If you’ve been looking for an answer to the question of how to overcome discouragement, you’re in the right place.
Listen, I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you.
Life can be difficult.
And discouragement can be a very real part of that process.
Even some of the most successful people in history have had to navigate and overcome this negative emotion at one time or another.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that there probably hasn’t ever been a single human born into this world who hasn’t dealt with their own fair share of discouragement.
So in this post, I’m going to lay out 13 tips that have helped me immensely in dealing with this problem in my life.
Hopefully, this guide will help you to figure out how you can work past your own discouragement in life and move on to feel encouraged, motivated, inspired, and capable of achieving the success you desire.
Let’s dive into it.
13 Tips – How To Overcome Discouragement
1. Understand That Everyone Gets Discouraged Sometimes
One of the weird things about discouragement is that we’re often tempted to believe that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.
But this simply isn’t true.
Everyone feels discouraged to some point.
So rest assured that you’re not the only one who’s ever felt this way.
Even the most successful people who’ve ever lived have dealt with their own bouts of discouragement.
If anything, you’re in great company—though that may not necessarily bring you a whole lot of comfort in the moment.
2. Be Kind To Yourself
One interesting thing about discouragement is that a lot of people label it as just being another word for depression.
Depression can lead to discouragement, but the truth is that discouragement is actually rooted in a sort of hopelessness for the future.
Therefore, it really helps to be kind to yourself when you’re feeling discouraged.
Try not to judge yourself for failures.
Try to remind yourself that you deserve mercy, grace, and patience—just like anyone else.
In cases where your discouragement may be coming from subconscious negative self-judgment, this can do a lot to help alleviate the problem.
3. Talk To A Friend Or Loved One
If you’re feeling discouraged, sometimes the best medicine is friendship, kindness, and community.
Consider calling up a good friend or visiting family—and tell them how you feel.
Spending time with people who will encourage you, motivate you, and just in general reassure you that you’re doing a great job is actually really powerful.
Never underestimate how important this is.
4. Take A Break And Do Something Fun
Discouragement, all too commonly, comes from our own self-perception of feeling like we’re not making good enough progress at something we’re hoping to achieve in our life.
And sometimes, just taking a step back and getting some time away from the ‘goal’ can make all the difference (at least in the short term).
Consider taking a break from the thing you’re discouraged with, and spending some time just having fun, laughing, and temporarily forgetting about the problem.
Obviously, this isn’t a long-term solution.
But in the short term, this can actually be really beneficial.
5. Take A Nap (Get Some Sleep)
One interesting thing about the brain is that it tends to build up toxins while we’re awake.
Then, when we sleep, it filters out these toxins and cleans itself.
Now, I’m no brain scientist—and I’m definitely not some kind of neural brain chemistry expert.
However, the way I understand it—when we sleep and give the brain plenty of time to clean itself, we’re less likely to experience as many negative emotions.
This seems to make sense, and it also seems to correlate with circumstances in my own life.
I’ve always found that healthy sleep patterns and getting adequate sleep (both in the short term and long term) tend to equate with not only better results in my day-to-day life, but also a higher level of life satisfaction, happiness, and other positive emotion.
6. Make A Plan
At some point, you’re going to need to confront the thing you’re discouraged about.
If you’re discouraged because you’ve hit a roadblock, challenge, or setback with a goal, then it’s time to revisit the problem and make a new plan for how to overcome it.
Do you need some help making and sticking to a plan? If so, check out this guide: How To Stick To A Plan And Succeed – In 7 Simple Steps.
It can be tempting to run from the problem in the meantime—and this may provide you some temporary low-level relief.
However, in the long term, the best way to defeat discouragement is to overcome the problem that caused the discouragement in the first place.
And this all begins with making a plan, setting a goal, and sticking with it until you succeed.
I also recommend that you read this guide, to help you figure out how you can get started today with planning an encouraging, successful, hopeful future for yourself: 13 Tips For Planning For A Successful Future.
7. Figure Out If You’re Putting Too Much Pressure On Yourself
I once had a goal-setting coaching client who faced particularly extreme bouts of discouragement in his life.
But upon closer inspection, it became clear that he was setting a lot of demanding goals—and then failing to meet almost all of them on a weekly basis.
