If you are like many people who often feel easily discouraged about many things they once seem to get excited about, try the following tips to defeat this notorious deadly enemy of happiness and success called DISCOURAGEMENT:
1. Take the fear out of failing. The biggest reason why many feel discouraged easily is the fear of failure. You will probably disagree with this, because often times, this fear happens in the subconscious mind. So it’s not something you think about consciously which then starts making you to feel discouraged…
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Here are few things you should bear in mind: If you must succeed in anything, you will have to fail several times. It is a law – therefore you can’t change it. Ask all top achievers – they will tell you the same thing.
Failure is not a disease, but a build-block to your success. What the highly successful people do is actually staggering. They keep trying many things one after the other, so that they can fail and fail fast. They know they will. So they go through many failures as fast as possible, learn from them as quickly as they can, correct their courses, and then take more actions – until they eventually hit it. It is called the law of averages. If you aim any target long enough without giving up, chances are you’ll eventually hit it.
That’s why an average mind who keeps trying will achieve more in a life time than a genius who quits trying after a first or second attempt. Therefore, just resolve it in your mind that the task, project, or idea you are starting right now won’t work out the first time, second time and even up to your fifth attempt. But along the way, you will develop character and learn valuable discretion vital for massive success.
You never know, life sometimes comes with surprises, meaning that you might hit your target sooner than expected. But never bank on this – always anticipate more failures on the way, while at the same time hoping for the best all the time. It is a grand mixture of realism and optimism. This is the surest way of starving to death your subconscious tendency for easy discouragement.
2. Understand that self-doubt is normal whenever you’re in an unfamiliar territory. Doubting your ability to succeed in any undertaking is never a license for quitting. Everybody doubts themselves when they are starting something new or in a situation where they have little knowledge, expertise or experience. This is natural. “Every artist was first an amateur,” rightly observed by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American essayist and poet.
History is full of great men and women who were basically terrified of their own ability to influence a handful of people never mind the world. The key is never to allow your sense of inadequacy and insecurity to make you throw in the towel on your dreams. Feel the self-doubt, but still do it anyway.
Actions and more actions eventually will eventually free you from the cycle of discouragement from self-doubt. Nothing grows confidence than progress that comes out of sheer action-oriented self-discipline and persistence in the face of self-doubt.
3. See negative feedback as what helps you fine-tune your idea. This is one of the greatest reasons why many people feel discouraged easily. People they trust, respect and value make negative comments that literally knocks out their confidence and dampens their hope.
You need to remember that if you want to achieve your goals in life and maximize your potential, you will have to learn to be less sensitive to the opinions of others. Regardless of whether you get it right or not, there are people who will criticise and undermine your efforts. They will question your judgement and disagree with your decisions. But your focus is to see what you can use in their negative comments to propel yourself forward in the direction of your goals.
Respect your own vision. Listen to what all of the people with opinions have to say, positive or negative. Scan through them and separate the wheat from the chaffs. Discard the nonsense and extract the relevant wisdom that can help you fight smarter for what you desire in your future. With this, you will strengthen and encourage yourself with the same expression, gesture or comments meant to discourage you easily.
4. Accept that life holds no guarantee of success in anything. Before you embark in any project, you must fully accept this. There is no guarantee that you will succeed in anything. But through constant actions, persistence and patience, you are more likely to succeed than when you just shrink back and take no actions at all.
Even though life does not guarantee us any success, it does have a refreshing way of handsomely rewarding resilience, belief and perseverance. So, do not start looking at others and asking “why me?.” After you become an adult, nothing is automatic anymore, except your automatic car if you’ve got one. You will have to fight for every good thing you need in life. This mentality will keep you strong in challenging situations and steer you away from slumping into discouragement and depression.
5. Expect things to take twice as long as you first estimate. I personally learnt this the hard way. I used to be full of faith, passion and drive about my goals. I’ll be very optimistic about the time-frame I wanted to achieve my goals, but only to discover, down the line, that things did take a little longer than my imagined time-frame.
As a result, I developed something that would eventually changed my life and preserve me from constantly getting discouraged. I set more reasonable goals – giving myself more realistic time-frame for a goal to be achieved. And after I’ve done this, I then DOUBLE the time again.
For example, if my reasonable time-frame for making £100,000 a year is 3 years. I double to be 6 years.
I know it’s insane! But this I have found extremely useful in protecting my momentum, hope and sense of encouragement. No more pressure to burn myself out! Also I do not have to become dejected and totally discouraged for not meeting my deadlines.
6. Chop tasks into little steps. Now that we know that almost everything worth doing well takes a little longer to complete than first imagined, do not try to do too much at a time without a clear, small and highly achievable step by step plan. Set your daily goals and make them small. Do not rush things, bearing in mind that you might still have to fail several time in the process. Keep you short-term expectations low, but your long-term high.
Break your big goal into small daily steps, which you can easily complete.
For example, if you want to write a book, start by writing short articles related to the topics of the book you intend to write. When you start feeling the thrill of completing and succeeding in little tasks, your confidence, momentum and knowledge start to grow towards eventually becoming a published writer. Another key principle here is to work on your little daily goals everyday. Do something daily toward your goal.
This keeps you progressive, which is very important to your motivation. When you feel you are making progress and contributing, no matter how small, you will avoid getting discouraged easily. Why? This is because your brain is already learning a new mentality of success.
7. Do something good to others, if possible anonymously. We feel discouraged easily often because our subconscious mind has been programmed to over-protect our ego. As a result, you are often half-discouraged in your deeper mind before you even get started. Therefore, quitting easily, getting discouraged easily, blaming others for our sense of inaction, procrastination etc., are all ways our deeper mind tries to over-protect us from the potential hurt and disappointment to our ego. Should what we are working on or doing is not successful, we dread hurting our ego.
So, the best way to correct the automatic over-protective attitude of the subconscious mind is to start doing good to others without expecting anything back for it. I do not have time here to explain why. But the results will be there for you to see if you practise this principle.
Give your time, energy, expertise, resources, and money away to help others. Whatever you have that can add value and benefit others is a potential instrument to re-programme your mind for resilience, greater persistence, happiness and greater self-confidence.
Contribute without contemplating about the reward that you will get in return. Volunteer somewhere, or join the search party, help someone move house, etc,. Basically do something that does not force you to protect your ego., and kindness without any attachment is best medicine for building residual inner motivation and resilience. If you do acts of kindness regularly and long enough, you will certainly re-programme your subconscious mind to become less-protective of your ego.
In return, you can go further pursuing a course, goal, or passion, without easily dropping off from it, due to the resistance you are getting from your subconscious mind. Once your subconscious mind stops over-protecting your ego, you’ll become more resilient, happier and self-reliant. You’ll be able to see the brighter side of things. Also you’ll be able to recover faster from set-backs, sudden discouragement and frustration. Your bounce-back rates from adversities will be a lot quicker, with a greater sense of purpose.
Hope this is helpful to you
Best regard
Wale
P.S. If you have any issues withanxiety panic attacks, OCD, GAD or any other anxiety-related disorders, why don’t you check out the MindBody Breakthrough highly effective natural anxiety recovery programme: The Anxiety Panic Recovery Breakthrough Programme?
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