that wouldn’t be good either – because it was my job and my task, just as it is the task of every person who finds themselves in a situation like this, to find THEIR OWN WAY out of it.

But I know that this path exists – despite not knowing what it looks like. That is also really secondary, because what matters is not the “how”, but that we focus on going out.

*

And this is the crucial point:

In my view, one of the main reasons why someone is stuck in such a situation is that they are holding on to a certain image, an identity, a desire, an entitlement, an assumption.

“If only I could get … , then I’d get out of it.”

It could be the job we have longed for, the successful relationship, the desired amount of money in our bank account, the child we have been waiting for so long. It is what we hope to be redeemed by, what stands in our way of really finding redemption.

I have to write that again:

It is what we hope will redeem us,
what stands in our way,
from finding real redemption.

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What does that mean?

It means that what we are so afraid of must (yes: MUST) happen: A death.

Something must and will die on the way out, on the way to a reality in which we feel comfortable, safe and happy.

It means that we have to let go of our CONCEPT of what that looks like, so that what can appear and emerge can bring us the state we long for. Because life is not built to fulfill our concepts, to be controlled by us… Life is built to give us what we need – to become who we are. To end up in the peace and freedom that we all long for.

And that is the decisive step:

To detach ourselves from concepts and concentrate on the QUALITY of what we desire. And to learn to align ourselves with this, to think in this quality, to act from this quality. And that takes…

Alignment.
Discipline.
Courage.
Perseverance.
Letting go.
Willingness.
Dying.
Opening.
Allowing it to be possible.
Love.
Gratitude.
Desire.
Courage.
Recognizing.
Acting.
Celebrating.
Moving on.

And that then takes center stage. And no longer the loop of resignation with its many “ifs” and “buts” and “I would love to” and “The others…”

*

The trick is to recognize the loop.
Then to acknowledge it.
Then to take responsibility for it.
Clarify and decide where you want to go from now on.
And then set off in the new direction and…

Learn how to do this.

Yes. Learn it.

Because the expectation that we should already be able to do this is also a loop that keeps us in the abyss. But we don’t, we can’t (yet), otherwise we would have gone somewhere else long ago!

We have to learn that. To be beginners, again and again. Get help and ask for support. Practice. Trying things out. It’s like learning to walk again – and that’s what we do. We are learning to walk again, on new paths.

And that is the breakthrough!

The decision to take a new path
and the actions that follow,
is what breaks through the resignation.

And that is the new, that is where it begins. It’s already there – in the first step, where we once again act out of desire and FOR something and no longer desperately and AGAINST something. This is where, even in the smallest movements, life begins to bring joy again.

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I know this path. It is often hard and bitter at first and really not pleasant. The picture above is the view from the cliffs where I often sat when life crushed me…

However, this path is also a source of happiness, a true adventure and a guarantee for new experiences and a truly different life. And then, one day, it might really take us to where we all dream of:

To be at peace.

Regardless of whether the money / the relationship / the child / the job… is there. In other words, what we had hoped for.

There is something much more important:

We are with us.
Always.
In everything that is.
And we can rely on ourselves.

What could be better?