Killing the Inner Doomer: When the World Feels Like It’s Falling Apart, Serve Someone

by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

The Doomer Mindset is Based on the Illusion of Ego and not REALNESS

Listen to enough people out there in the world today and you could be forgiven for thinking that we’re living through the final act of civilisation:

Society is collapsing before our very eyes.
The economy is about to implode.
The culture is disappearing and our beloved traditions no longer ‘mean’ anything.
War is all over the place and it’s affecting the cost of everything.
Nobody knows what to believe anymore because they’ve been told that “everything is relative” (when the truth is actually absolute).
Artificial intelligence is going to take everyone’s jobs (that they hate anyway) and then kill us all for being unemployed and a waste of carbon.
Immigration is transforming Western countries at a rate that feels impossible to keep up with.
The planet itself is dying.

Somewhere, there’s a bloke living in a bunker with 400 tins of baked beans who has been preparing for all of this since 1997 but – for the rest of us – this is all naturally a cause for great concern.

There is, of course, plenty of genuine uncertainty in the world and it’s not just the unavoidable uncertainty that comes with life as a default – in fact, most of the uncertainty we’re dealing with is man-made:

There are wars being fought across the planet that affect the whole globe, cultures are changing at a speed that human beings haven’t really experienced before, we’re exposed to information about events thousands of miles away almost instantaneously (unless we consciously tune out), and there’s a genuine vacuum of meaning society because, for many people, the dominant values seem to revolve around work, money, consumption, status and progress for the sake of progress instead of anything human and REAL.

All of this is to say that the doom and gloom isn’t necessarily coming from nowhere but this raises a problem:

Even if the world really is becoming more unstable, becoming more unreal isn’t going to help us deal with it.

In fact, that’s one of the biggest traps of all.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

The way out of the doomer mindset is to see that we're all interdependent and your realness takes you deeper into this.

The World Isn’t Your Village Anymore

For most of human history, you could be born, live your entire life in the same place, and then die amongst a relatively small community of people that you knew pretty well:

You knew the people around you.
You knew where your food actually came from.
You knew your neighbours and even spoke to them (eww!).
You knew the landscape inside and out.
You knew your family history and what your ancestors had done in their lifetimes.
You knew what was expected of you and what was true about yourself and life.

I admit I’m painting a pretty idyllic scene but I’m not suggesting that you didn’t have any problems or that this was literal Heaven itself:

Human beings have always had problems and always will and so there was violence, disease, famine, poverty, oppression, and all the rest of it.

Despite this, there was a certain simplicity to it (not that I was literally there):

Your nervous system wasn’t expected to process the emotional consequences of events happening simultaneously in hundreds of different countries every day.

You weren’t waking up in the morning and immediately discovering what had happened overnight in a village in Ukraine, a city in Gaza, a political rally in America, a financial market in Japan, and a natural disaster somewhere else.

(Nor were you then being presented with fifteen different interpretations of what all of those things supposedly ‘mean’).

I guess what I’m saying is pretty simple:

Modern human beings don’t just live in their own village anymore – we live in almost every village at once.

This creates a strange and tense psychological situation where we’re constantly being told about things that we can’t directly influence and – to add even more tension and dissonance – a great deal of the information we receive comes through organisations with their own incentives, assumptions, commercial interests, political perspectives, and editorial choices.

That doesn’t mean that everything is ‘fake’ (though most of it is, imo) but it does mean that we have to develop the ability to distinguish reality from the stories and interpretations that are being built around it.

Not only does that cost a lot of time, energy, and attention (our most valuable assets) but it’s also just difficult in general because the human nervous system wasn’t designed to spend fourteen hours a day contemplating and worrying about the fate of civilisation.

It’s a Wild Time to Be Human

Add everything together and it’s fair to say that it’s a pretty wild time to be alive (which I guess it always is but hopefully you know what I mean):

We’re told that the planet is in danger of dying (even though the planet itself isn’t going anywhere and so long after human beings are gone Earth will still be here).

We’re told the economy could collapse, that technology is going to change everything, that immigration is transforming cultures and that some traditional identities are disappearing.

