"One of the things I learned the hard way
was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged.
Keeping busy and making optimism a way
of life can restore your faith in yourself."
-- Lucille Ball
Discouragement, and being discouraged is a very common thing that I'm sure we have all experienced. Merriam-Webster defines being discouraged as "to deprive of courage or confidence." The opposite of this would then be to have courage and that is defined as, "[having the] mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty."
So, I was thinking about this thing called being discouraged or without courage. I read a number of quotes about keeping your nose to the grindstone, not allowing yourself to get discouraged, focusing and such, all of which are difficult because they require so much effort mentally to pull yourself out of a place. Only the heroes do that. The rest of us are on our own to find a way out.
So, in all my study of life, I've only found one thing that works every time to get back on to a more positive stance, and I learned it from Jerry and Ester Hicks. It is called "Moving up the emotional guidance scale process." Here's the scale from 1 to 22 on human emotions:
1.Joy/Knowledge/Empowerment/Freedom/Love/Appreciation
2.Passion
3.Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness
4.Positive Expectation/Belief
5.Optimism
6.Hopefulness
7.Contentment
8.Boredom
9.Pessimism
10.Frustration/Irritation/Impatience
11.Overwhelment
12.Disappointment
13.Doubt
14.Worry
15.Blame
16.Discouragement
17.Anger
18.Revenge
19.Hatred/Rage
20.Jealousy
21.Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness
22.Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair/Powerlessness
Now, believe me, this is the easy way requiring so little effort, but just requiring an awareness of where you are on the scale and the willingness to move to the next level up little by little. No magic. No tricks. No courage needed. Just awareness and some small degree of willingness. After all, it is a requirement that you want to feel better, right?
Here's another key. It is hard to move too many rungs up at a time, so have a bit of patience and mosey your way to feeling better.
If at the level of discouragement, moving up to blaming someone or something for this problem is actually a positive move--a move in the right direction (up the scale). You don't need to spend any more time than necessary at any level you are on. Move as fast and slow as you like, just make sure you are going in a better direction. Once you get to the level of Hopefulness, you are in the positive realm and everything above this is where we probably want to be.
As you use this scale (feel free to print it out so you can visually see it too), over time, you will find that your emotions don't swing as far from positive to negative as they used to. You might even get to the place where your "down" emotion level is, say, contentment or boredom and your high is joy.
One other thing. It seems as if there are more negative emotions than positive, but there are many, many levels of joy--perhaps even unlimited levels of joy--and that is exciting to me.
So, anytime I begin to become aware that I'm feeling worry or blame or discouragement, I immediately know what to do to move away from those emotions. I just move up the scale until I am back where I want to be. The more I do this the faster that turn is.
One last secret is that for me, the freeway speed way to move from a negative emotion is to begin appreciating things, even very small, seemingly insignificant things, and try to just make mental or even vocal lists of things I can appreciate that very minute. It only takes a couple of minutes of that and I am appreciating much larger things, and even the negative emotions I was just feeling because now I know what to do that is easy and fast to change my feelings and attitude for the better.
What A Powerful Tool. Thank You Jerry & Esther!
Spread Some Joy Today--Share this email with some friends. What a joy to help someone else have a way to immediately change for the better.
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