How to Stay Persistent When You Feel Like Giving Up
4 ways to overcome frustration when things don’t go as expected
Striving for your goals can be one of the most fulfilling aspects of life.
Even though it requires you to go through struggles, it gives you a purpose; a reason to get up each day looking forward to building your online business, to create content and provide value for others.
Nevertheless, it’s a challenging journey.
It can be frustrating when you feel like you’re putting so much effort into your craft and all you get as feedback is crickets.
You realize that you’re still far from achieving your goal and, because you’re quite new at it, you are still making mistakes along the way.
It even gets harder when you see others who are on the same path as you succeeding while you barely see any results.
You might even doubt yourself and your abilities, and you start having negative thoughts. Ones that can make you feel devastated and disappointed with yourself.
I found myself thinking the other day: “Am I even capable of doing this? Maybe I’m really just a dumbass.”
Sometimes we just need a reminder that we are not alone in this journey. Even highly successful people got rejected many times in their life during their pursuit of success.
The key is to stay persistent. Success doesn’t happen overnight.
So here are 4 ways you can increase your persistence and keep pursuing your goals:
The Right Mindset
Having the right mindset means expecting that failure is a natural way of learning, and knowing that to develop a certain skill you must strive for consistent improvement.
It means thinking “I need to learn the ropes” instead of “I’m just not good at this”.
This mindset, also known as the growth mindset, will enable you to believe that with a decent amount of effort and hard work, you can cultivate any skill necessary to reach your milestones.
Hence, even if you fail initially, you will still persist on improving, try new strategies, learn from others, do anything it takes to achieve your goal.
People with this mindset have been shown to have perseverance and subsequently higher rates of success.
Self-compassion
How you treat yourself when you make mistakes, can be the difference between choosing to give up or to keep going.
Going through failures is a natural part of the learning process.
You’ll have to accept that you’re fallible.
By showing kindness and forgiveness towards yourself will encourage you to seek improvement and overcome challenges.
Imagine instead of beating yourself up, you talk to yourself with understanding and compassion. That’s how you enhance personal growth.
Having self-compassion will allow you to stop having absurd expectations. It will help you have a better realization of who you are, what you’re capable of, and you forgive and treat yourself with kindness when you fail.
It will allow you to accept your failures and acknowledge that it’s not the end of the world.
“You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” — Gautama Buddha
Take a Day Off
I’ve recently been at such point in my life where I realized that I’m nowhere near to achieving my goals.
I felt really frustrated because I’ve been trying to make things work regarding my career and I put a lot of effort into it without seeing visible results.
But I realized that’s completely normal to feel this way since I’m still at the beginning of my journey, and I know there’s still so much room for improvement.
Taking a day off really helped me get myself together and overcome this feeling of disappointment.
If you go through something similar here are some things that can benefit you as well:
- Write down a few thoughts in your journal.
- Hang out with people who will lift up your spirits.
- Take a day off to take care of yourself. Go for a walk, take a nice bath, read an inspiring book, cuddle with your pets.
- Listen to relaxing music and do something creative that will get your mind off your negative thoughts.
Also, having a network of people who are on the same journey as you, and talking with them can be really helpful as they can tell you how they’ve been through the same difficulties and how they overcame setbacks.
Know Your Why
Knowing why you are striving for a certain goal is crucial to persistency.
If it’s something that you truly want, and it aligns with your values and desires, you’ll always want to keep striving towards that goal.
But when you’re in it just for the outcome you’ll be more likely to quit when facing roadblocks.
For example, when you’re writing articles and expect to see the big bucks roll in just after a couple of weeks and you get frustrated when that doesn’t happen, you realise that you don’t really love writing, you just want the result.
Know why you’re doing something.
You’ll have a better chance to persevere when things go sideways.
It will help you remain optimistic about your journey, even if you still have a long way to go.
Ask yourself the following:
- Is this goal really important to you? If so, why?
- What will the result be when you achieve this goal?
- Does the outcome align with your values?
- Can this goal help you improve as a person even if you fail?
When you have strong reasons about why you want to make something happen, you’ll be less likely to come up with excuses, procrastinate, and give up when facing obstacles.
In a Few Words
- Cultivate the mindset of improvement. Take setbacks and challenges as an opportunity to grow.
- Have self-compassion. Forgive yourself for making mistakes, treat yourself with kindness like a good friend would.
- Give yourself a break.
- Know your why and enjoy the process.
Pursuing your goals can be a satisfying journey but it’s not an easy one. Success requires patience and perseverance.
If you truly love what you do, and it’s part of your bigger story, then acknowledge your humanity and keep striving for the life you deserve.
Thank you for reading!