Then we’re told the polar opposite by other people and that the future is going to be incredible, we’re all going to be chilling on Universal Basic Income, and the A.I. “Sand God” is going to answer all our prayers (or, at the very least, grant a wish or three).

It can all serve to make the monkey mind go bananas and yet we’re still expected to somehow go to Tesco, answer our emails, and remember to put the bins out.

Yeah, it can be a lot…

But how you deal with all of this ‘stuff’ depends enormously on how connected you are to your REALNESS because when you’re real, you understand something that the ego desperately wants you to forget:

Change is normal, uncertainty is normal, not being in total control is normal, being affected by forces bigger than yourself is normal, and none of these things mean that you’ve lost your humanity -in fact, embracing them is what makes you more human.

Let me show you what I mean:

The Illusion of Independence

One of the biggest distortions of the ego (the unreal self-image we filter life through because of unresolved shame, guilt, and/or trauma) is the belief that we’re fundamentally separate and independent from everything and everybody else.

In this distorted state, the ego looks at the world from the perspective of an individual body and projects its fragmentation out in to the rest of life – basically believing “I’m over here and everything else is over there” (or some variant of this theme).

From there, it’s very easy to construct the illusion that we’re independent in actual reality but we’re not:

We’re interdependent.

We breathe because plants and oceans and ecosystems make our atmosphere possible, we eat because other people grow, transport, prepare and sell food, we have language because other human beings created and transmitted it, and we have knowledge because countless generations came before us.

That’s not even to mention the roads, houses, electricity, medicine, technology, and pretty much every other feature of modern life that we only have and sustain because billions of people contribute to systems that we couldn’t maintain independently.

Even the most aggressively self-sufficient person is standing on an enormous foundation of other people’s contributions – that’s just REALITY and, of course, the ego hates it because the ego wants to believe that it is either completely powerless or completely powerful.

This creates two particularly destructive reactive archetypes to the perceived collapse of society all around us:

The Victim and the Hero

The Victim says “The world is happening TO me, there’s nothing I can do, so I’m helpless” whereas the Hero says “The world is happening BECAUSE of me so I need to fix everything, save everyone, and control everything that happens next“.

They might look like opposites but they’re actually two sides of the same unreal coin:

The Victim denies their power and The Hero denies their limitations.

The Victim becomes too passive and the Hero becomes too active.

Both are driven by shame because both are disconnected from the truth of what it actually means to be human (which is all shame is: a disconnection from truth caused by judgment instead of acceptance).

The Victim forgets that they can participate and the Hero forgets that they can’t control everything.

What’s relevant to everything we’ve been talking about is that when the world feels like it’s collapsing then these archetypes tend to show up with the volume all the way up:

What this means is that the Victim spends their time consuming increasingly horrifying information about how terrible everything is and becomes a ‘doomer’ but the Hero starts trying to ‘rescue’ everybody, ‘fix’ society, expose every conspiracy, defeat every enemy, and single-handedly rebuild civilisation before breakfast (which is a denial of reality for a million different reasons)

Both of them have officially become obsessed with The World whereas neither is particularly connected to reality (which is ‘bad’ news because reality is the only place where we can ever expect to get actual results).

The Survival Trap

There is another way the ego responds to all of this confusion which is that becomes self-obsessed (“If everything is falling apart, then I’d better look after myself“, etc.).

This is why people start hoarding (instead of acquiring enough for their families and communities), become obsessed with protecting their own resources, develop increasingly extreme us-and-them thinking, and become suspicious of everyone outside their tribe.

They start seeing other people primarily as threats, competitors or obstacles which – on the surface – seems logical seeing as though society and civilisation have been cancelled and everybody is about to return to a debased and animalistic nature.

After all, isn’t it a dog-eat-dog world? Isn’t it survival of the fittest? Shouldn’t we protect ourselves?

There is obviously nothing wrong with taking care of yourself and REALNESS doesn’t mean becoming a doormat and continuing to be a people-pleaser even at the end of the world as we know it:

You need boundaries.
You need discernment.
You need to protect yourself from people who are acting to destroy instead of create.
You need enough resources to survive.
Etc. etc. etc.

There’s a huge difference between healthy self-care and egoic isolation, though, because if we’re genuinely interdependent then trying to survive by disconnecting from everybody else is ultimately self-defeating.

