How to not give up when you are desperate and it seems like you can't fight anymore? Think about the last time you were looking for a job. With every "thanks for your application, but we've hired someone who better matches the required skills" you receive, it becomes harder and harder to apply without self-deprecating. You might even consider staying miserable in your current job because "at least it's a job" rather than continuing to look for something better and more worthy of your time.
Whenever we are faced with a difficult task or choice on the path to achieving something we want, it is easier to give up than to continue. This happens because we feel there is nothing we can do to ease the situation. But once we get over it, we look back and realize it wasn't as bad as we thought. In fact, we usually emphasize much more than is necessary.
You may not know how not to give up when life throws you another curve ball. Nobody knows, but we are here to help with these helpful tips.
It's just a moment of disappointment, don't give up
When we feel like we're losing all the motivation we had to start with, it's sometimes almost impossible to get it back. Following the example of looking for a new job, when stuck in a difficult situation, it's sad to think that many of us would let our emotions drown out our optimism.
We were not born to go to work, pay bills and die. If you spend most of your time at work and not at home, why should you settle for a career that makes you unhappy? Yes, any time you try to achieve a goal, there are risks and difficulties, and as a result, stress.
When we're faced with a truly difficult challenge—like constant rejection from companies—we can develop tunnel vision and lose sight of the optimism around us. All we see is failure and heartache. We completely ignore the idea that this will ever be just a memory.
Remedy 3: Another look.
Seligman discovered the problem, and devoted the rest of his life and career to finding a solution. The scientist found that animals can learn to resist helplessness if they have previous experience of successful actions. Dogs that were initially able to turn off the current by pressing their head against a panel in the enclosure continued to look for a way out even when they were restrained.
In collaboration with famous psychotherapists, Seligman began to study people's behavior and their reactions to external circumstances. Twenty years of research led him to the conclusion that our tendency to explain things one way or another influences whether we seek opportunities to act or give up. People with the belief, “Bad things happen because of me,” are more likely to develop depression and helplessness. And those who believe “Bad things can happen, but it’s not always my fault and someday it will stop ,” cope faster and come to their senses under unfavorable circumstances.
Seligman proposed a reframing scheme: rethinking experience and restructuring perception. It's called the ABCDE Scheme:
A – Adversity, unfavorable factor. Think about an unpleasant situation that causes pessimistic thoughts and feelings of helplessness. It is important to start by choosing situations that, on a scale of 1 to 10, you rate no higher than 5: this will make the experience of learning reframing safer. B – Belief, belief. Write down your interpretation of the event: everything you think about what happened. C - Consequence, consequences. How did you react to this event? How did you feel during the process? D – Disputation, another view. Write down evidence that challenges and challenges your negative beliefs. E – Energizing, activation. What feelings (and perhaps actions) led to new arguments and more optimistic thoughts?
Way to cope: Try challenging pessimistic beliefs in writing. Keep a diary to record unpleasant events and work through them according to the ABCDE scheme. Re-read your notes every few days.
What can this do? Stressful situations will always arise. But with time and practice, you can learn to cope more effectively with anxiety, not give in to helplessness, and develop your own successful strategies for reaction and behavior. The energy that previously served pessimistic beliefs will be freed up and can be invested in other important areas of life.
PS Safety precautions:
I am glad if you are now finishing reading the article, and the desire to act is already born inside. Please take care of yourself in your future actions. It is important to remember that there is no single solution that will definitely suit everyone. A person and his life situation are more complex than the most thoughtful and detailed diagram. Sometimes independent work gives the desired result. And sometimes you need to enlist external support and/or seek help from a specialist. It is especially worth seeking professional help if:
- you are experiencing difficult experiences and on a scale from 1 to 10 you rate them as 7 or higher;
- you are in a depressed state, everything is falling out of your hands;
- you started working independently, but in the process you feel worse;
- feelings of helplessness increase and negative self-images become stronger.
Please trust your feelings and take care of yourself and your condition.
I believe that in difficult circumstances we also face our own strength. The choice to read this article and try the methods described in it already means that within you there is faith in change and the possibility of moving to where it is better. The possibility of a good future beyond today's circumstances.
Seligman's dogs had no choice. We have it. Let's choose will.
Author - Elizaveta Musatova
If we give up, the same problem will return again
If you let rejection stop you from finding the job you want, all you'll do is prolong your misery. You may feel momentarily relieved that you no longer have to submit applications, but that satisfaction will be fleeting. This suffering that you have been experiencing will return, one way or another.
The real challenge you are experiencing at that moment is your own weakness manifesting itself in physical form. No matter what problems you face (be it work or otherwise), you will struggle to maintain your optimism, dedication, and willpower because you haven't solved the real problem: yourself.
You can continue to adjust your life according to your fears (i.e. no longer look for a job because you have accepted that you will always fail), or you can continue to send applications and make calls to follow up and schedule interviews.
