Where Do I Find The Strength To Keep Going?

There are times (and they’re many) where I get discouraged about life, about what happens during the day, and many other things too. And it is very difficult to keep doing those things after you have faced immense stress or difficulties. So, the question now is: Where do I find the courage and motivation to keep going and ‘plough through’? “Keep your head held high and never lose your heart.” Even though it might seem easy or obvious to some, it is a very difficult thing to do. Imagine you have been climbing this mountain, and you have been tiring for quite some days now. The top of that mountain just seems so reachable and you have been able to keep a positive attitude, even through the cold and difficult conditions. When you have only about a quarter of the way left to climb, you find out that the path disappears and does not go to the top. It is very dangerous to continue the climb without the path that you had been following for so long, and you start doubting and feeling that you cannot reach the top like you had hoped to at the beginning of your journey. The dilemma that arises is: Do you climb yourself down or do you build your own path, even though it has been unplanned?

The good news is that it is completely up to us and in our hands to be able to retake control of the situation and move towards the outcome that we had primary envisioned. Being that “discouragement in and of itself is simply a psychological/emotional response,” that makes it that much more obvious that the solution is up to us. “The problem is that it often leads to a lessening of the frequency and intensity of the myriad behaviours necessary for the desired outcome or to outright quitting.” No matter how positive one can be throughout their daily lives, I can assure you that there has been no single person that hasn’t felt the weight of ‘failure’ and in turn, has not been discouraged about the goal they might have wanted to attain. But the important thing is that no matter how tough it gets, people have the ability to objectively asses the ‘damage’ and decide how they are going to proceed and what they are going to do next.

In hardships, we must remember that a bump along the way does not make the destination impossible, it just makes it a bit more difficult to reach than before. Losing faith in ourselves is normal, but it is something that could very easily turn into self-pity, and that can be a very destructive thing. The moment we might lose a little faith, one thing that can help, is to go over similar moments when we felt down or incapable to influence certain events in our lives and we actually had the strength and courage to pick ourselves up and finish the task we had started. These clear examples of ‘victory moments’ that are forever forged in our memories are a very good way to remind us that what is happening to us right now, is not the first time we’ve felt this way. Even before, we have had the strength to get up and find a way to the completion of our goal or task.

Another helpful thing to do, something that can even help us be ready for difficulties before they happen, is to plan. By planning out how you are going to reach your goal or accomplish your task, it is easier to see what difficulties you might face. After ‘calculating’ the damage these difficulties may cause, then you can construct backup plans so that you can know how to proceed even when something does go wrong. It is often when we see that our hard work is not paying off like we would have liked it to, or when it feels like it’s just not enough, that we tend to fall into a state of self-pity or self-loathing even harder. Try thinking of it this way: you had started your way towards a goal, you happened to face something that prevented you from directly continuing the path that you had laid out in your head, so what do you do now? You try to see what you can learn from the situation. What is a lesson you can identify and carry with you in future endeavours? What is something that taught you how to lay your own path towards the top of that mountain? The strength we all have inside of us, can sometimes be surprising and we might not even be aware we had it in the first place; but once you prevail, you will have yet one more victory under your belt ;)

‘Till next time…

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References:

Schreiner, M. (2016, July 27). Bouncing Back From Discouragement. Retrieved from https://evolutioncounseling.com/bouncing-back-discouragement/