I always wondered “why does nothing ever work out for me?”. No matter how hard I tried at things, it was always the same. Nothing seemed to work.
But lets think about that statement before we go any further. “Why does nothing ever work out for me?”
It’s a belief and an affirmation. It may very well be true, but it also affirms an idea: “Nothing ever works out for you”. Repeating such an affirmation is self fulfilling.
Why Does Nothing Ever Work Out For Me? – Ask Better Questions
The question you are asking may very well feel true for you the moment you ask it. It’s affirming a sense of struggle and pain. This may stem from an earlier time and you may be repeating this pain through other experiences until you can let go of it.
I had an early life trauma. My brother died in front of me on a Judo mat at age 10. It was to cause a string of events throughout my life. Pain and trauma has a way of doing this. It leaves an unconscious scar. Carrying the pain through life without knowing it can cause you to find more and more problems in life. Perhaps you’ve had a traumatic experience too, or are still grieving something in your past?
Ask better questions. If you catch yourself asking “why does nothing work out for me?’, ask yourself if this statement is entirely true. It may be that some things actually do work out for you. Think about what does work in your life.
A roof over your head, food on a daily basis? Family? a home? A healthy body? When you concentrate on the things which cause pain, you’re reliving that pain over and over. To shift this feeling which grows and grows when you focus on it, learn to focus on gratitude. Ask better questions such as “what does work in my life?” “How can I change my situation and become happier?”
Questions elicit responses. If you ask negative questions, your mind will look for negative answers.
Why Does Nothing Ever Work Out For Me? Using Gratitude
When you ask yourself “why does nothing ever work out for me?”, you make yourself a victim. You can reverse this habit by focusing on things which you are grateful for. see deliberate creation exercises. This can take some time of course but when you focus on the things that go wrong, more things go wrong. It’s the law of attraction working in your life!
“For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”— Matthew 25:29, RSV.
This is known as The Matthew Effect and can be observed throughout life in many forms. One of the commonest expressions of this is “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”.
When you’ve experienced pain in life, you find reasons and outcomes which reflect back to you what you already believe about life. Life is hard, money is always a problem, there’s no happiness or satisfaction. You probably say a few things like this to yourself too, don’t you?
Why Does Nothing Ever Work Out For Me? – What You Tell Yourself
We go through life with many teachers and mentors who may try and help us. But ultimately the person who you spend more of your life with is you! You are the one who determines what goes on inside your mind. You tell yourself stories based on what you believe and have picked up in life. They might not always be the most empowering ones or even the truth. But you believe what you continually say to yourself and repetition is key.
So if you’re telling yourself over and over “why does nothing ever work out for me?”, you’re training it into your subconscious mind. Guess what? It responds by creating the suggestion as a belief. Therefore nothing works out for you! Things go wrong for you because you keep telling yourself they will. You’re planting seeds into your subconscious mind all the time with your thought patterns, beliefs, attitudes and especially repetitive sayings!
Stop Doing Things Which Cause Pain
I tried at many things and no matter how hard I tried, I considered myself as a failure. This is the crux of things. How you see yourself is a big part of making life work for you. Until I realised this I kept walking into more and more problems.
Your self image either works for you or against you. If you keep saying to yourself “why does nothing ever work out for me?”, your self image could be sabotaging your best efforts. You may be trying really hard at things, harder than some who simply float through life, right? But somehow there’s always something standing in your way, stopping you make that breakthrough.
Your self image may be the culprit. Self image is a deep ingrained part of who you thing you are. No matter what you do on an outside level, your self image is going to trump all your efforts. That’s because it’s the little voice in your head which never stops talking. Until you learn to control that voice, and change what it has to say, you’ll likely repeat the same problems you’re encountering time after time.
Retrain Your Brain For A Change
You can reprogram you mind to focus on things which are more pleasing and enjoyable. When you focus on the pain, you create more of it. Of course you still have to pay the bills and go to work and this can bring up problems; especially for people who are carrying emotional scars from their past traumas.
