Fellow men, what made you get out of the “everything feels useless” phase?

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1. Accept that most things we do in life, careers, insatiable lust for money, getting the new toy, trying to impress others, flexing on social media are utterly pointless when the day of reckoning comes and you’re worm food

   We’re just big apes who no longer live outside. Time to start acting like it.

2. A quick fix is going to the gym. After exercising I feel I have accomplished something.

3. After the “*everything feels useless*” I choose to add “*but I’m here and it’s temporary so I should make my stay as pleasant as possible*” because it’s better than wallowing in suffering.

4. There is a get out of it phase?

5. Listening to Shake it out by Florence and the Machine.

   It was so beautiful. I felt that if someone out there could sing something so beautiful, there must be shit out there worth living for and that I just didnt have it in my life.

   It was a slow walk to recovery from there,

6. When everything feels useless it is easy to do nothing, as you are convinced your efforts will also be useless.

   You just have to start changing things, start small and stick with it and keep telling yourself it will help even though it feels useless.

   Many won’t, they will stay miserable – it’s not easy.

7. I’m not sure if anyone ever really beats it. There’s always going to be those days. I think the goal is to not let it be every day. What worked for me was aiming to just be a little bit better than yesterday. It also changes things a lot when you think about what your actions can do for others. Living only for yourself gets pretty lonely after a while, and having other people to care about gives everything more meaning. It’s not just about you anymore and your actions, for good or bad, have significance. What you do matters when it affects people, especially the ones you care about.

8. It happens from time to time. When you evolve you lose sense of importance of what interested you before, ypu’re more peaceful. You have to build up a new drive, à more peaceful and healthy one is all.

   Just find it. Find a way to entertain to motivate you. And your daily life gets à little bit better everytime you do it right.

   At least for me its always how i get into this phase.

   But yeah everything we do is objectively useless, but we’re not an objective spieces. Just lose the comolex of being immature nerdy or whatever.

9. Honestly gym.

10. Met a nice lady I can talk to and excersize

11. It *is* all pointless. But maybe that’s the point, ya know?

12. I’ve always been quite nihilistic and viewed everything as being ultimately pointless in the grand scale of the universe. But then I saw a video about optimistic nihilism and it helped me not feel dread over the pointlessness of everything.

    Basically, everything is pointless – and that’s ok. There’s nothing wrong or bad about it being like that, it’s just the nature of life. And it gives you true freedom of will and choice. You can decide what your meaning of life is and you won’t be wrong because there’s no wrong nor right answers. The only thing that you should worry about is being the happiest you can be.

    That’s what helped me.

13. “. . . so I might as well have fun while I’m here”

14. Prayer

15. [deleted]

16. I’ve never been in one of those thankfully. But I think being a parent really shields me from that ever happening. As long as you have kids, you have a mission in life.

17. It’s a tide; it recedes, and occasionally comes right back.

    Focussing on self improvement in the gym, burying myself in hobbies to sharpen skills I enjoy using, and not having too much spare time to just sit and watch TV.
    Avoiding having more than a beer or two at a sitting helps, unless you’re in an overwhelmingly positive situation with friends.

    It’s hard, but this too shall pass.

18. gym, plenty of water, eat healthy

19. Phase?

20. Finding a partner and starting a family. The useless feeling is still there but having a family specifically to focus on really helps greatly reduce it.

21. Log off of reddit

22. Seperating from the military.

    I had gone from growing up in a shitty home, to barely surviving in a party house, to enlisting in one of the shittiest jobs in the military.

    I’d been depressed since age 5. And suddenly, it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I was finally doing what I wanted. Finally not struggling just to survive. Finally hopeful for my future.

23. graduated and moved across the country

24. Antidepressants. Hard stop. I lived with that feeling for way too fucking long. I sometimes feel it creeping in, but its allowed me the emotional distance to analyze that feeling and deem it worthless.

    I’m who I am, and the things around me have as much meaning as I fucking deem them to.

25. Just hanging with good friends. Not the neighbors you know but the type you could sit with quietly and be rowdy with. Be with good people always brings me back to this is why.

