Everyone has dreams, goals, and ambitions. The path to success is available to everyone. No matter your level of skill, experience, or how knowledgable you are or are not, everyone has the opportunity to reach their potential. However, the path to success if often plagued with discouragement. Sometimes the goal seems closer, and you feel your dreams coming true. At other times, the goal seems farther away than ever. How do you overcome discouragement? Why should you keep pursuing your goals? These questions begin to weigh on you until you give up on your goal or blame outwardly.
It is natural for people to get discouraged when something gets difficult. Even more so, it is easy to point blame outwardly when reaching your goal gets difficult. You feel you are focused and that you are making an effort. As a result, you look at the teachers, coaches, peers, or society as a whole to find blame. Yes, it is easy to assign blame when your goal challenges you.
How do you overcome discouragement? Overcoming discouragement requires persistence, which doesn’t require any unique talent. Consequently, the only thing that stops persistence is discouragement. Achieving a goal is a journey of learning, growing, gaining strength. Above all, achieving a goal is a journey of focused, disciplined actions. You’ve already significantly invested in your dream and made sacrifices along the way.
Instead of giving up, assigning blame, and allowing discouragement to overpower you, dig deeper inside yourself. Go beyond it, persist in your efforts, and, most importantly, forget your disappointments. Look resolutely at yourself, in the mirror, and ask, “what can I do to get better at this?”
All those great things you are working towards are possible. Greatness is within you. Keep going, keep trying, keep finding ways to get better at that thing. Today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes.