The first step towards changing your life for the better is just to observe what’s going on in your mind. If your constantly saying to yourself “why does nothing ever work out for me?”, you’re probably saying a bunch of other negative things too.
Make time to sit and notice your internal dialogue for at least 5 minutes to start with. You don’t have to get into the full lotus position or cross your legs! Meditation can be just about sitting comfortably and noticing your mind without attachment to it. At first you’ll get drawn into the dramas playing in your head. But over time and with practice, you’ll be able to distance yourself from them and see them as thoughts and not actually you.
You can also write down some of your most common beliefs which keep coming up and get them out in the open. When things are running in your head, you tend to just believe them. But when you start dissecting your inner dialogue, you can stop attaching yourself to it.
Create Some New Mantras Instead
Your old mantras are the things you tell yourself which perpetuate your current situation. If you no longer want to live a life filled with nothing ever working out for you, you need to change what’s going on inside. This can start with another mantra which you’ll repeat to yourself in your head.
Now your previous mantra will probably have been going on for years, even decades. “Why does nothing ever work out for me?”, you say (in your head). “Why does nothing ever work out for me?”, “Why does nothing ever work out for me?”, over and over.
To change your belief you’re going to need to spend some time repeating an alternative mantra many times over and over. Here’s one which you can use:
“things work out easily and effortlessly”
“everything works out perfectly for me”
Of course you may have problems at first repeating such a mantra when your ingrained belief is just the opposite of this. If so, just be a little gentler and use one like this:
“some things do work out for me, just fine” or something like that!
So whenever you hear yourself repeat your old saying “why does nothing ever work out for me?”, repeat the new mantra “actually somethings do work out for me, just fine”.
Cybernetic Transposition
Stuart Lichtman, an MIT professor has studied what he calls cybernetic transposition. This is a strategy to change belief and create amazing results in your life.
It is based around the repetition of a daily mantra which is tailor made to you, for your own specific preferences and difficulties. What this takes into account is you own personal desires and expectations for what you want to achieve.
If you’re currently struggling with life and hold the belief that things don’t work out, you may want to test it first with a small goal. You can access Stuart Lichtmans book here.
Why Does Nothing Ever Work Out For Me? – Self Love
So you’ve now discovered self talk, gratitude and mediation to help you reverse those pesky old mantras and beliefs which are keeping you from the life of your dreams. Stop telling yourself those negative things and start changing the way you talk to yourself.
These strategies have worked wonders for me but they take time and some dedication. Think about how long you’ve been telling yourself those same negative stories about how nothing ever works out. You need to spend time and effort to change your paradigms around whatever is holding you back.
Self love is another thing to work on too. It’s something which has helped me dramatically. If you’re carrying old trauma in your pain body, you’ll keep feeding it with unhappy circumstances and problems. Then it keeps growing and your old negative mantras keep feeding the same beliefs which create them; over and over. A quick way to the route of the problem is to focus on self love.
With self love you go to the heart of the issue! If you’re carrying grief and pain, you need to heal it. Your decision making process is impaired and you’ll keep attracting problems unless you love yourself.
If you loved yourself would you keep creating problems for yourself? No, you wouldn’t unless it was to wake yourself up! But once you’re awake you don’t need to keep making life hard for yourself. So just learn to love yourself. Ask yourself whether your actions are those of someone who loves themselves in every situation.
Repeat a daily mantra “I love myself”, over and over in your head.
The Ho’oponopono Process
Another great technique is called the ho’oponopono process. This is a technique whereby you repeat the phrases:
” I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you” over and over inside your head.
This is a great mantra for clearing old negative thought patterns out of your mind and subconscious mind. While repeating these phrases, over and over, it’s going to replace existing thought habit patterns while creating new more positive ones.
Learn more about ho-oponopono in Joe Vitale’s book Zero Limits.
