A disease called "Discouragement"

A disease called “DISCOURAGEMENT”

Mario D’Couto

            Evan Williams founded a company called Odeo, a podcasting platform. Shortly, Apple announced that I-Tunes would include a podcasting platform, making Odeo obsolete.  Evan was not ready to give up his pursuit. He, along with Noah Glass and Biz Stone went to build Twitter, one of the most leading online social networking and microblogging services today.

            Robert South once said, “Defeat should never be a source of discouragement but rather a fresh stimulus.” Discouragement is one of the mental conditions unique to human beings. It is easy to get discouraged when you reach a point at which nothing you do seems to help you reach your goal. However, the clutch of discouragement will not hold you down if you refuse to fall prey to it. If you happen to allow discouragement to set in then you will remain vulnerable to its powerful negative influence. Just because you failed in something that you are trying to pursue should not make you a victim of discouragement or disappointment. Remember that no egg-seller stops selling eggs because he/she had dropped his/her basket of eggs on one or more instances.  

            Discouragement is a choice. If you feel discouraged, it is because you have chosen to feel that way. When you choose not to get discouraged by your failures, then you’ve closed the door to discouragement. Discouragement lasts only as long as you allow it to continue in your life. It is like fighting in a boxing ring. As long as you keep fighting, you have a chance of winning. The moment you stop, you fall down.

            Dr. William Dryden gives us a practical way of dealing with discouragement in his book, “HOW TO ACCEPT YOURSELF.” To trust one’s self to a particular task, is to have self – confidence, knowing that you will be able to accomplish that particular task. The very word ‘Self’ and ‘Confidence’ when understood as 2 separate words is just that. When a person says, ‘I have no confidence’ or ‘I lack confidence’, he or she is saying that he/she does not trust himself or herself. But this is where Dr. Dryden points out that the human person is fallible. By fallible, what he implies is that you are far too complex to call yourself a failure. Hence instead of using the word “Self – confidence”, it would be more helpful to use the word “Task confidence”.

            By using the word “Task - Confidence”, we are talking about a particular event. If you wish to become proficient at something which you value and which you are not very good at or which you are approaching for the first time, you will not be confident at it. Since you have little or no success experience at the task in question, you can hardly have faith that you can do it. You only develop task confidence when you achieve a number of such successes and this means two things: learning how to do the task and doing the task unconfidently at first until you begin to become confident at it. When you do something unconfidently at first, the chances are that you will do it poorly. This is where accepting yourself is so important. If you accept yourself or your initial failures then you are more likely to learn from your failures and hence more likely to persist at the task than if you were to depreciate yourself.

            Striving for task – confidence based on unconditional self – acceptance is more realistic, more logical and more likely to be achieved than striving for self – confidence, with the emphasis on having faith that you can do virtually everything that you turn your hand to.

            If you want to do something that you prize, recognize that you will not be confident at it first. So, do it unconfidently and accept yourself and learn from the mistakes that you make. Persist in this way until you become confident and competent at the task in this way until you become confident and competent at the task in question. In other words, proceed on the principle of task confidence based on self – acceptance rather than on the principle of self – confidence. Once you build task - confidence, you will automatically become self – confident.

            Remember failure is about an event not about you as a person for to be a failure as a person is to imply that you would be failing wherever you put your hand to do something, which, is highly impossible. Each one is blessed in one way or another. You’ve just got to discover them, start counting and capitalize on it.