It's easy to get caught up in thinking in the "if only's" and the "what if's." That is the most common trap the mind sets for us. The truth is that way of thinking keeps you living in a false reality. "If only's" and "what if's" can only exist if I as an individual am never changing or growing. That is not possible. I cannot be who I was yesterday because that is in the past. Who I am tomorrow will be different and unknown for it has yet to happen. We only feel stuck when we resist change and get in our own way of evolving.
When you find yourself yearning for something to be other than what it is realize this: The "I" that wanted the "if" scenario was the "I" I was at the time. The "I" I am now may no longer care and honestly who has the time to spend obsessing over a hypothetical? Right now is the time for who you are in this present moment. Embrace that. Does that mean you will instantaneously not care about what you were obsessing over? No. It means you spend less time thinking about what is not and more time thinking about You. Now.
Do you ever find yourself tired but you don't know why? You've been working out, you've been sleeping a lot but you're still exhausted throughout the day. You feel as if a cloud is hanging over you but you can't quite put your finger on why? Everything is fine. Nothing tragic happened. What's going on? This happens when you are not being fully present in your current reality.
"When you'd rather be someplace other than where you are, parts of you shut down and begin not to participate. Your energy circulation becomes contracted, and the creative life force is unable to flow through you unimpeded. Your energy flow, the amount of life force flowing through you, begins to diminish. The source of the energy does not diminish, but the amount that flows through you does."
-Erich Shiffmann (Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness)
Think that's not you? This is just how you feel and it's just the way it is? What if who you and others, who have been tainted with whatever scars they've accumulated in their past, have defined you to be are wrong?
"Let go of every false self-deifnition, of everything you think you know about who you are, and then be what's left, what remains is the untarnished presence of who you've always been and still really are. This untarnished presence manifest--shines--as pure, clear awareness and unconditional love. When you experience your essence, you will feel this natural lovingness within yourself without having to do anything!"
-Erich Shiffmann (Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness)
A great tool that I have found to help this process along is practicing yoga. Yoga encourages the mind the be still and connect every part of you through your breath. Yoga is not based on ego or false pretenses. It focuses on keeping us in tune with how we are feeling in the present moment and nothing else. When you are fully present in the moment you cannot be bothered by hypothetical circumstances that so easily consume our lives. When you think of it it's ludicrous how much we allow hypothetical situations dictate our true reality. Live with who you are now in the now. By doing this you will have more energy because you will not be constricting your flow and you will be living more in sync with the True You.
Namaste.