He had demanding workout goals, business goals, family goals, house organization goals, etc.
To be really honest, he was pretty much trying to do a perfect job at absolutely everything in his life, all at the same time.
And obviously—the vast majority of the time, he didn’t even have time to try to do all of this stuff.
The truth was that his goals just weren’t realistic.
And thus, when he failed to achieve them, he would get discouraged—and it would make him feel like his future was hopeless.
As it turned out, the solution to his problem was pretty simple.
He needed to choose one or two areas of his life that he wanted to focus on first, and make those the priorities.
Then, the other areas needed to be downgraded to things that he only did if he had extra time and/or got the priority items done with enough time to spare.
Once he made this simple adjustment, he went from feeling completely discouraged about his days, to being motivated and encouraged.
Why?
Because now he was successfully achieving his daily goals instead of consistently failing at them—which made him feel like he was making real progress in his life.
And this, in turn, made him feel hopeful about the future.
This one simple change really revolutionized the way he was approaching his goals.
It just worked.
Case in point, don’t put too much pressure on yourself.
Make sure that your goals and to-do lists are achievable so that you can set yourself up for success right from the beginning.
8. Remember That Great Things Take Time
If you’re feeling discouraged because you’re just not making as much progress as you’d like to be making, as fast as you would like to be making it, then consider this:
All great things take time.
It’s easy to get discouraged when things don’t go the way you want them to within a couple of days, weeks, or months.
But it’s also really important to understand that it takes time to do things like:
- Start a business
- Increase your income
- Learn a new skill
- Improve your fitness
- Get a promotion at work
- Fix your marriage
- Improve your relationships with your children
These are all extremely important things that actually require a significant time investment.
And to be honest, a lot of people don’t give themselves enough time to actually create significant results.
So be patient.
Allow yourself more time to accomplish these important types of tasks in your life.
And try not to get discouraged if they take a while.
Every life experience is different and moves at its own pace.
So just stay the course and keep plugging away at the things that are important to you.
9. Start Setting Specific, Measurable Goals For Yourself
Sometimes, not seeing progress in life in the areas that matter to us can really leave us feeling discouraged.
One of the best ways to combat this is to start setting specific, measurable goals that’ll show us how much progress we’re making, and at what rate we’re making that progress.
For example, if you want to lose weight and increase your fitness, you may be tempted to do some exercises, try to diet a little bit, and then look in the mirror every day to see if you look any more ‘fit’ or ‘athletic.’
But this is actually a really dangerous game—and it can definitely leave you feeling discouraged when you don’t see results within a short timeframe.
Instead, it’s going to be far more helpful to set a SMART goal related to fitness, and then set yourself specific, achievable daily milestones that, when added together over time, will lead up to the fulfillment of your goal in the long-term.
And you’ll want to measure the results over time using a more specific, measurable framework.
For example, instead of feeling discouraged when you look in the mirror and don’t see any physical changes occurring within the first few weeks—settle into your new ‘fitness routine’ for the long term.
Understand that it may take six months, a year, or even two years to achieve the sustainable fitness results you want.
This is actually really normal.
Then, instead of relying on a non trust-worthy metric (like how you look in the mirror) to track your progress, you should measure your results by either stepping on a scale to get an accurate weight reading, or by measuring the results you get based on your performance while you exercise (how much weight you lift, how long it takes you to run a mile, etc).
You can also meticulously track calories and regulate your food intake to take even more control of your levels of fitness.
When you get serious about your goal, to the point where you’re meticulously tracking your inputs and outputs and getting feedback on your results, this will result in forward momentum and progress that will help you to see if your plan is actually working.
And if you’re doing everything right, then the plan will work.
And as you become aware of this, you will be encouraged instead of discouraged.
Goal setting is a huge part of this equation.
Learning to set SMART goals, and learning to stick with those goals every single day, is a crucial part of making this process work.
This is why I’m a huge proponent of dreaming big dreams, turning your dreams into goals, and writing those goals down to create a roadmap for success.
This could not be more important.
10. Start A Journaling Habit
Sometimes, discouragement doesn’t necessarily come from a failure to meet your goals—but rather, from a range of negative emotions we feel throughout the day.
