How to Overcome Discouragement

Life can be discouraging. We all have expectations of how we hope or wish life would go, and then, things don’t turn out that way.

• The relationship you had hoped would work out doesn’t.
• You don’t get the job.
• You don’t get the raise.
• The college rejects you.
• The test results come back positive.
• You have worked hard on the diet and exercise, but you didn’t lose the weight.
• You gave in to temptation yet again.

When life doesn’t turn out the way you or I had hoped, discouragement can settle in. Before you know it, you begin to lose hope, confidence, and courage.

Discouragement causes a person to feel defeated and want to give up.

If we don’t overcome this feeling of discouragement, we could very easily quit the job, walk out of the marriage, or worst of all, attempt suicide. Overcoming discouragement is a skill that is absolutely essential for every human being. Here are 4 strategies that I use to overcome discouragement:

1. Lean into a positive friend.

A positive friend is someone who will listen to what has gotten you down and be able to encourage you through it. Sometimes the encouragement comes from their presence alone. Sometimes it comes from something they say. Solomon wrote in Proverbs 12:25, “Worry weighs a person down; an encouraging word cheers a person up.” One of the quickest ways to overcome discouragement is to reach out to someone who can lift us up.

2. Change your self-talk.

We all talk to ourselves. The problem with our self-talk is that it is mostly negative. When something bad happens, our self-talk reinforces the event with words like:

• “See, you weren’t good enough.”
• “No one likes you.”
• “You don’t have what it takes.”
• “You will never amount to much.”

This type of self-talk comes naturally. Its effects are powerful in keeping us discouraged much longer than we should be. You must learn to say different things to yourself.

The people who overcome discouragement quickly do so because they are telling themselves different things like:

• “This will make me stronger.”
• “You will get the next one.”
• “He missed out on a great relationship.”
• “This is just a small bump in the road.”
• “God has something else for me.”

What are you saying to yourself? When you say positive things, you are able to bounce back quicker from discouragement.

3. Trust in God.

As a person of faith, this strategy is by far the most effective strategy for me. The Apostle Paul wrote these powerful words in Romans 8:28, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” What this means is that God will take every circumstance and create something good, but we have to realize it’s not a guarantee.

We have to do our part in loving and trusting Him. If you and I do, we can rest in the assurance that no matter what is happening, He will, in fact, do something good. This truth allows us to quickly move from being discouraged to encouraged, knowing that something good will result.

These three strategies–leaning into positive friends, changing your self-talk, and trusting God–have helped me to overcome small and big discouragements in my life, and I believe they will help you, too.

“Discouragement is a choice. You don’t have to remain discouraged no matter what is going on in your life.” Charles Stanley