All of which brings us to a central point:

The REAL Way Forward: If the World Is Falling Apart then Serve Something Bigger than Yourself

The way to deal with all of this and to stay real is to realise that if everything around you feels unstable then you can always find a sense of inner stability by shifting from asking “How can I protect myself?” and instead thinking about “What can I give that’s REAL?“

This doesn’t mean ignoring what’s happening, tricking yourself into thinking that everything is wonderful when it isn’t, or abandoning your boundaries, and it certainly doesn’t mean sacrificing yourself for people who repeatedly abuse or exploit you – it just means recognising that your REALNESS always leads to the same truth:

When you grow more real, you discover that you have something real to give.

This will be different for all of us but here are some examples:

Your attention.
Your creativity.
Your courage.
Your humour.
Your knowledge.
Your effort.
Your presence.
Your ability to listen, build, or teach.
Your ability to make somebody’s day slightly better.
Your ability to raise children well.
Your ability to create something beautiful that makes people see something true in themselves.
Your ability to help an elderly neighbour.
Your ability to make people laugh when everything feels heavy.
Your ability to tell the truth when everyone else is hiding.
Your ability to simply show up when nobody else is ready to.
Etc. etc. etc.

These things might seem insignificant when you’re thinking about the fate of civilisation as a whole but that’s exactly the point because “civilisation” isn’t an abstract thing floating somewhere up in the ether above us all…

Civilisation is what human beings do with one another.

It’s the way we treat each other, the things we build, and the knowledge we pass on.

It’s the relationships we create, the meals we cook, and the children we raise.

It’s the people we help, the communities we participate in, and the problems we solve.

You don’t need to roll over and give up like the Victim or try and save the entire world like the Hero – you simply need to show up and participate in the world around you in a REAL way and that means GIVING something.

REALNESS Always Has Something to Give

When you’re genuinely connected to yourself at the level of your realness then you don’t become obsessed with extracting more from life (because realness doesn’t have a scarcity mindset) – instead, you become interested in participating in it.

This is why ‘Realness’ isn’t just some abstract philosophical concept but something that has actual practical consequences in your relationship with yourself and life as a whole.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to Awareness, Acceptance, and Action (the general ‘steps’ – though it’s not necessarily a linear process – I use in my coaching containers with clients):

If you cultivate Awareness then you start seeing through the ego.
If you develop Acceptance of yourself, then you start integrating the ‘parts’ of yourself you’ve rejected by facing the Shadow Self.
If you take real Action then you start trusting yourself and life enough to participate instead of constantly trying to control everything.

Eventually, if you keep living in this REAL way then you realise that your life isn’t just about ‘you’ and that it never even was in the first place:

Your growth gives you something real to share with others (and to help them on their own journeys).
Your suffering can give you compassion and depth that helps you ‘see’ others.
Your mistakes can give you wisdom that we can all benefit from.
Your creativity can give you something beautiful from your experience that helps others understand their own experience even more deeply.
Your experience can help somebody who isn’t as far down the path as you are.
Your strength can support somebody who is temporarily weak.
Your honesty can serve as a role model to help somebody else stop pretending or performing their way through life.
Etc. etc. etc.

In short, your realness becomes a gift just because it’s real – not because you need to force it to conform to the world but simply because it flows out into the world and creates new connections.

This is what service really means:

Not martyrdom, people-pleasing, ‘rescuing’, ‘fixing’, being a spiritual doormat, or anything else along those lines – just bringing something real into the web of relationships that makes up your life (and, indeed, all of life).

What If Everything Really Does Collapse?

Here’s a thing:

Even if the worst-case scenario happened and civilisation really did come to an end then then all of the basic principles of REALITY itself would remain the same.

In relation to what we’ve been saying about the reality of interdependence this means:

If the economy collapsed then you’d still need relationships.
If political systems changed then you’d still need relationships.
If technology failed then you’d still need relationships.
Basically, if your community ever had to rebuild in some way then you’d still need the skills and gifts of people who could cook, teach, repair, organise, communicate, care, protect, create, and cooperate.

This all brings us to a really important truth about life:

The more uncertain life becomes, the more valuable REAL human qualities become.

