Fighting Off Discouragement
This is from my weekly email series, The Weekly Mixtape. To get it the right way, please subscribe to the newsletter
Hey Indiepreneurs,
How do you fight discouragement?
If you have suggestions, send them along, because it’s not an easy thing to get through.
Looking out at the kind of responses I typically see, when people are discouraged, they seem to respond in a few different ways: (1) suck it up and keep trucking along same as before, (2) blame others, keep doing the same thing but with a bit more bitterness, or (3) change and recommit to doing something new.
I’m sure I’m missing ways people handle it, at least in nuance if not in substance. But these are the general ways that I see discouragement handled.
I have tried each of those responses. . .after a few days of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth (and on that note, my dentist said I need to use a night time mouth guard…). I’d like to believe that I always take the high road, option #3, but that’s simply not true.
The problem is, at least logically, is that I know that #2 will get me nowhere (even if the discouragement IS due to someone else). And option #1, while at times is the best way to go, often is just a game of kicking the can down the road to find more of the same disappointment in the future.
So what to do?
I had a double whammy of discouraging news on the day before I put this newsletter together. Nothing serious, fortunately. In the grand scheme of things, both are quite small. And, even better, both of them where on calls where the other person literally gave me a blueprint of what they think I should do to get what I actually want…eventually.
Discouraging, nevertheless.
Since this particular newsletter has become a bit of a stream-of-consciousness on working through that discouragement, I can tell you want I’m planning to do right now (definitely option #3), but I can’t tell you the results, since I’m not there yet.
The trick is to not slide back to #1 and just give up on change. Because change is hard to do, and the end result needs to be worth it for our higher functions to pull away from our lizard brain that wants to keep doing the same thing over and over again.
I think I’ve gone on long enough. But I would like those suggestions on how you got past that discouragement, even as I’m pulling myself out of this pit of my own.
The Links
- My latest: Depending on how this cancellation of student debt thing goes down, it could lead to serious tax consequences.
- Really important news: EA won’t be totally destroying Dragon Age before it’s even released!
- In a tangent to Option #2 above, it turns out using facts is a terrible way to win an argument.
Service Dog Update
Snow days are so much harder when you have a dog who looks on you longingly when he doesn’t get his walk. Yes, Sherman got to play out in the snow, something that he loves to do. But when he doesn’t get his long morning walk, he gets excited–then disappointed–every time we so much as walk by the front door.
I have to admit, I’m getting a bit nervous about the future with this dog. The idea is that he should eventually be able to go with us everywhere, including to work and school for a full day. But he’s just not there yet. So as COVID restrictions start lessening, there will be times when he is left at home alone for quite a while. I’m not sure how he will take it.
Hopefully that won’t be for too long. He’s nearly a year old. It’s supposed to be sometime between a year and 18 months that these dogs finally start calming down and really doing what they’re supposed to be doing. So leaving at home should be short term.
Or we could just bring him along anyway. Technically employers in Colorado aren’t allowed to say anything. But technically illegal doesn’t always translate to being fully accepted.