26. I just started laughing about it to myself and learning to apply some humor and humility to everything. If I make a mistake I just laugh at how it’s funny and move on. And if someone else does something crazy or stupid, I laugh at that too because we are all humans and all of this stuff in life is something someone made up. There’s bound to be some things that just don’t make sense.

27. On a universal scale, you, me, and everything any of us will ever do is meaningless.

    On a human scale, right here, right now is eternity, but you only get one eternity.

    I chose to focus on the scale I live in from day to day, not the one that I’m practically nonexistent to.

28. I’ve never had that “phase”. Please elaborate.

29. I found out that doing things that showed results felt amazing. Having a nice yard. Building a dog bed. I do halloween decorations. Have a hobby that makes you happy.

30. Pussy and blow

31. i found love. she is the reason why i give my best every day.

32. Being useful. It is easy to feel isolated and hopeless in our increasingly atomized world. But, if you get outside and go do some community service and volunteer, you’ll quickly find that there are hundreds of people, living all around you, who are actively trying to make your world better.

33. I never left. BUT I got stuff to do despite feeling that. And I’m not “there” yet. Not yet.

34. I started drinking a lot when I realized everything is futile and pointless. It made me enjoy things again, so now that’s the purpose. (Just remember to balance drinking with a good diet and exercise)

35. There’s a get out?

    I just thought you turned to spite and gave the universe the finger…

36. Honestly? I went full on “nothing matters” mode, which makes me happy because it made me realize that my mistakes don’t even matter. Yea nothing matters, so I might as well work on my own happiness and just focus on myself.

    Seriously think about it, we’re on a spec of dust in the great terms of the universe. Nothing we do will affect all of it in the big terms.

37. No way to solve for all men and situations, but any combination of these activities gives you a good shot:

    -Read about stoicism (Ryan Holiday is fantastic)
    -Get exercising regularly (Our muscles contain compounds which, during exercise, are released into our bloodstream and travel to our brain to fight depression and regulate our moods)
    -Allow yourself to feel sad and reset your dopamine levels so you don’t know an unhealthy constant flow of high dopamine to feel normal
    -Hang out with good people who have been through this themselves
    -Read non-fiction (Reading is proven to be one of the most underrated activities for overall brain health and mental wellness)
    -Accept that your original idea of purpose and meaning might not be true, but creating your own sense of it can be even more fulfilling if you choose to own it.
    -Stop caring so much about what you can’t control. It is literally a waste of time and energy.

38. I started trying to get help. I adopted stoic mindsets. I realized that no matter who you are, you will hit a moment or long period of what’s the point in anything. Life is not a destination. You don’t take the trip and finally arrive to where everyone is happy forever. We are more like scenes in nature. We are affected by the seasons of our life and moods and other changing events. Some days will be truly remarkable, other days will be truly bleak. Some days will seem so plain. Some days (either good or bad) will seem like things will never go the other way again, but they will.

39. I started doing all the things I always said I would do but never did.

    I hit on that girl at the bar.

    I took vacation and muted my emails.

    I am about to put a down payment on that Buell.

    That expensive computer I always said I’d buy one day? Had it for 9 months.

    Getting a colonoscopy and endoscopy as well as several tests to address my health.

    $200 bottle of wine? Why the fuck not? Drink it with an old friend you have feelings for and she knows but she doesn’t wanna be more than friends? Why the fuck not? Be her friend! Move on.

    Can’t have steak often? Order it blue rare when you do and complain if it’s not perfect.

    I am practicing making meunière sauce rather than watching others do it.

    Take a risk! Live a little! Throw out the condoms, maybe try and get pregnant!

    Get that cat you secretly want and name the shit out of him!

    Wanna quit smoking? Start tomorrow! Cold turkey! No excuses! Hold yourself accountable. No one else does.

40. I fell in love….but don’t worry that didn’t work out so I’m back here ✌️figures…

41. Why would you want to get out of it. Once you realize nothing matters you free yourself to do whatever you want