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The hope that was raising you higher and higher seemed to leak away, like a small rip in a hot-air balloon. Before you knew what had happened, you were back down in your old, familiar, going-nowhere, reality. You were stuck. Suddenly, you were tired, grumpy, and could not think straight anymore.
"Oh, it's no use," you say. "I can't even believe that I thought it would work. What on earth was I thinking. Me--Rich? Famous? Happy? Successful? Spiritual? (Fill in the blank). I've never been that way. I wouldn't even know how to start. What do I know about making something like that happen?"
The next thing you know you're arguing with someone, eating something fatty or sweet, watching TV, or doing anything other than being productive. In fact, what you're actively doing is running away from noticing how bad you feel about yourself.
What started it all--doubt! You noticed something. You were doing something that did not work the way that you had hoped it would. You were expecting something that did not show up the way that you hoped it should. You began to doubt your ability to make a difference to yourself or anyone else either.
The doubt was a negative thought, which was followed by a negative feeling, which reminded you of other things that you had done that did not quite work out. Before too long, the whole darn thread was off the spindle.
As William Shakespeare once said, "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt."
Discouragement is not what it appears to be. It is not something in the present, telling you that you have no future. It is instead something from the past, the long, buried, forgotten past that tells you that you're not worthy of great, lofty, and noble things. It's the voice of your mother or father, heard long ago, telling you that you won't amount to much.
This legacy from the past is very subtle. You can't see it. You can't hear it. And more often than not, you can't even remember it. But it's there--because the smallest deflection from your ideal is enough to activate it and stop you from moving ahead.
There is a certain comfort in staying as you are in life. There is a certain discomfort in trying something new and unknown. Given a split-second of choice, you will always revert to what feels familiar. And the voice of discouragement is what helps you stay safe by staying stuck.
Procrastination follows swiftly on the heels of discouragement. When this can persist for enough time, then the discomfort of the challenge ahead simply goes away. It disappears with the challenge itself.
Of course, the anti-dote for discouragement is encouragement. Find a good friend, find an inspiring book, go for a long, brisk walk, and you will get back your energy, your hope, and your will to win at the games of life.
You are what stops you from success. And you are also what starts you on the journey to success. You can be, do, and have whatever you want--once you learn how to get up every time you fall, dust yourself off, and march forward as if nothing had stopped you at all. You can heal the invisible pain through theta healing or reiki healing, or some similar modality of spiritual healing.
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