10 Things To Remember When You Feel Defeated

10 Things To Remember When You Feel Defeated: Metaphorically speaking, life is like a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs, and sometimes the downs outweigh the ups of life. And few motivating things to remember when you feel defeated can get you back up there.

It is natural to go through a point in this journey where you feel like you are unable to move further on your path.

You feel tired, defeated, and overwhelmed by the negativity around you.

Whenever I am under such a nerve-wracking and pressuring time in my life, these words by Arianna Huffington help to keep me going and give me the strength to stay firm on a rocky road,

“Failure is not the opposite of success. It is a part of it.”

It will not be misleading to say that failure is that aspect of life that people are most afraid of.

Yet, it is the one that is almost inevitable. Everyone tumbles on the obstacles of the road that is life, and the biggest obstacle is failure.

But as it is true to most expeditions, there can be no journey without any obstacles.

Hence, one cannot live life without facing failures.

The only solution to this fear is to accept that everyone fails, everyone has failed, and everyone will fail again and again.

Everyone has felt defeated in life, but being afraid of failing and feeling defeated will only restrict you from experiencing life to its fullest and stepping out of your comfort zone.

Why do we feel defeated?

With failure, comes the feeling of defeat. And this feeling brings downheartedness and lack of motivation to continue; with it.

Oftentimes, you will feel like you have been hit in the face by a truck of defeat.

And as catastrophically difficult and senseless as it sounds, you should not let it take over you.

Remembering that you are the boss when it comes to your life and that it is in your hands to stop this desolation and unhappiness from gaining its control over your mind and your happiness.

Some things to remember when you feel defeated:

In order to minimize the toll of defeat on you, we at LifeFalcon have compiled together a list of things you need to drill in your mind now so that you can remain the captain of your ship when it is going through a storm later.

Every hardship comes with ease

Undoubtedly, if you have the tool of patience which is the most fundamental virtue when it comes to life, defeat and failure will seem too small for you.

Patience determines the action and reaction of your life.

It helps you to realize that things are temporary and will pass.

It might actually even be an understatement to say that patience is just a virtue. It is more like a skill, and not many acquire it.

Hence, staying forbearing and submissive to God’s will that He will never put you through a hardship that you cannot tolerate, and that He will always take you out of whatever He is making you go through is what will help you to annihilate the despondency from your life whenever you are feeling defeated.

This not only makes you more obedient to God but also catalyzes the cultivation of positivity and happiness whenever you are undergoing a ‘down’ in your life.

The right mindset can transform darkness into light

If I tell you that there is absolutely no such thing as failure, you would never believe me.

“You never fail until you stop trying.”-Albert Einstein

Read more Albert Einstein quotes here.

Let’s face the facts.

Failure means whatever meaning we give to it.

If as children, we would have feared that trying to walk would lead to falling down, or the effort of climbing stairs would mean stumbling and hurting yourself first; we would have never learned how to walk or climb stairs.

Even though it took us several tries to learn to do so, we were still brave and confident enough to try again and again.

We kept erasing the fear of falling down and getting hurt until we could finally start running around.

The same ideology applies to everything else in life.

We are naturally made to do things or take steps without the anticipation of failure.

However, over time, we have been indirectly taught by the society and the people around us to criticize us whenever we are met with failure, rather than appreciating the process and the things we had to go through meanwhile.

Changing your mindset, and remembering to step back and always focus on what we have learned from our hard work is the only way to help us get through the blues of defeat.

You are bigger than your ego

Egocentrism creates unrealistic expectations and is the root of entitlement.

Too much ego makes you think that you are deserving of a certain outcome, whether it be a job, a promotion, a writing competition win.

Ego is the enemy of success and it will make you believe that whatever you make an effort for, you deserve it because you have earned it.

It not only raises your expectations drastically but also leads to you not acknowledging the efforts that other people make in order to reach the point that you wanted to get to.

