How Do You Keep Going When Nothing’s Working? The Bhagavad Gita Answers

Let’s start here: There’s a moment. It’s not loud. It doesn’t come with thunder or a movie-score crescendo. It’s quiet.
A slow, hollow, almost imperceptible moment when you realize: you’re tired. Not physically. But something deeper—tired in your will. Tired of trying. Of starting over. Of keeping the smile on, the checklist moving, the optimism factory running. Nothing’s working. Not your effort. Not your kindness. Not your plans. And you wonder—how do people do it? How do they keep going when there’s no feedback, no reward, not even the illusion of progress? Here’s where The Bhagavad Gita walks in. Not with comfort. But with clarity.

The Gita’s most famous verse says it plainly: “You have the right to your actions. But not to the results.” It doesn’t say don’t care. It says—don’t depend. We live in a world obsessed with results. We love cause and effect. Input and output. Effort and outcome. So when outcomes betray us, we break. But the Gita says—detach. Not from life. But from the illusion that you control how it unfolds.
You control your effort. That’s it. You write the book. You raise the child. You speak the truth. You show up. Not for applause. Not for proof that it’s working. But because it’s who you are to do it. The act is the reward. The doing is the dignity. When nothing’s working, this is the deepest truth: You still are.

In the Gita, Arjuna is asked to fight. Not in theory. In a war. With his own people. He doesn’t want to. He’s paralyzed by emotion, ethics, grief. He sits down and says, “I can’t do this.” Ever said that to yourself? Yeah. So did he. And Krishna—God, no less—does not say: “Take a break. It’s okay. Maybe next time.” He says “Stand up.” Why? Because you don’t get to not show up just because it’s hard.
This world is not built to always be kind. It will ask more of you than is fair. It will test you with silence, loss, loneliness, and decisions that have no clean answer. But here’s the Gita’s question: Will you stand up anyway? Will you live this life, not the one you imagined, but the one that is here? Because that is courage. Not the absence of pain. But the presence of purpose even inside it.

This part is hard to accept. Because we think we are our bad days. We think we are the failure. The heartbreak. The rejection. The weight we carry. We think if nothing is working around us, we must be broken inside. But the Gita says—
You are not this one day in your life. You are not the outcomes you didn’t get. You are not the noise in your mind or the silence in your inbox.
You are something steadier. You are the one who watches the thoughts, not the thoughts. The one who continues when everything else stops. Your soul, the Gita says, is untouched by this chaos. So act. But know you are more than what happens when you do. This doesn’t mean numbness. It means knowing what’s real.

One of the most uncomfortable parts of adulthood is this: There is no clear path. No instruction manual. No booming voice from the sky telling you if you should stay or go, try again or let go. Sometimes the hardest part of life isn’t the pain. It’s the uncertainty of how to respond to it. The Gita doesn’t give formulas. But it does offer this: Right action comes from clarity, not from certainty.
Take time to know yourself. Be still long enough to hear your inner compass. And then—choose. Even when you’re unsure. Even when it’s hard. Because not choosing is a choice too. And life moves. With or without you.

The Gita never promises winning. It doesn’t say: fight, and you’ll be rewarded. It says: fight, because it’s right. We’re taught to measure life by outcomes—money, marriage, milestones. But the Gita says: measure by who you became in the process. Did you stay kind? Did you stay true? Did you show up, even when no one was watching? That’s success. Even if the world never claps.

You remember that your soul is not defined by the results. You remember that struggle doesn’t mean failure. You remember that your work is still sacred. And most of all—you remember that even in the absence of reward,
you can still choose to act with grace, with courage, and with love. That’s not just faith. That’s freedom.
And maybe that’s the point the Gita wants us to see: When everything else falls apart, you don’t have to.
Because you were never held together by the world anyway. You were always held by something much deeper. Now live like you know it.