In a way, I can credit any success I’ve had in my adult life to garbage. And by picking up trash, one piece at a time and finding a better purpose for it, I somehow managed to clean up the mess my own life had turned into, and I found my sense of self-worth.

We all have moments in our life when we feel lost. We doubt that we can offer anyone, or the world, anything useful at all. For the past four decades, people have turned to me when they’ve needed support because they couldn’t find their purpose.

I’ve made it my life’s mission to help people who feel hopeless. Why has this been so important to me? Because I once felt lost and hopeless too.

When I was younger, I felt myself going nowhere fast. Nothing was going the way I’d hoped it would. My future looked bleak and I felt I had become an embarrassment to my family. I had no hope left that things would ever turn around for me.

As I was thinking about how worthless I felt, I took a walk around my neighborhood one day. I saw a big pile of garbage being stored underneath a bridge. While anyone else might notice the trash and move on, that trash was a harsh reminder about the state of my life.

That trash pile reminded me of myself. Its best days were gone. It had been used and was tossed away because it wasn’t valuable or worth keeping. As odd as it sounds, I could relate to the trash because I felt a lot like it.

But in that instant, I decided to do something about it—not in terms of improving my own life, but by finding a purpose for that trash. I thought that maybe there was still some life in that big trash heap.

I began to haul that garbage to a new location where I would make it into compost fertilizer. My body was achy and sometimes bruised from carrying all that trash. But I moved it and dug big holes—filling them with trash and soil.

I even felt hopeful enough to plant pumpkin seeds in those holes, to see if anything would sprout from my efforts. I was pleased to see that over time, that trash helped grow a lot of pumpkins that my neighbors and local cows could enjoy.

It might seem like a small accomplishment, but to me, it was enough to turn my life around. It gave me pride in myself, and it showed me that even when things look hopeless and finished, they aren’t. We may have to do the work, but if we put in the effort, that’s when the magic happens.

Does that mean if we’re feeling lost or hopeless, we have to start looking in our neighborhoods for bags of trash to do exactly what I did? No, of course not. But there are some lessons I took from this experience that can benefit others too. No one has to stay trapped in that mindset of disconnection and hopelessness.

Here are some things we can do to improve our lives, find our purpose, and start to feel better about ourselves and our place in the world.

1.       Find a Way to Help

When I planted those pumpkins and beautified my neighborhood by removing the trash from under the bridge, did I do it as a way to help people? No, I think I just wanted to show myself that feeling hopeless could be a temporary state and that everything, even me, had a purpose. We all can do that in our own lives by finding a way to help others or the planet.

One selfless act, especially when we think there may be no reward, can make us feel better. We can be reminded that we have a purpose and be who we want to be deep down.

2.       Focus on Our Hearts

To do this, we’ll need quiet, such as that found outside at our favorite spots or in a private room in our houses. We can meditate quietly and try to pay attention to what our hearts are saying. By listening to ourselves, we can find what our ultimate desires are, as well as what is missing from our lives.

3.       Pay Attention to Breathing

By taking slow, deep breaths and thinking about keeping them even and steady, we engage our minds so we aren’t letting intrusive thoughts come in. We won’t have the chance to tell ourselves that our meditation isn’t working or cast any other doubts—we’ll be too busy being in the moment for that to happen. And the thoughts that clutter our heads won’t keep out what our hearts are trying to say.

Don’t Just Listen—Act

The first step is listening to our hearts, but to truly change our lives and establish a connection with ourselves, we need to act on what we discover about ourselves.

We can do that by taking what we’ve envisioned for ourselves and making it happen. I’m living proof that it can be done, no matter how bleak things seem. We can all reach our new life and mindset if we take the baby steps we need to get there.