“A bad day for your ego is a good day for your soul.”-Jillian Michaels

With high expectations, you will never be able to cope with defeat and failure.

And because you are to be faced with these two every now and then in your life, you can yourself calculate how difficult the inability to accept defeat will make your life.

You will label yourself a failure, which processes into the unlikelihood of wanting to try to achieve something again.

When you feel entitled to something, you cannot digest defeat in it.

And yes, I agree that it is a natural trait to feel so, still entitlement and egocentrism are toxic traits that thwart your success and mental peace by stunting your willingness to make efforts.

Comparing yourself to others will do you no good

Comparing yourself to other people is basically the recipe for unhappiness and low self-esteem.

Sometimes the comparison is healthy as it allows you to work harder and improve yourself to climb up the ladder of social success, however, the ratio of comparison making you feel motivated and impelled, to comparison making you feel underconfident and uncomfortable with your efforts is much less.

Comparison makes some people sad and disengaged from life, work, and happiness.

They indulge themselves so much into paralleling themselves with other people, that all their mental energy and time is spent and wasted in staying unhappy and unsatisfied with themselves.

And they have no energy to try to achieve the success that others have attained.

Hence, whenever you are going through a down phase in your life, you will only meet sorrow and self-doubt and distrust if you focus more on what you have not achieved rather than what you have achieved as compared to other individuals.

This will obviously repeat itself every single time you find yourself in turbulence, which will lead to a stumbly ride overall and a bad landing at the end.

The struggle will end once the gratitude starts

It will not be an understatement to say that lack of gratitude and thanklessness is the background of despondence and despair.

Whenever we feel defeated or we are going through a phase that is making us think that all the doors have been closed for us, the single solution to help pull you out of this puddle of suffering is to try to find things you are grateful for in your life.

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were big things.”-Robert Brault

It will not be wrong to say that oftentimes we ignore the blessings that have been given to us by God whenever we are going through a dark time in our lives.

Yes, the development of ingratitude is natural and very human-like, but fastening our eyes onto the things we already have that several people sweat their blood for every day will help us to realize how blessed we are even during these dark times.

With that serotonin flowing, you will be able to see a dramatic improvement in your psychological and emotional health and it will also help generate empathy inside you.

Defeat starts to vanish when you stumble upon the power of gratitude and how it can transform your life.

Showing kindness to yourself is the key to happiness and acceptance

It is true that whenever we feel defeated by the harsh blows of life, many people among us start to blame themselves for not being capable enough to achieve what they want.

Going hard on yourself and repeating that you are nothing but a disappointment and you have no abilities will actually only just add to the ache and affliction of the defeated sensation.

“Be careful how you are talking to yourself because you are listening.”-Lisa M. Hayes

Instead, whenever you feel that the negative part of your brain is overpowering you, start reminding yourself of the goals you have already achieved and how many obstacles have you been through in order to fulfill them.

Remind yourself that you are enough for your happiness and that it is okay to feel demoralized and dispirited sometimes.

Even though you have made some wrong decisions, and some mistakes, shining a light on the things you have done correctly and reminding yourself of all the things you have done already will make you even more motivated to stop the pain of feeling defeated and strive to take control of your life again.

You are not the star of the show, there are other characters too

“Do things for people. Not because of who they are or what they do in return, but because of who you are.”-Harold S. Kushner

Whenever we are feeling crushed and blown away by the harsh realities of life, we often start to think that we are the only ones going through so much pain.

We do not realize that there are 7 billion people in the world and every single one of them is going through something heart-rending and afflicting every day.

The day when you feel like you have failed at life just because you did not win a competition, try to realize that there is someone in the world who has lost a child today or someone who lost their job and they are devasted with the fear of approaching poverty; or that there are several children in the world who are losing their fathers to war every single day.

Shifting your focus to the welfare of others who are in seemingly worse positions than you are, will transform your negative mindset into a positive one.

When you feel like you are the center of the limelight, it becomes easier to pity yourself and makes a negative impact on your life by making truculent thoughts of self-doubt flow into your mind.

