There should be a warning sign that flashes on the path of every dream we pursue: Beware of Discouragement.
Because discouragement is sneaky. It doesn’t always arrive as a dramatic breakdown. More often, it creeps in quietly — after the fifth date that goes nowhere, after the creative project that stalls, after the job rejection, after the health setback. It starts as a whisper: This isn’t going to work. It’s never going to work. I don’t have what it takes. And before you know it, a wave of doubt closes over you, and you feel walled in — your heart shut, your creativity dimmed, your joy gone flat.
I know discouragement intimately. It has visited me many times. I’ve started writing projects and lost the thread completely — felt none of the flow, none of the inspiration — and instead of accepting that as a natural part of any creative process, I’ve turned it inward and made it mean something about me. That’s when discouragement becomes truly dangerous: when we stop observing it and start identifying with it.
Here’s what I’ve learned: discouragement only has power when you let it move inside you. The moment you can look at it from a slight distance — observe it rather than become it — you create space for something else to arise.
Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of Rome, spent fourteen years enduring a devastating plague. In his private notes, later gathered as Meditations, he wrote something that has stayed with me: that it is not our circumstances that disturb us, but our own perception of them — and that perception is always within our power to change. He also wrote that nothing has the power to harm us unless we allow it.
That is not passive wisdom. That is radical inner authority. The invitation, in any moment of discouragement, is to remember that you are not at the mercy of what is happening around you. You have a choice — not about the circumstances, but about what you give your energy and attention to. That choice, made again and again in the small moments, is where our freedom lives.
One of my favorite practices for working with discouragement is to give it a form — an image, even a name.
Mine is a fire-breathing dragon with fangs and talons, trying to extinguish me. Yours might be different. Maybe it’s a short, slimy little goblin who shows up to tell you that other people have what you want, that you aren’t loved, that you’ll never amount to anything. When that goblin arrives, it makes you want to crawl into a hole and disappear.
But here’s the thing about that goblin: it only has power if you feed it.
When you give discouragement a face — even a ridiculous one — you stop merging with it. You can see it as a visiting energy rather than a permanent truth. You can even, occasionally, have a little fun with it. “Oh, it’s you again. I see you. But you don’t get to drive.”
This small shift is enormous. Because the opposite of discouragement isn’t false positivity or forced motivation. It’s the quiet, grounded recognition that the spirit in you is far more real, far more powerful, and far more loving than any dark voice that shows up uninvited.
Whenever I feel the pull of discouragement most strongly, I turn to prayer and breath. Not to bypass the feeling, but to create enough interior space that I’m not swallowed by it.
The practice is simple: slow down, breathe, and turn inward. Let the exhale carry out the anxiety, the defeat, the contracted feeling that has been sitting in your chest. And as you breathe in, allow the possibility — even just the possibility — that there is a way through this that you cannot yet see.
Because there almost always is. Discouragement narrows our vision. It makes the present moment look like a permanent condition. Prayer and stillness widen it again.
The Prayer
This prayer is for anyone in the grip of discouragement — whether it’s around love, creative expression, work, or simply the feeling that life has stopped moving forward.
Dear Beloved,
I come present in my heart, quiet myself, attune myself to my breath, and turn my focus inward. I take a long, slow, deep breath, and I exhale my anxiety, my worry, and my tension. I take another long, slow, deep breath, and I exhale, too, the feelings of defeat that have taken over me.
As I breathe in, I allow myself to relax, move into profound calm and peace, and create space inside of my body, my emotions, and my mind to bring a sense of trust and a new vision for what I’m working through.
Although the discouraged part of me wants to give up and can’t see a way through this, I affirm that there is a way out of this contraction I’ve been feeling — around my life, my expression, my love, and my connection.
I’m open to receive inspiration and joy, to see new horizons where I am not seeing any, to see how this invisible light that works with me can usher me to delight, and to let it transform these thoughts that have tried to rob me of the newness of possibilities, creativity, and action.
Right now, I breathe in that holy spirit, the comforter, and I begin to feel the joy of my thoughts that whisper to me how valued, loved, and connected I am. I allow myself to receive this spirit and rekindle the spark in me to keep going — to be the captain of my own ship, propelled by a strengthening of my emotions and thoughts, with the wind in my sails.
I now start to feel the tenderness of my spirit encouraging me to move forward, not forcing results or outcomes, but allowing the transformation to unfold in a natural state of being.
In my silence, I receive — and I am shown the possibilities of my life.
I thank you. I am grateful.
So be it.
Discouragement will come. It visits everyone. But it is not the truth about you, and it is not the final word on what is possible for your life.
The next time it shows up — whether as a fire-breathing dragon or a small, slimy goblin — don’t feed it. Name it, breathe through it, and call forward the part of you that is far greater than any setback. That part has never left. It is always there, waiting for you to remember it.
This post is adapted from Speaking with Spirit: 52 Prayers to Guide, Inspire, and Uplift You (Harmony Books).