There will always be difficulties
First you need to understand that there will always be difficulties. Whatever heights you strive for, the price of this is overcoming yourself.
It does not happen that a person has achieved outstanding results and has not made efforts for this.
Any athlete, businessman, artist will tell you that the price of his success is grueling, hard work on his shortcomings. Improving yourself. Many attempts and failures.
From the outside it seems like a successful person wakes up like this one morning. In fact, behind success there are always years of hard work.
And the ability to work hard is what separates winners from those who give up ahead of time.
What is mental toughness
Disasters, accidents, illnesses, financial failures, late-night conversations with the wife and other stressors may or may not pull the rug from under us. Our reaction to experience (which, as we know, is the son of difficult mistakes) serves as an indicator of this very stability. Psychologists draw an analogy with the physical properties of materials. Let’s imagine that our psyche has elasticity, that is, it quickly returns to its original state after deformation, and no traces or wounds remain on it. Hop - and the jelly again took the shape of a flower. Let's take strength. In physics (hello, strength of materials!) this is the ability to resist destruction and disintegration under the influence of external loads. We put a whole truck on the jack - but the device was fine, it worked. Or plasticity, when the physical body changes shape, but does not tear or break. Plasticine is now not a ball, but a cake, but it has not lost its green viscous essence.
All these metals, plasticines and jellies are just metaphors illustrating the behavior of our psyche. Stability is good: a person resists stress, retains his qualities and sometimes his appetite - or changes, but in such a way as not to suffer too much and then be able to get into shape again.
The American Psychological Association believes that we are all jacks of some kind, elastic jelly or plasticine. The ability to calmly recover from losses, stress and shocks is our usual quality, and not at all an exceptional phenomenon.
Numerous examples of mass upheavals such as 9/11, armed conflicts and revolutions prove that the majority of those who have experienced severe stress or tragedy still return to normal life. But this does not mean that people with a healthy psyche do not suffer or endure disasters meekly, with the stone face of action heroes. Emotional experiences, pain, sadness - the path to recovery is thorny in any case.
The Psychological Association does not forget to add that resilience is not a single character trait, like frivolity, but a whole complex of innate qualities, our internal attitudes, behavioral characteristics and habits. So you can always improve some sources.
In order to restore your spirit you need to turn to Jesus Christ
To restore your spirit, save your soul from despondency and depression, you can turn to our Lord Jesus Christ by reading Psalm 101.
Icon of the Savior. Photo: pravzhizn.ru
Psalm 101:
Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to You. Do not turn Your face away from me: even if I mourn for a day, incline Your ear to me: even if I call on You for a day, hear me soon. As if my days had disappeared, like smoke, and my bones had dried up. I was wounded like grass, and my heart was gone, as if I had forgotten to bear my bread.
Because of the voice of my groaning my bone cleaves to my flesh. We became like the tawny owl of the desert, like a nighttime corvid on its dive. Bdekh and bykh like a special bird here. All day long I have been reproached by you, and those who praise me are cursed by me. Ashes are gone, like bread is eaten, and my drink is dissolved with tears. From the presence of Thy anger and Thy wrath: as Thou hast exalted and cast down me.
My days have turned away like the shade, and I have dried up like hay. But You, Lord, remain forever, and Your memory endures forever. You have risen, having shown mercy to Zion, for the time has come to show mercy to it, for the time has come. For Thy servants will take pleasure in his stone, and his dust will blight him. And the nations will fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth will fear Your glory.
For the Lord of Zion will build and appear in His glory. Consider the prayer of the humble, and do not despise their prayers. May this be written for generations, and the people of the land will praise the Lord. As from His holy heights, the Lord looked down from Heaven to earth, to hear the groaning of the chained, to allow the sons of the slain to proclaim the name of the Lord in Zion, and His praise in Jerusalem.
Sometimes the people and the king will gather together to work for the Lord. Answering him on the way of his strength, I will build up the humiliation of my days. Do not bring me to the end of my days: Thy years are in the generation of generations.
In the beginning, O Lord, You founded the earth, and the works of Your hand are the heavens. They will perish, but You remain, and all the garments will be discarded, and all the garments I have worn will be changed. You are the same, and Your years will not become scarce. The sons of Your servants will dwell, and their seed will be corrected forever.
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To get rid of despondency, you can read the prayer of St. John of Kronstadt
In times of great despondency and sadness, you can turn to John of Kronstadt in prayer.
John of Kronstadt. Photo: hram-aif.ru
Prayer for deliverance from despondency by St. John of Kronstadt:
The Lord is the destruction of my despondency and the revival of my boldness. Everything is Lord for me. Oh, truly this Lord, glory to You! Glory to Thee, the Father Life, the Son Life, the Holy Soul Life - the Simple Being - God, who always delivers us from spiritual death, caused by passions to our souls. Glory to Thee, Trinitarian Master, for from one invocation of Thy name you enlighten the dark face of our soul and body and bestow Your peace, which surpasses all earthly and sensual good and all understanding.
