Apathy can be described as the mental state without emotions. You don’t feel anger or joy, wonder or hate, passion or disappointment. You can think it to be your calmness, but if to look closer, there are differences. Apathy is a long-term state characterized by lack of energy, interest, complete loss of fresh and original thoughts.
Apathy is not an emotion you can ignore. Of course, you change hundreds of different mind-states, you can’t devote time to analyze them all. But your apathy is different. You feel a minimum of emotions “Thanks” to it, it influences your mental and physiological state.
Here are features of you being affected by apathy already:
- Your usual interests and hobbies do not bring you satisfaction they used to bring;
- Loss of motivation about studying, job, self-development, low personal effectiveness;
- Thoughts about your main goal are interrupted and replaced with something else, usually by your understanding of its achievement to be pointless;
- Waste of time for senseless things: Web-surfing, watching TV, playing video games;
- Feeling of frustration because of others having more interesting lives;
- Procrastination: during the last couple days you are busy with anything but your important tasks;
- Eating more food and lack of will to go in for physical exercises;
- Reading self-development books without using recommendations in practice;
- Loss of sensual landmarks about your life.
When some of these features are about you, you need to accept that you have a problem and to start looking for ways to overcome apathy before things go too far.
Apathy favors such feelings and emotions like guilt, shame, self-hate, and leads you towards low self-esteem, too.
Ways to Overcome Apathy
Change Perspective
Apathy is a temporary state of mind, it has nothing in common with your personality. In fact you are not lazy, not silly, not amorphic, not dull. Take off all the shortcuts you have put on yourself. Apathy does not say who you really are, it just shows your current mood. Things will change soon.
Determine the Reason
Are there any triggers that led you to your apathy? How did it all start? Remind yourself about the last day you’ve felt great. What went wrong then and why? How exactly have you used your time? Did a certain thinking template appear in recent days? Be critical and think objectively. Gather all the answers and find out what the reason is.
Change the Situation
If the reason is determined., it is time to change at least something. What actions, thoughts or words are to be changed in order for you to come back to that past good state? Think over everything possible to be replaced. Things you do don’t work. That is why you need to try something else.
Create Small Discomfort
Shaking up and getting out of a comfort zone (or neutral zone) is the best solution. Wake up earlier, do unusual things, meet new people. It is routine that leads towards an apathy the most often, so you need to break it and make your life different.
Create Your Mood
You probably have friends it is always interesting for you to spend time with. Or places helping you to restore energy. Maybe, music or films. The point is to charge yourself with exact emotions you lack the most at the moment.
Write a List of Past Joys
Enlist everything that used to bring you joy in your past, and start doing those things one by one. And devote more time than you usually do. If an hour of drawing or reading books does not bring you satisfaction, go in for it longer, for 3-4 hours. When being inflicted by apathy, your organism is longer to “enter” the activity, and they need to be more intensive.
Find Things That Can Make You Glad
Not all of your glad-list points can be available for you at the moment, so it is very important to find something you can get busy with instantly. What is that? What can you do now? Maybe, it is a cup of tea or a call to a certain person.
Go In for One Task
You need discipline. Choose one task and go in for it during couple hours with no breaks. Work on your own psychic is to be conscious. When you know your organism and its individual features, you are able to deal with apathy, depression and stress effectively.