Permission to feel: Discouragement

The Doorway to Self-Belief and Perseverance. It's a sliding doors moment...

How do you deal with feeling discouraged? Do moments in which you are discouraged springboard you to inward self-flagellation of not being good enough, fuelling your ‘just try harder’ piston*?

*Ahem, just me then?

I used to do this, but I’ve learnt that I get so much more out of my feelings of discouragement if I use them as an invitation for self-reflection. I hope that I am a late starter to this and this is what you do too.

We feel discouraged when we are losing our confidence and enthusiasm about any future effort¹, so we don’t have the oomph to persist.

Unless you are a demi-god, it is likely that, as a child there were times when your efforts didn’t meet your expectations and that left you feeling disappointed.

In all likelihood an adult helped you out; advising you what you needed to do differently in order to fix it; advice introduced with, ‘What you need to do is…’ or, ‘Here, let me do it’. The second one often uttered by adults at the mercy of a full schedule.

Whilst that gets the job done, it can leave the child with an assumed sense that their efforts are not good enough which in the skip of a heartbeat can turn into a sense that they are not good enough. Then the feelings of disappointment turn to ones of discouragement.

Brunette Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) in the Sliding Doors film is the embodiment of how discouragement then shows up in adulthood. The sloped shoulders, the down turned mouth, are beautiful displays of a lack of confidence and enthusiasm.

How do we see this play out in her relationships? Accepting someone’s values and views as her own, which makes her doubt herself and accepting shitty behaviour from others. She’s literally running at doors that shut in her face.

James (John Hannah’s character) is, in my opinion, the personification of hope:

“Everything happens for the best. You'll never know if you don't try.”
James, Sliding Doors.

When James (i.e. hope) comes into her life, she gets a grant to start her own PR firm, dyes her hair and wears those lovely little red flowers in it; all displays of a sense of possibility, opportunity and change.

Hope is the antidote to discouragement. Actually, hope is a matter of life and death, because when we have hope we have reason to persevere, and when we persevere things have the chance to change and where there is change, there is life.

Discouragement can be dissolved when we have hope, so the issue is not that we have been discouraged, but how we can find hope again.

The path from discouragement to hope often necessitates walking through the tube train door. The tube train door is self-reflection.

Still with me? God love ya!

As an aside, this is also why my favourite film is Shawshank Redemption. I couldn’t understand for ages why I loved it so much; it is brutal and despairing, but it is a love letter to hope.

When we are encouraged by others, ‘No, yay, you’re great’, or, ‘What you need to do is…’ it can feel flat and doesn’t hit the sweet spot that encourages us to persevere. For, in order to persevere, we need to have self efficacy.

Recalling our past experiences and transcending our limiting beliefs are what ignites our energy to persevere.

Andy Dufresne’s hope in Shawshank Redemption was grounded in his self belief that he was innocent, even though there was a well founded, well proven limiting belief in the form of crooked Warden Norton that he would never get out of the prison.

The rats in the experiment I link to above didn’t keep on swimming because the psychologist was at the side of the water cheering ‘yay, you got this, just doggy paddle!!!’.

No, it was the rat’s past experience of respite from swimming for a small amount of time which encouraged them to keep on swimming.

Recalling past experiences which we have survived and reflecting on the strengths which helped us get through gives us hope that things can be different, or as they say in 12 step recovery, that, ‘This too shall pass.’

Examining our limiting beliefs helps to bring the unconscious into consciousness and this gives us the opportunity to change. As Carl Jung said,

‘We cannot change anything until we accept it.’

and you can’t accept what you aren’t aware of.

As I often share, I’m all about the wisdom of feelings, indeed, I consider them to be the macronutrients of the soul:

Love and fear are like proteins - the building blocks to connection and boundaries. 

Anger is like a carbohydrate - a great emotion to give the energy for change. 

None of them are bad or good, they just are, and they all have their use. 

That’s why we have them, because Mother Nature is highly efficient and equips us with what we need!

---

I realise that up until now I have told a very solitary story about how to move through discouragement; one of self reflection and the influence of past experiences and limiting beliefs.

Of course, other people can help enormously to encourage, but I’m not sure that they can bring us out of discouragement. I think we have to do that work inner work so that we rebuild our self belief.

I appreciate encouragement, but I think I can only truly receive it when I am back to being my numero uno daydream believer self; but I down-to-the-tips-of-my-toes-and-up-to-the-tip-of-my-nose appreciate it when it’s there.

Which neatly leads me on to a great big thank you for your encouragement last week. To those of you who shared my post on social media and said complimentary things about my writing, and signed up to a paid subscription, an enormous thank you.

Good lord, I nearly forgot to post a poem! Well, here’s one of my favourites about hope:

I hunted for hope in the cupboard.

I looked for it under the stairs.

I searched for hope in the cookie jar.

I sought it in strangers’ stares.

I asked about Hope at lost property.

I checked my inbox in case.

I poked about under the sofa.

I even went through the waste.

But it was masterly sequestered.

It’s camouflage had me tricked.

I was on the edge of despairing,

When something inside me clicked.

I glimpsed it in the squirrel,

Who simply cared not a jot

About whether ‘my Christmas’ I’d wanted

Would go ahead or not.

I caught a peek through the spiders web,

Such beauty from something I’d shun.

I glanced at the hint of suggestion

That came from the winter’s sun.

I peeped at it in the planets, 

That made me feel so small

And this lit something inside of me,

For none of it matters at all.

For we are alive and that’s magic!

A once in a lifetime chance!

And I caught hope by the hand again

And I asked it once more to dance.

My final bit of wisdom for this email? Well, I’ll hand over to Dory. When you feel discouraged…

That’s it for now,

‘Til next time!

Jacky x

1. Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown.