Overcoming Discouragement: 10 Effective Tips to Feel Better

Feeling discouraged can be really tough in life. When you’re discouraged, it’s like having a heavy weight in your heart that’s hard to shake off. Everything around you starts to feel affected as you think about times when you felt hopeless before.

Life has its ups and downs, and there are moments when disappointment and discouragement come our way. It might be a small setback or a surprise failure, but when you’re feeling discouraged, your energy can drop, and the progress you’ve made gets slowed down. Discouragement can bring down your motivation, positivity, and excitement. Instead of feeling good, you start to doubt yourself and see things negatively.

1. Revise Your Expectations

When you’re feeling low and discouraged, try reminding yourself of your “Why”. Many times, it’s our big hopes that make us feel discouraged when we can’t reach them. If your hopes are too high, it’s good to change them to something more possible. The real world isn’t always like our perfect ideas, and in real life, it usually takes a bunch of tries to do well.

2. Focus on Your Vision

If you’re feeling down and discouraged, try thinking about the future you want. Imagine what you want your life to be like. Go out for a walk to clear your head and picture it in your mind – what would it look like? Such thinking can make you feel stronger and more motivated to overcome unhappy feelings.

3. Avoid Comparison With Others

Another unhelpful thing to do when you’re feeling discouraged is to compare yourself to others. When you compare yourself with others, you only see their successes and not the challenges that they had to go through to get where they are today. Everyone has a unique journey, and comparing your journey to others can lead you to feeling sorry for yourself in the end.

4. Cultivate Patience

Patience is a virtue, ever heard of this phrase? When you start working on your goals, remember not to hurry with things if you want positive outcomes. Your journey toward your goals needs to be filled with patience because if you hurry on making decisions, you might end up choosing wrong for yourself. Understand that achieving meaningful results takes time, and having patience can help you overcome discouragement.

5. Change Your Perspective

There are times when you plan things a certain way, but the outcome is something you never hoped for. What happens is people just get stuck there mentally and are unable to look forward in life. In such times, you should just let go of the situations where you have no control over things. Rather, look at things from a different perspective, and you will be able to concentrate on ways you can improve or adapt to new things.

6. Prioritize Self-Care

No matter the circumstances, you should never allow these setbacks to affect your health. If you have a healthy mind and body, you will be able to push all the negative thoughts away from yourself. When you start feeling low, get involved in activities that bring you joy; start yoga or meditation, paint, play a sport, or just simply go out for a walk or run.

7. Learn From Your Setbacks

Are you feeling low because of the setbacks you had to encounter? Always remember, every setback or failure you go through teaches you a valuable lesson. You must always look at the brighter picture and try to learn the lessons that your failure has given you. Take these failures as a chance to come back with perfection, as they make you strong and more resilient against discouragement.

8. Seek Support From Others

It is okay to ask for help. Whenever you feel that you are stuck at something and no matter how many times you try, the results are not what you expected. Simply get up and ask for the support of people you trust; these could be your mentor, a friend, or your boss. They might help you with insights on the issue that could not think of, they also will motivate you to give your best and overcome your challenges.

9. Learn New Skills

It is always beneficial to learn new things, in these times when technology is rapidly changing, you must always be ready to upskill yourself. A person’s learning must never stop, keep trying new and exciting things in life, as it will be helpful in overcoming your discouragement. It will also bring positive energies into your life and will broaden your mind to look at life from a different perspective.

10. Despite it All, Keep Going

Life will often give you challenges that will make you lose your focus. Despite all the challenges, you must try to stay focused and keep moving forward in life. No matter how hard things get, you will have to keep a never giving up attitude if you wish to succeed in life. Stop worrying about what will happen in the future, rather, focus on the tasks that you have in hand and, if needed, take things slowly ahead. This positive approach will help you to boost your confidence and work harder.