Self Help

Imagine how much closer to living our dreams we would all be if everyone who ever promised us something actually delivered it! How much fuller our lives would be if, any time we asked people for something, they would say yes by giving it to us. When we don’t get what we want from others, when they fail to keep their promises, when they let us down, we often have hurt feelings.

Even deeper (and more frequent) are the times we have let ourselves down. How much greater are our imagination and desires than our physical abilities to fulfill them. The result of all this letdown is often hurt feelings - sadness, loss, grief. And in our bodies, these hurt feelings are felt in the center of the chest, in the area most people refer to as the heart.

A common “cover-up” for hurt is anger. We blame whatever or whoever it is that let us down, and we get steamed. (”How dare you!”) Some people have anger as the automatic response to disappointment. In almost all cases, however, hurt is just underneath. A common defense against hurt feelings is depression. Some people feel so down all the time that one more hurt is just another drop in the ocean of their melancholy.

After enough hurt, anger and depression, people tend to decide, “I’m not going to do anything that causes me any more pain.” That would, of course, include any behavior of a dream fulfillment nature, because that almost certainly includes asking a lot of people (including ourselves) for a lot of things - some of which we’ll get, and some of which (let’s be honest: most of which) we won’t.

Discouragement: Over time, the result of all this fear, guilt, unworthiness, hurt feelings and anger is discouragement. Discouragement promotes inaction, and inaction guarantees failure - a life of not living our dreams. It’s hard to imagine anything more pernicious - and effective - than discouragement.

Let’s take elephants for example, when they are young, baby elephants are heavily chained to stakes driven deep in the ground. Pull as they might, they remain firmly tethered. Soon, the baby elephant becomes discouraged and stops pulling. It learns to stay put. Over time, the trainer uses lighter and lighter restraints. Eventually, a small rope attached to a stick barely anchored in the earth is sufficient to stop a fully grown elephant from moving. In a sense, discouragement makes us all like elephants. Although we, as adults, have the power we didn’t have as children to pursue our dreams, discouragement keeps us from using it.