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Do you have a dream that you have been striving for for years, but it is still not getting closer to a tangible result? How do you feel about this? Resentment, anger, depression? And it seems like you’re doing everything right: you plan, think through a strategy, work 12 hours a day, and the dream, as it was in your head, remains there. How to deal with such a dilemma? How not to give up and go astray? How not to be disappointed in life after another fall? How can we convince ourselves that life is not as unfair as we imagine it to be? The answer is very simple and just as complex - HUMILITY! But what does this mean and how can it help with specific problems? This is what we will look at now. First of all, I want to ask one question? Why do people only remember the bad? Well, really, why does a person, if he turns to the Almighty, only so that he can help solve some problem? We can hold a grudge against a person for years because of his one offense, completely forgetting all his achievements. If we quarrel with loved ones, then we generalize everything bad to the fullest, forgetting even how much we love him/her. Kind of strange, don't you think? And here the first rule of humility arises - Think and remember only the good. Those. When communicating with another person, think about his strengths, not his weaknesses! By calculating the strengths of your opponent, it will be much easier for you to find common ground for profitable cooperation, believe me! But if you hold a grudge and wait for some kind of trick from a person, sooner or later you will get it. These can be said to be the laws of the Universe. You just have to accept that in life there is both good and bad, and if there were no darkness, light would not appear against its background. “Okay, let’s say we’ve all heard about positive thinking, so what? You can’t feed yourself and your children with it,” many answer me. I agree that you won’t be able to feed yourself, but you need to learn humility, just like math or drawing. Humility is a system of views on life, and not just another skill that can be learned in personal growth trainings. To be honest, humility is one of the MOST important qualities for a person! If you are in doubt, then I will have to touch on a topic that we usually do not talk about with each other. Death, that is the incentive for learning humility! Yes, yes, it’s death and that’s all because it awaits us all and, as they say, we need to come to terms . I hope after such arguments you certainly believed me that this quality is necessary for everyone :) Then we will continue the discussion about finding it. The second rule of humility is: Accept your path in life and follow it without hesitation. This means that each of us, or rather our soul, has its own purpose, project, destiny in this life. We all feel it subconsciously, but often, due to a number of stereotypes and complexes, we are afraid to admit it to ourselves. The funny thing is that in life it also happens that a person born in a family of scientists is destined to become a singer, and in a family of builders - a scientist. At the initial stage of a child’s life, many parents do not understand this and try to send the child in their own footsteps so that he will complete the project for them, but there is no point in blaming the parents forever, after all, someone raised them “in their own way” and sooner or later the moment comes when we ourselves must take responsibility for our lives. This is where the second law of humility comes into force - you need to accept or, more precisely, come to terms with what you are predisposed to and develop in this direction. It sounds funny - you need to come to terms with what brings you the most pleasure :) “This is all interesting, but what to do if you realized your purpose late? If I am already 40-50 years old? If there are children on your shoulders, wife/husband?” standard response to this rule. And here the third rule of humility comes into force - Intend success, despite all the difficulties. Intending does not mean dreaming! To intend means to KNOW for sure that you will achieve what you are striving for! It is clear that before you know for sure, it needs to be correctly and clearly positioned and planned! And when you have an action plan for real SUCCESS, you need to come to terms with the fact that you will achieve it! Those. turn off all doubts and advice from others! Just accept as a fact that what you are striving for is the same necessity of life as air and water!!! And here is your last success story of a man who humbly walked towards what was destined for him: When he was 7 years old, his family was kicked out of their home for non-payment, and he had to work to somehow feed himself and his loved ones. When he was 9 years old, his mother died. And at the age of 22, he lost his job as a courier in a store. He wanted to go to study to become a lawyer, but he lacked the education. At the age of 23, he went into debt to become a partner in a small store. When he was 26, his business partner died, leaving him with a large debt that he had to pay off for many years. At the age of 28, he asked his girlfriend, whom he had been dating for 4 years, to marry him, but she refused. At the age of 37, after his third attempt, he was elected to Congress, but was not re-elected two years later. When he was 41 years old, his four-year-old son died. At 45, he tried to get into the Senate and failed again. And at the age of 51 he was elected President of the United States. This man's name was Abraham Lincoln.
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I invite my readers to the FREE online seminar “UNIVERSAL MOTIVATION” , which will be held on July 24 at 20:30 Moscow time. At the seminar we will discuss:
1. How to set life priorities correctly?
2.Quadrant of financial flow.
3. How to properly motivate employees and yourself?
Click HERE to register.
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Sincerely, Igor Betliy
psychologist, business consultant
ibetliy.com
