When you have been working on something for so long it is easy to feel crushed and demotivated after a setback but before you entirely give up on something here are some things to consider:
1. Focus On How Far You’ve Come
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When you’ve been working on a goal and hit a rough patch or a creative block it is easy to feel flustered and like giving up. But before you decide to completely abandon your mission you should take some time out to think about what you have accomplished so far. Remember how much strength it took to get started in the first place and use that to push through this rough patch.
2. Run your race
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We often have the tendency to compare ourselves and our lives with others. We look at their success and instantly feel a lack of our own. Their lives seem to be going better than ours and we are constantly pitched against them trying to prove ourselves better than them. However, we must keep in mind that others life does not always seem like it is in reality and in the end, you have to choose your own path. Trust your own instincts and follow your plans without thinking about what others would say.
3. Master Patience
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Patience means that you remain positive even when things do not seem to be working out. Sometimes the biggest enemy of our creativity can be our lack of patience and the desire to rush through the process to reach the end goal. Hence you need to keep reminding yourself that everything good takes time and consistency. Rather than just focusing on the end result, pay attention to the process as well. For even after doing everything right it can take some time for the results of your effort to show.
4. Focus On What You Can Control
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No matter how hard you work and how many hours you put in there will be some things that will remain out of your control. Just like you cannot control the weather you cannot control those things as well. It is absolutely futile to blame or beat yourself over it. Instead of it , focus on the things you can control and try to work them to your advantage. It will save you from a lot of unhappiness and frustration.
5. Look To Others For Guidance
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There are hardly any circumstances that you are facing that no one has faced before. Things like lack of motivation, depression, obstacles are universal problems and there will be people who you can relate to. All you have to do is find someone who has faced something similar or exactly what you are facing at the moment and look at how they dealt with the situation. What made them push through it and probably the same thing will work for you as well.
6. Learn From Your Mistakes
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This is something that is said often but whenever you make a mistake there are two ways of dealing with it. You can lament over the fact that you made that mistake and transform it into a self-loathing which is bound to stop you from moving forward. Or you can take your human nature into account and come to peace with the fact that you made a mistake and what is the best way forward now. Some people would argue that mistakes can actually be blessings in disguise because it often happens that if you get success too quick you seem to feel invincible and when you do fail you do not know how to deal with it. So in this case mistakes keep you grounded and help you learn how to deal with failures.
7. Weigh The Pain Of Effort Against The Pain Of Regret
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Whenever you feel like the pain of what you are doing is too great imagine what it would be like to look back at your life in the future and feel the even bigger pain of regret. Use that pain as motivation to keep pushing forward.
8. Look to your friends and family for support
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It is better to share your plans and aspiration with the people who you know love and support you. So on days when you feel like giving up, they can remind you of why you started off in the first place and remind you of what you have achieved already and what you are capable of achieving in the future.
9. Build Resiliency
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It is true that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Resilience is the ability to pick yourself up after you get knocked down. Most of the time we underestimate our abilities of enduring things and facing setbacks but in reality, these things help us not quit altogether when things get rough.
10. Start With Why
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Whenever you start doing something think hard and write down why you are doing what you are doing. For when you feel like giving up you can go back to it and remind yourself of the reasons you took on that endeavor in the first place. It will help put things in perspective for you and help you get through the rough patch.