By developing empathy, you try to find ways to help others who are going through a much worse situation than you are.

It will not only help you be grateful for the blessings you have but also give you a chance to do something beneficial for the fellow members of society.

“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”-Mark Twain

Complaining will not get you anywhere, try instead

The feeling of defeat comes as a result when you feel like things are not going your way.

Most times, we start to whine and complain to others whenever we are going through such a demeaning situation.

We think that complaining about things will help us get over them.

However, the truth is that complaining about where you are now and what has happened to you will never let you reach where you want to go.

“Success is achieved and maintained by those who try and keep trying.” -W. Clement Stone

Failing at something in life does not mean that you have lost your spark, it just means that you have to try harder to find it. 

If you prevent wasting your time and energy on complaining about your life, you will never be left with any energy to try to achieve your goals again.

And we all know that trying, again and again, is the only way to acquire what we want in life.

So if we keep complaining and do not make any efforts, then we will just remain in a pit of defeat and always feel discouraged.

Feeling defeated is okay sometimes

“Never confuse a single belief with a final defeat.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald

No one has ever won anything historically momentous or eventful without a series of setbacks, collapses, and false starts.

This is what you need to permanently stick into your mind to keep yourself as far away as possible from feeling discouraged and defeated in life.

The secret to success is in the developmental process that you have to go through in order to bag success.

The process is what will ultimately result in success.

Nevertheless, it is preferable to try and fail instead of not trying at all and just convincing yourself that you are incapable of it.

What’s the worst that could happen?

You would not be able to do it?

I have already told you that we cannot walk if we are simply too scared to stand up and fall.

Moreover, acceptance of the fact that everyone goes through defeat at multiple stages of their lives is also extremely crucial for your well-being when you are going through a similar situation.

If you regard failure and defeat as a natural aspect of humanity, then you will not alienate your sorrows.

It will instead help you to embrace the fact that what you are going through is totally normal and you will get through it just like everyone else does.

Or else everyone would be discouraged if there was no recovery from it.

Focusing on the destination, not the journey will help you get to it

I do not need to make it clearer to you that life cannot and will not be a walk in the park. Read what John Cena’s “Never Give Up” has to say about that.

Life will always throw hardships and suffering in your direction.

That is a fact.

So instead of complaining about the facts and counting the number of times life does that to you, or the number of adversities it makes you go through; it is better to record the time it takes you to bounce back and recover from the wounds that life gives you that make you feel defeated.

Hence, shifting your focus from the goal to the journey that you have to take in order to guarantee your goal will entirely change your perspective on life and its failures.

Instead of trailing after a greater goal that will unfold at a certain point in your life, you should focus on the baby steps you have to take in order to reach that goal in your life.

This gives you the chance to keep your eyes open for even the smallest accomplishments in your life that come as a process of attaining your goal and help you act wiser and smarter which will eventually lead to a more peaceful and laid back mental state.

Several drops of water make up an entire ocean which directly translates to the fact that life cannot happen without the smaller wins and the slow progress of it.

This helps you to stay confident and positive in times of distress and aids you to cherish the smaller achievements and triumphs instead of making you feel disappointed by the distance between you and your big goal.

Conclusion:

Firstly, it is acceptable to sometimes feel like there is no light around you and that you are the last one in the race of life.

Secondly, treating yourself as a human instead of a machine that is supposed to produce the best results every time will only make you feel worse.

You need to remember that even machines need maintenance.

You are human, after all. You have emotions, and you are allowed to feel your feelings.

Do not let self-critique stop you from making efforts to get what you want from your life.

Thirdly, it is up to you to decide that you do not want to let life make you suffer anymore.

If you think your judgment is what you needed to wrongly label yourself a failure, then let me tell you, getting back up and just going on life is also under your control.

All it takes is some patience, self-acceptance, determination, hard work, positivity, and of course, this guide to help you get through the darkest of your times.