It could come from depression, anxiety, or any other number of negative feelings.
In these cases, starting a journaling habit can be a great way to help you process all those emotions before going to bed at night.
Consider getting yourself a journal and committing just a few minutes every night to writing about your day before going to sleep.
You can even make a list of the things that are good in your life and deploy gratitude to help you stave off those discouraging feelings.
You may be amazed by how this can help you to process your negative emotions and work through them enough to sleep better—and then get on with the next day on a much more ‘encouraging’ foot.
11. Let Go Of Negative Emotions
As humans, we are always going to experience some level of negative emotion.
This could be regret from the past, frustration over a current situation, sadness from a loss, etc.
However, it’s really important that we don’t run from these emotions.
Instead, it’s always better to look at them, process them, try to understand them, and then try to healthily work through them and heal from them.
Sometimes, getting therapy is the best way to do this.
But other times, it’s just a matter of being intentional about deciding that you’re going to face your emotions and work through them without caving into the temptation to run or to avoid them.
As you work through your negative emotions and you start to find happiness on the other side of that, you’ll definitely help to cut back on that discouragement and increase your hopefulness about life.
12. Forgive Yourself
Sometimes, we end up feeling discouraged because of things that we’ve done in the past.
Maybe you’ve messed up some opportunities in your life, and you regret doing so.
Maybe you’ve done things, said things, or neglected to do things in the past—and today, you look back on those actions with regret and remorse.
Maybe since you’ve failed in the past, you don’t give yourself credit for being able to succeed in the future.
This can definitely be discouraging.
But once again, it’s really important to try to let go of past regret.
Holding onto it will just continue to discourage you.
But if you let go of it and you give yourself a new chance to succeed, you just may set yourself up to become an even better version of yourself tomorrow than you were yesterday.
And that’s a huge victory.
Remember, there’s no such thing as a perfect human.
We all make mistakes.
But letting go of them and giving ourselves a chance to try again is really what matters.
13. Remember That Every Day Is A New Beginning
It’s important to remember that every day, you have another chance to create the life you want for yourself.
I completely believe that every human deserves a new chance—every single day.
Sure, we’ve all made mistakes.
And yes, we may still need to deal with the consequences of those mistakes.
But we also have the opportunity, every single day, to start where we are and create something amazing with our lives.
You have as much power to do this as anyone else.
And today, I want to encourage you to have faith in yourself and in your ability to be successful.
Just start making little strides in a positive direction.
You may be really surprised at how much progress you can make if you just start writing down your future goals and making small, achievable advancements to accomplish them.
FAQs
What is the root of discouragement?
Discouragement really comes from a lack of belief and/or clarity in your future goals.
If for one reason or another you don’t actually believe that you’re capable of success, then you’re highly likely to feel discouraged to at least some degree.
What are the reasons for discouragement?
People feel discouragement when they lose faith and hope that their life can turn out as planned.
This is most likely to happen when you hit a roadblock, a setback, or a failure in life.
How does discouragement affect us?
Discouragement can make us feel sad, depressed, and hopeless. It can hurt your ability to think positively and hopefully about the future, and it can keep you from being able to stay motivated and inspired to continue on your journey.
How do you overcome disappointment and discouragement?
You overcome disappointment and discouragement by figuring out why you’re discouraged, making a plan to overcome the problem, writing down your goals, and taking daily action to see those goals through to a successful outcome.
Sometimes, this is a huge challenge. But when you do get through it, you’ll tend to feel even much more accomplished… knowing that you took control of your life to solve the problem for yourself.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this post has given you some useful information that’ll help you with learning how to overcome discouragement—and how this can help you in your goal-setting and life-success journey.
Of course, at the end of the day, this is just another part of the larger, overarching process of turning your dreams into goals, and writing those goals down to create a roadmap for success in your life.
This is how you begin your journey to success and crush it.
Need some help? Download my weekly goal-setting sheet, print out a few, and give it a try.
You can also sign up for my email list to get a free copy of my Goal Setting Essentials Starter Kit.
You’ve got this. I believe in you.
Now it’s time to get to work.
Best wishes…
Jay O’Donnell