This is worth knowing because none of these real human qualities can be stockpiled – they’re just something that you can cultivate (and the best time to start doing so is…now!).

You can’t hoard compassion, you can’t buy courage in bulk at Costco, you can’t put empathy in a bunker and leave it there in case you need it in the future, and you can’t preserve trust for yourself and life in a tin – all of these things only exist through relationship and that’s why the answer to an increasingly unreal world isn’t to become more unreal yourself but to become more human.

Start working on the things that make you more real regardless of the state of society and you’ll increase the odds of having a better relationship with yourself and the world around you.

If you want to get more in touch with reality and your own realness then check out my book Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness.

How to Practise This ‘Stuff’ and Make It REAL So You Can Kill the Inner ‘Doomer’

As always, the process of taking this ‘stuff’ off the page and into the rest of your life comes back to Awareness, Acceptance and Action.

1. Awareness (Deconstruct the Ego)

The first step is to get real with yourself and start noticing how you’re reacting to the state of the world in an unreal way:

Are you becoming the Victim? (“There’s nothing I can do and I’m doomed”) or are you becoming the Hero? (“It’s all down to me and I can fight reality”).

Don’t judge yourself for however you’re reacting – just notice what’s going on and then ask yourself an important question:

“What’s actually within my control here?”

Usually, the answer is much simpler and less complicated than the ego needs it to be to keep its hold over you.

2. Acceptance (Integrate the Shadow)

It’s totally okay to embrace the fact some uncomfortable truths about what this entail.

For example:

You’re a real human being and that you’re scared sometimes.
You don’t know what’s going to happen.
You can’t control society or life as a whole.
Other people will make decisions you disagree with.
Reality involves eventual suffering no matter what.
There are ‘parts’ of you desperately want certainty even though uncertainty is the default (even if civilisation and the world aren’t ‘collapsing’).

You don’t have to become fearless (though most fear is just F.E.A.R – “False Evidence Appearing Real”) but it is worth being honest with yourself about what you’re afraid of without allowing fear to become your whole identity.

3. Action (Trust Yourself & Life)

Finally, it’s time to do something REAL (if you go through Awareness and Acceptance first then it increases the odds of doing something real instead of doing something your ego wants you to do).

Of course, this could literally be anything and what’s real for one person might not be for another (depending on their intentions) but – in general – it’s going to involve you using your real values and gifts to show up and serve.

For example:

Help somebody.

Teaching something.
Creating something.
Listening to someone and really making them feel heard.
Volunteering.
Supporting your community without trying to be a big hero or ‘rescue’ people.
Looking after your family.
Making something better than it was before you found it.
Giving someone your attention.
Using your skills.
Building something useful that outlives you.

The most important part of all this is to stop waiting for the entire world to become ‘fixed’ before you allow yourself to participate in it and realising that you don’t need to know how the story ends – you just need to know what the next REAL thing is.

You overcome the doomer in your mind by focusing on something bigger than yourself.

The Final Word: Be a SLAVE to the Doomer in Your Mind or Choose to Show Up and SERVE

Perhaps the realest response to a world that feels increasingly fragmented is not to retreat further into ourselves and all of our fears and doubts but to actually remember what we actually are:

Interdependent human beings that can keep evolving and growing into deeper wholeness.

Remembering this just helps us to see that the realest thing you can do when the world feels like it’s falling apart is to just serve somebody or something in a real way.

Not because you’re responsible for saving the world, because you can control everything, or because you need approval – simply because because you’re part of life and so you always have something REAL to give.

REAL ALWAYS WORKS.

Even here.

Especially here.

Stay real out there,

Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

P.S. If you’re ready to get more in touch with your realness and to start participating in your life then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you to tune back in.

Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want.

It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.

Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.

It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.

This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).

Shadow Life is an exploration of the human shadow and the hidden side of our personalities. It looks at the masks we wear, where these masks come from, and how we can take them off.

The book explores how we can better manage our relationships with shame, guilt, and trauma in order to remove the Mask that the world has asked us to wear (and that we forgot we were wearing) so we can live an authentic life with less drama, chaos, or BS whilst we’re still around.

Download EGO/SHADOW/TRUST - a free guide to transformation that will walk you through the vital stages of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action with practical strategies to implement right away.

Real Always Works